Islamist Terrorism Is Not Done With Us, Warns Former al Qaeda Hostage Theo Padnos Time 2/25/2021
How about al Qaeda?
It was not long ago (on the calendar, at least) that either name could summon, if not profound discomfort, at least a hint of the queasiness that swept over Theo Padnos as he sat in front of a TV in southwestern Syria the morning of Aug. 20, 2014. At the time, Padnos was a prisoner of al Qaeda, the terrorist group that commanded the attention of the entire world back when a radical religious ideology was considered the major threat to life as we know it. But that morning, Padnos watched in real time as Osama bin Laden’s creation lost top billing.
SARATOGA SPRINGS Northshire Bookstore Saratoga presents two Northshire Live events this week.
At 6 p.m. on Feb. 23, Ali Benjamin presents The Smash-Up in a conversation with Steve Sheinkin, to celebrate the publication of “The Smash-Up,” celebrating the debut adult novel Ali Benjamin in a wide-ranging literary conversation with NYTimes bestselling author Steve Sheinkin.
Benjamin is the author of the young adult novel “The Thing About Jellyfish,” an international bestseller and a National Book Award finalist. This is her first adult novel.
At 6 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 25, Theo Padnos presents Blindfold: A Memoir Of Capture, Torture, And Enlightenment.
Northshire Bookstore to celebrate the publication of Woodstock, Vermont author and award-winning journalist Theo Padnos’s revelatory memoir about war, human nature, and endurance Blindfold: A Memoir of Capture, Torture and Enlightenment, the searing, extraordinary account of being kidnapped and tortured in Syria by al
Blindfold: A Memoir of Capture, Torture, and Enlightenment by Theo Padnos (Courtesy)
In 2012, freelance journalist Theo Padnos was in a Turkish border town searching for a way into Syria to cover the civil war.
He found men who volunteered to guide him through the country and soon found out they were not who they claimed they were.
Once over the border into Syria, the al-Qaida affiliates kidnaped Padnos, tortured him, moved him from prison to prison for two years, and threatened him with execution but Padnos survived.
Alone without support from a news organization, Padnos was unprepared to set foot in a war zone when he tried entering Syria nearly a decade ago. The freelance reporter says he didn’t realize the so-called guides, who belonged to al-Qaida affiliate group Jabhat al-Nusra, had grim ulterior motives until they held a gun to his head.
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February 17, 2021
On my first day in my first prison, the Eye Specialist Hospital of Aleppo, Syria, the captors gave me a blindfold a grime-stained scrap of fabric they called “the cloth.” Before every interrogation and during my twice-daily excursions through the hospital corridor to the bathroom, they made me tie it over my eyes.
I knew everything about that blindfold. It lay on the floor of the cell I was occupying then, next to a pee bottle, a water bottle, and some bits of bread crust I was saving up. It was an early springtime green. It felt soft in my fingers. It had been decorated with dozens of tiny violets. I became attached to this blindfold, perhaps because, in that world of al Qaeda prisons, it was my only possession.