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Peter Theo Curtis, Abducted in 2012, Is Released by Nusra Front Peter Theo Curtis, Abducted in 2012, Is Released by Nusra Front
(about 3 hours later)
An American freelance journalist held captive for nearly two years by Al Qaeda’s branch in Syria was freed on Sunday in a handover to United Nations peacekeepers in the Golan Heights, who then released him to United States government officials. Held for nearly two years in a prison run by an affiliate of Al Qaeda in Syria, an American freelance writer was unexpectedly freed on Sunday, following extensive mediation by Qatar, the tiny Gulf emirate and United States ally that has successfully negotiated the release of numerous Western hostages in exchange for multimillion-dollar ransoms.
The freelance journalist, Peter Theo Curtis, 45, from Boston, was abducted near the Syria-Turkey border in October 2012. He was held by the Nusra Front, the Qaeda affiliate in Syria, which has broken with the even more radical Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. Another American journalist, James W. Foley, who was kidnapped in Syria the following month, was beheaded last week by ISIS, which posted the images of his death on YouTube. The family of the freed hostage, Peter Theo Curtis, 45, said that no ransom had been paid. But his surprise liberation by the Qaeda affiliate, the Nusra Front, came less than a week after the decapitation of another American freelance journalist, James Foley, held by a different and even more radical jihadist group, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and was likely to raise further questions about what, if any, concessions should be made to militant groups holding Western nationals. The decapitation of Mr. Foley, which shocked and enraged much of the world, also may have spurred Qatar to press more intensively for Mr. Curtis’s release.
The United Nations confirmed in a statement on its website that Mr. Curtis was transferred to the custody of the United Nations peacekeeping force in Al Rafid village, in the disputed Golan Heights region straddling Syria and Israel, at 6:40 p.m. local time. The death of Mr. Foley, apparently at the hands of a masked ISIS guard believed to be British, which was filmed and uploaded on YouTube, came after European nations and organizations had negotiated the liberation of more than a dozen Europeans held in the same cell as Mr. Foley for ransoms averaging more than $2.5 million per person, according to former hostages and their families, as well as negotiators and officials involved in their releases.
“After receiving a medical checkup, Mr. Curtis was handed over to representatives of his government,” the statement said. Marie Harf, a deputy State Department spokeswoman, said Mr. Curtis was then taken to Tel Aviv. News of Mr. Curtis’s release came as British officials said they were close to identifying Mr. Foley’s suspected killer, based on voice-recognition technology, eavesdropped phone recordings and other intelligence tools. If the killer is identified, it could give officials insight into the ISIS captors, who are holding another American journalist, Steven J. Sotloff.
Mr. Curtis’s extended family released a statement thanking the governments of the United States and Qatar and “the many individuals, private and public, who helped negotiate the release of our son, brother and cousin.” Relatives of Mr. Curtis said in interviews that after numerous failed starts and after having received ransom demands ranging from $3 million to $25 million, his panicked family was introduced to the Qatari ambassador to the United Nations, after learning that Qatar had successfully won the release of Europeans kidnapped by Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen. As soon as Qatar became involved, the relatives said, they felt as if an avenue of communication had been opened, and they were able to send a proof-of-life question which only Mr. Curtis could have answered: What was the subject of your Ph.D. dissertation? (Answer: a museum started by the mother of the novelist Anthony Trollope.)
Nancy Curtis, the journalist’s mother, asserted in the statement that his release was secured without any ransom payment, one of the primary motivations for such abductions by the Nusra Front, ISIS and affiliated groups. It remains unclear what Mr. Curtis’s captors received, if anything, for releasing him. “My family wants to thank the country of Qatar in a big way,” said Amy Rosen, a cousin. “Every person that our family dealt with in Qatar said that under no circumstances would a ransom be paid — and that this was something the U.S. government had requested, and they had agreed to,” she said. “But at the same time, we don’t pretend to know everything that happened.”
“While the family is not privy to the exact terms that were negotiated, we were repeatedly told by representatives of the Qatari government that they were mediating for Theo’s release on a humanitarian basis without the payment of money,” Mrs. Curtis said. The United Nations said in a statement on its website that Mr. Curtis had been handed over to United Nations peacekeepers in Al Rafid village, in the disputed Golan Heights region straddling Syria and Israel, at 6:40 p.m. local time. The family was told that an American doctor was there to meet him, and had confirmed that he was healthy. He will be debriefed by the F.B.I. before he returns home. American officials said that Mr. Curtis was taken to Tel Aviv.
President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry welcomed the news, coming less than a week after the beheading of Mr. Foley had focused world attention on how the administration was confronting the ascendance of radical Islamic militancy in the Middle East, particularly ISIS. Ms. Rosen and Viva Hardigg, another cousin, said they began hearing late Saturday night that Qatar’s efforts had succeeded, and that Mr. Curtis was soon going to be delivered to an appointed spot in the Golan Heights.
“The president shares in the joy and relief that we all feel now that Theo is out of Syria and safe,” Eric Schultz, a White House spokesman, said. “But we continue to hold in our thoughts and prayers the Americans who remain in captivity in Syria, and we will continue to use all of the tools at our disposal to see that the remaining American hostages are freed.” Ms. Rosen, in her bedroom in New York, and Ms. Hardigg, in her home in Hanover, N.H., said that neither could fall asleep. All through Sunday morning they fretted, hearing from their interlocutor that if the handover did not happen before sundown Syria time — roughly seven hours ahead of the East Coast — the transfer might be called off. It was 11:43 a.m. when Ms. Hardigg got an email informing her, she said, and her hands holding a cup of coffee began to shake. She caught herself on the wall, and slipped to the floor, tears streaming. Just outside New York, Ms. Rosen got the same news, and she, too, had to sit down.
Mr. Kerry acknowledged that “after a week marked by unspeakable tragedy, we are all relieved and grateful knowing that Theo Curtis is coming home.” In a statement posted on the State Department website, Mr. Kerry also said: “Over these last two years, the United States reached out to more than two dozen countries asking for urgent help from anyone who might have tools, influence, or leverage to help secure Theo’s release and the release of any Americans held hostage in Syria.” Mr. Curtis’s mother, Nancy, in Cambridge, Mass., took no time to celebrate, relatives said. Before telling her own family, she sat down to write an email to the Foleys, telling them that despite her relief, she could not rejoice, because she was still grieving for their loss.
In a video dated July 18 and obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Curtis is seen disheveled, with long unkempt hair and bound hands, with an armed man holding an automatic weapon at his side. Mr. Curtis begs for his life, saying: “I have three days left. Three days — please do something.” A video released just weeks earlier, on June 30, had a different tone. Speaking from a script, he says his captors had treated him well and that he “had everything” he needed. Mr. Curtis, the author of two books, is one of two siblings raised in the Boston area. After receiving a bachelor’s degree from Middlebury College, and a doctorate in comparative literature from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, he moved to New Hampshire, where he taught poetry to young prisoners in a local jail, eventually parlaying the experience into his first book, titled from an Emily Dickinson poem, “My Life had stood — a Loaded Gun.” He later moved to Yemen, where he wrote under the name Theo Padnos, a change that may have protected him during his captivity in Syria, because his radical jailers appeared to have never found his second book, “Undercover Muslim,” researched in Yemen about Westerners who embrace armed jihad.
“Everything has been perfect — food, clothing, even friends,” he says in the footage. Turning to freelance journalism, he traveled in October 2012 to Antakya, Turkey, near the Syria border, where the last email his mother received was dated Oct. 18, 2012.
That description of his captivity is at odds with the accounts given by Matthew Schrier, an American photojournalist who escaped in July 2013 after being held for seven months, much of the time alongside Mr. Curtis in the same makeshift prison cell. An initial investigation by his family and colleagues appeared to indicate that he crossed into Syria with a guide who betrayed him, handing Mr. Curtis to an extremist group, Ahrar al-Sham, which later gave him to the Nusra Front.
Mr. Schrier described how his captors had tortured and starved him. In an interview soon after he regained his freedom, Mr. Schrier said his captors had forced a car tire over his knees, immobilized him with a wooden rod slid behind his legs, rolled him face down on a cement floor and beat the soles of his feet until he could not walk. For nine months the family had no news until July 29, 2013, when an American photojournalist, Matthew Schrier, escaped from the same makeshift cell where he had been held alongside Mr. Curtis. Soon after returning to the United States, Mr. Schrier described how he had succeeded in making an opening in the wall. Standing on his cellmate’s back, he wiggled through the opening but Mr. Curtis became stuck and after multiple attempts, fell back, Mr. Schrier said. He left alone to seek help.
Desperate to escape, Mr. Schrier managed, standing on his cellmate’s back, to unravel some wires in an opening in the wall of their cell, he said in the interview. That allowed him to wiggle through the opening, he said, but his cellmate, who was slightly heavier-set, became stuck and decided to stay in the cell, urging Mr. Schrier to go on without him. Mr. Schrier also described how he had been tortured, including beatings on the soles of his feet so severe that he had to be dragged back to his cell, unable to walk. The glut of information was followed by another five months of silence, until January, when Ghanim al-Mteiri, a sheikh from Kuwait, approached an employee of The New York Times with a photograph of Mr. Curtis in captivity, and The Times arranged for the image to be sent to the Curtis family. A fund-raiser for jihadi groups, the sheikh said he could organize Mr. Curtis’s release, and Nancy Curtis agreed that same month to fly to Istanbul, meeting twice with the shadowy figure, who insisted on seeing her at night.
The cellmate — only now revealed to be Mr. Curtis — endured 13 more months in captivity before the announcement of his freedom on Sunday. At the request of his family, news organizations, including The New York Times, had agreed not to identify him in their earlier reports of Mr. Schrier’s experiences. He proposed a complicated prisoner swap, offering to release Mr. Curtis if his mother arranged for the government of Iraq to free two women — both wives of jihadists — held in prisons there. The proposal went nowhere.
The Nusra Front and ISIS were once a single organization, but the groups split over ideological and tactical differences, with ISIS going its own way and Nusra remaining loyal to Al Qaeda’s central command. One of the issues that divided them was the acceptable level of brutality. Since the split, Al Qaeda has criticized the unrestrained attacks by the Sunni militants of ISIS against Shiite Muslims, as well as their attacks on Christian villages. At around the same time, Ms. Hardigg said that the family began receiving ransom demands by email and phone calls placed to a family representative in the United States. They started at around $3 million, then progressively increased to a high of $25 million. It took the family a while to realize that this spring four French and three Spanish hostages, as well as at least a dozen others from European nations, were released one by one as either their governments or their organizations and, in at least one case, their families paid a ransom.
Three Americans — two men and one woman — are still believed to be captives of ISIS. The group has threatened to behead one of them, the journalist Steven J. Sotloff, if the United States does not meet its demands, including stopping airstrikes on ISIS positions in Iraq. The United States is one of only a handful of countries that has strictly adhered to a no-ransom policy, refusing to make concessions of any kind to designated terrorist groups. This is in stark contrast to most European nations, who have now unintentionally become Al Qaeda’s biggest fund-raiser, paying more than $125 million to the network’s direct affiliates to free European citizens just in the past five years, according to a monthslong investigation by The New York Times.
Both ISIS and the Nusra Front use kidnappings to finance their operations, as other Qaeda affiliates do. While the United States has refused to pay ransom, European nations have secretly funneled large sums to kidnapper cells to obtain the release of hostages, including four French citizens freed this year from the same ISIS jail where Mr. Foley was believed held. The policy of not paying ransoms has protected Americans by not making them desirable hostages — they represent only a small share of the total. But it has put Americans at a disproportionately high risk of execution if they are abducted. ISIS — which killed Mr. Foley, 40, after having demanded a 100 million euro ransom — is currently holding three other Americans, including Mr. Sotloff, and has threatened to execute him.
Al Qaeda’s direct affiliates are estimated to have reaped at least $125 million in ransom payments since 2008, most of it paid by European governments through intermediaries. “The ransoms started out in the single digits and then progressively got bigger,” said Ms. Hardigg. “One day it was $5 million — and literally a couple of seconds later, they sent another message saying, no, it was 5 million euros ($6.6 million),” she said. The family never asked the United States to pay a ransom on their behalf “because we just knew what the answer would be,” she said.
_ American experts on ISIS and Middle East politics suggested that Qatar, which has supported some militant Islamic causes but is an important American ally, moved more aggressively to help secure Mr. Curtis’s freedom after Mr. Foley was killed, partly to emphatically send a message that it opposes groups like ISIS.
“I think what we’re seeing is a shift as the result of the Foley beheading,” said Rick Brennan, senior political scientists at the RAND Corporation. “Qatar has an interest in making certain it is seen as an ally in the war on terror. And beheading Americans or Westerners is not in Qatar’s interest."