JOSH BAKER: Before we start I just want to flag that this episode contains descriptions of violence and sexual abuse. 

 

SAM: I take my son by the hand and we’re walking, we’re walking really slow… I see my husband cross through a fence. My heart is beating so fast, I know, I know what is happening now.  

 

MATTHEW: We live in a small city called Raqqa. This city has scared the whole word 

 

LORI: How can they do this to such a sweet, innocent child? Matthew is the sweetest little boy you’ll ever meet.  

 

BAKER: I just found Mathew, Sam and all the kids together and they are alive… 

 

SAM: My story, oh yeah absolutely, it is, it is very difficult to believe, it is very hard to believe. I’m not a bad person, I’m not a monster.

 

BAKER: I’m Josh Baker and from BBC Panorama and FRONTLINE PBS this is “I’m Not A Monster.”

 

Episode 6: “Now I’m calling the shots”    

 

BAKER: I’m just going to do one thing with one of your mics if that’s ok? 

 

SAM: Yeah, it’s ok.

 

BAKER: Where are they? Let’s see… 

 

SAM: One is here… 

 

BAKER: It’s still mad to me that I’ve managed to find you… 

 

SAM: Phew

 

BAKER: And that you’re, you’re sat here.

 

SAM: It’s like for three years you go through feelings that most people don’t feel their whole lives, you know, your kids, your husband, it’s just, I’m starting to kind of come together now, you know?

 

BAKER: I’m on a military base in Northeast Syria. Kurdish guards are listening as I interview Sam. 

 

SAM: I was looking for smugglers and I think I talked to the wrong one maybe;  I ended up in a torture prison in Raqqa.

 

BAKER: She’s just told me that she ended up in a notorious ISIS prison, known as the Black Stadium.

 

SAM: They kept telling me, we know you’re a spy this and that, and I’m like, ‘I’m not a spy, I just don’t want to be here. You guys suck, I just don’t want to be here. I was, at this point, seven months pregnant. The beatings started, eltrocution, sexual abuse. They stripped my clothes, they beat me, they electrocuted me in my stomach. I’m not going to go into all the details… 

 

BAKER: That’s ok. 

 

SAM: But it was extremely violent. They hung me up from, from the ceiling by my wrists with handcuffs. They told me that they sold my kids in Mosul as slaves, they said my husband was dead. They killed him. I was sure they were lying but I wasn’t sure how long I was going to last. 

After the beatings they would give me food, sometimes they were nice to me, you know — ‘Just tell us, just tell us, just tell us and then it’s all over, we’ll just sell you back to your government, it’ll be finished.’ I was so ready to tell them I was a spy [laughs]… I wanted to but, you know.

 

BAKER: When that’s happening to you, what’s going through your mind? 

 

SAM: I was just ready for it to be finished. Like why drag it on? Just finish it.

 

BAKER: Sam says this went on for about two months. Then, suddenly, it was over.

 

SAM: They blind-folded me, they put me in a van and they dropped me off on the big street next to, like maybe half a mile away from my house in the middle of the night.

 

BAKER: As I sit across from Sam, I have to pause for a moment because of the barbarity she’s just described. I’m wrestling with this conflict, of wanting to empathize with the person in front of me, but also to do my job as a journalist. 

 

I know a torture prison called the Black Staduim existed. I also know that some foreigners that joined ISIS ended up there. I don’t know if Sam was one of them though. And I don’t understand why an American who was accused of being a spy, would make it out alive. I’m going to have to find a way to check her story.

 

SAM: After prison I gave birth. I have a new baby, I can barely walk. Like my whole body is scarred and injured and I just can’t even explain — not just depression, like I cannot move. I’m so injured. I’m extremely sick. My husband said he was going to buy a girl.

 

BAKER: How did that come up? 

 

SAM: Well, if you want to know the truth of it, I couldn’t stand looking at him and he’s a man.

 

BAKER: Sam seems to be saying that because she wouldn’t have sex with Moussa he wanted to buy a girl. 

 

SAM: He like tries to involve me in this. He tells me it’s going to be to help me, she’s going to just help me; this is, she’s going to be my friend, because he knows I don’t have any friends;  and I think to myself, you know, this will be really great, you know, have somebody there with me… 

 

BAKER: Can you, can you tell me about that environment? Where did you meet, where does somebody go to buy a girl? Because to most people…

 

SAM: Well, before they used to sell them on the street, but after a while it became more expensive. 

 

BAKER: And that’s how she met a girl called Suad. 

 

SAM: So I meet Suad and immediately I fall in love with her. I told my husband I said, ‘I’m not going home without her.’ Like my heart was broken to leave her there she just looked scared, you know, she just looked really scared and I just, I just couldn’t leave her there. My husband told me that she was really expensive. He told me she was $10,000. I said, ‘I’ll pay whatever, I’ll take her home with me, whatever, even if it’s the last thing I have I’ll pay it and take her home with me.’ I made her a nice room and everything for her. And she quickly caught on with my kids, she fell in love with my son and my daughter.  

 

After a while uh… This is getting kind of personal. He was talking to me about having more kids and I was like, ‘I’m not having any more children, I’m not having any more children, that’s it.’ He beat the hell out of me. I didn’t, I just I didn’t want anything to do with him.  

 

One night after he went to bed, I took Suad into a room just me and her, and I took my son too, because I couldn’t, I couldn’t speak Arabic. And I explained to her I didn’t know what to do.  

 

BAKER: So just so I’m understanding, you take Suad and Matthew into a room and you’re trying to explain to her what Moussa’s asking? 

 

SAM: Well she understands, she understands the arguments, she knows what’s going on, she knows. But she doesn’t… um, she… She knows what the conversation is without Matthew having to say it. He doesn’t understand things like that. 

 

BAKER: Did you feel like at that point that you were telling her that she was, she was probably going to be raped by Moussa?

 

SAM: Yeah I was, I was telling her that. There was nothing I could do about it and she was so broken.

 

BAKER: Sam says Moussa bought a second girl. She was 14. 

 

SAM: He would tell me I am going to take one of the girls upstairs — don’t come upstairs. And then I had to go tell them which one it was. And I had to tell that one to go take a shower and be ready.

 

BAKER: How would they react when you would go and tell them that?

 

SAM: They can’t even look at me. They can’t, they can’t even look at me. Even after a year it was the same. After a while Suad started to fight. At first she was more compliant but after a while she started to fight and he started to be violent with her. I told her, ‘Just please don’t fight, please don’t.’ If you ever had to sit back and watch your husband rape a 14-year-old and a 17-year-old girl, you just, what do you do? Man, what do you do? I don’t know.

 

BAKER: I’m going to interrupt the interview, because there’s a voice I think it’s important to hear — Suad’s. I managed to find her.

 

BAKER: Does she have any idea who we are?

 

HANA: Not yet, not yet. But when I talk about Sam she said, ‘Yeah I know.’ 

 

BAKER: I think she is going to be very confused, so we will need to be very delicate.

 

HANA: I think yeah. Yeah. 

 

BAKER: Hana is a Kurdish friend of mine who works with charities as a translator, often interviewing women and children who have survived sexual violence. I’d asked her to help me find Suad. As we drive along a hillside road at dusk in northern Iraq, a woman comes into view, she’s standing in front of a tent that’s pitched by the side of the road.

 

HANA: Josh, Suad. 

 

BAKER: Hello. I’m so happy to see that you’re safe

 

SUAD: I’m too.

 

BAKER: Ah your English!

 

HANA: She understand a little bit of English 

 

JOSH: A little bit of English. 

 

SUAD: Mhm.

 

BAKER: Can I see where you’re staying? 

 

HANA: This is her place. 

 

BAKER: I’ll follow you… 

 

BAKER: The Islamic State group destroyed her home, so now she’s living in a makeshift camp. Under the single bare bulb that lights their tent, Suad’s mom shows us a family photo album. 

 

HANA: This is Suad’s brother, he’s newly married.

 

BAKER: This is your brother?

 

BAKER: There are no recent pictures of Suad’s dad. He hasn’t been seen since ISIS attacked their town in 2014. Thousands of people from their community, the Yazidis, were killed and abducted. Suad was one of many women and children who were sold between ISIS fighters and their families. That’s how she ended up in a slave market in Raqqa, where she met Sam. 

  

BAKER:  Suad. Everything — [to Hana] would you translate? — Maybe you will understand because I know you speak some English. 

 

HANA: [translating]

 

BAKER: I really want you to understand that I am so happy to see you and to see that you are safe. And I know there is a camera, there is a strange man you don’t know but you are in control and we will just talk very gently and anything you don’t want to talk about, if you feel upset, we will just talk, ok? 

 

HANA: [translating]

 

BAKER: Suad tells me she spent a lot of time with Matthew — or Yusef as she calls him. She’s got this commanding gaze and is warm and welcoming.

 

SUAD: [Kurdish]

 

BAKER: So Yusef taught you English? Did you teach him Arabic?

 

SUAD: [Kurdish] 

 

BAKER: Really, so like it was a trade? 

 

HANA: Yea, she ask him that I will teach you Kurdish and you teach me English.

 

BAKER: I have an idea. Why don’t we drink some tea and then we will talk some more. But we just stop for a minute, how about that? 

 

HANA: She said you are welcome anytime. 

 

BAKER: The next day, in a nearby town, down a dusty back street, I meet Suad at her work. 

 

BAKER: Is this your shop? Do you like, do you sell all these clothes? 

 

SUAD: Yes… 

 

BAKER: We talk and she laughs at my Arabic, or lack of. And when she takes a break, we record an interview.

 

BAKER: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. 

 

SUAD: One, two, three, four, five, six…

 

BAKER: Seven…

 

SUAD: Seven, eight, nine, 10.

 

BAKER: Yes… Can you tell me about the first time you saw Sam? Do you remember that?

 

SUAD: [voice actor reading in English] Sam and her husband saw me at a slave market in Raqqa and brought me home. Sam told me that she wanted to buy me because she saw that I was in a bad way and that I could recover in her house. She told me I wasn’t her slave, I was going to be like her daughter. 

 

Moussa started to shout at Sam and hit her a lot. Moussa was telling Sam to hand me to him. She said, ‘No, I won’t give you Suad, I bought her.’ Sam couldn’t do anything. She used to say I don’t want this to happen, but I can’t do anything.

 

BAKER: Suad’s account is similar to Sam’s. She mentions the beatings and Sam trying and failing to stand up to Moussa. 

 

SUAD: [voice actor reading in English] Sam knows he forced me for sex and every time I go to her and tell her what happened she used to cry and say I’m against that, but I can’t do anything.

 

BAKER: How do you feel about Sam? A lot of people think Sam is really bad, that she took her children to join ISIS. Do you think Sam is bad?

 

SUAD: [voice actor reading in English] No, I never thought that she is bad. I always believe she is a good person. I think she is saying the truth and she is not a member of ISIS.

 

BAKER: Over the years I’ve been working in Iraq, other Yazidi women have told me how much they despise the wives of ISIS fighters. I’d been expecting Suad to do the same. But despite everything she went through, she cares for Sam, and feels strongly that she tried to protect her.

I’ve also spoken to the other Yazidi girl, who we are not naming. She told me she feels the same.

 

BAKER: Are you happy to continue? 

 

SAM: Yeah.

 

BAKER: Do you mind coming back into this?

 

SAM: Yeah. Did you see the pictures of my kids after the house got bombed? Our house got bombed twice. 

 

ARCHIVE: In Syria the U.S.-led coalition has stepped up the bombing of Raqqa hoping to drive ISIS fighters from their remaining hideouts… They have advanced to Raqqa’s Eastern edge and they’re fighting inside the city for the first time… Well let’s tackle a look at some drone footage which shows the extent of the devastation caused by week’s of fighting there as well as the damage inflicted by thousands of bombs dropped on Raqqa. 

 

BAKER: By August 2017, Sam, her four children, Suad, Ayham and the other Yazidi girl were trapped inside the battle for Raqqa. 

 

SAM: So our neighbour, four story building, got bombed. The whole place fell into our house

 

BAKER: While you were inside?

 

SAM: While we were inside. It was around seven o’clock at night. You get blown, I hit the wall, I can’t see anything, it’s smoky, I can’t breathe, the gunpowder, it’s intense. My kids. I just knew they were dead, I knew they were dead. The bomb literally fell probably 20 feet away from them and I just start screaming. The whole wall in their bedroom was blown in, like you could see where the old building was and not even feet, a couple of feet away from them, people died and they, they were fine… It’s amazing they are not dead.

 

BAKER: I’ve seen a photo of the aftermath of the bombing — it was sent to Sam’s sister Lori.  

Matthew is standing in this courtyard covered in dust. He’s surrounded by rubble. His sister’s there too, cradling a scrawny cat. They both have these blank looks on their faces. It was around this time, when Raqqa was being obliterated, that Matthew and Ayham were forced to appear in the propaganda video that was shown around the world.

 

ARCHIVE: This is chilling to see a young boy… claims to be a ten year old American boy who is now living in Syria… Experts say a script was likely written for him… To threaten the U.S…. to shock and deflect attention from the group’s dwindling territory.

 

MATTHEW: My message to Trump, the puppet of the Jews. Allah has promised us victory and has promised you defeat. By the will of Allah we will have victory. So get ready, for the fighting has just begun.

 

SAM: It was Moussa and his brother that were forcing the kids to do this, this crazy, intense video of this American kid with his Yazidi friend. This will be a great propaganda.

 

BAKER: Sam says Moussa’s brother, Abdelhadi, who’d traveled to Syria with the family, was working for the Islamic State group’s media department.

 

SAM: Abdelhadi was, he was really pushing. So he really pushed it and then after a while Moussa was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, sounds good.’ My son has had the hardest end of all of this.

Everyday Abdelhadi was waking him up in the morning and when they would come home he would be crying. He would be like, ‘Abdelhadi was talking really bad to me because I forgot my lines.’ He’s crying but, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do. 

 

BAKER: I mean how was it to essentially watch your son go off and you must have known that that video would be shown to people. 

 

SAM: Yeah I know.

 

BAKER: What goes through your head?

 

SAM: What can I do to stop it? All I can do is think about the end, like how am I going to be able to convince people that this is not my son? How am I going to be able to convince people that that’s not him? And then I’d just think to myself if they spend one hour in a room with him they’d see it’s not him. If you meet him you’d see he’s not like that at all. Like he doesn’t know anything about weapons he plays marbles. 

 

MATTHEW: Do you not think there is anything you could have done more to protect the kids? 

 

SAM: Absolutely. Absolutely, I think that a lot. I was always thinking how am I gonna get these guys out of here.  I just  didn’t know how to get there, as far as protecting my kids, I did the best I could, I did the best I could keeping them away from these terrorists. I did the best I could keeping them out of the schools, I did the best I could protecting their lives. I did the best I could teaching them at home. 

 

BAKER: It’s hard to understand how Sam could ever have hoped to protect her children from what she calls “these terrorists.” She was living under the same roof as Moussa, a fully fledged member of ISIS. A fighter committed to the group’s way of life. 

 

SAM: You know, maybe. Maybe after a few minutes I’ll take a break and smoke a cigarette if that’s as ok? 

 

BAKER: Are you happy to smoke there?  

 

SAM: Yeah I can smoke here.

 

BAKER: As Sam lights a cigarette, I notice a tattoo on her arm — it’s a word written in Arabic. 

 

SAM: That is my husband’s last name.

 

BAKER: Is it weird having that on your wrist?

 

SAM: Yeah, I get asked a lot from it and it’s, it’s difficult for me to answer. I would lie but everybody here reads Arabic

 

BAKER: You looked upset then when you looked at it. 

 

SAM: It was just so different, you know, I loved him a lot.

 

BAKER: In America?

 

SAM: Mhm.

 

BAKER: Did you love him in Syria?

 

SAM: I didn’t cry one tear when he died. It was like prayers were answered. 

 

BAKER: In the final stages of the Battle for Raqqa, Sam says Moussa was fighting to defend the city.

 

SAM: Apparently him and a couple of guys felt brave and they started to try to advance and a drone caught him, bombed him.

 

BAKER: So he was killed in a drone strike? 

 

SAM: Yeah, I think so. He was ready to die. I was making the same prayer he was. He was praying to die and I was praying for him to die [laughs]. 

 

BAKER: But when you looked at the tattoo then, I mean…

 

SAM: What I was thinking of is that I’m an idiot [laughs]. That’s what I’m thinking. I felt like the noose had been taken off my neck. You know I felt like now I’m calling the shots, nobody is going to tell me what to do anymore. I’m calling the shots and this is the beginning of the end.

 

BAKER: Talking of the beginning of the end, how on earth did you escape Raqqa?  How did you end up in Kurdish hands?

 

SAM: You know, when the ceasefire happened, we left, we left with everybody.

 

ARCHIVE: The deal to get out of here, is the deal that no one wants, to talk about… 

 

BAKER: The story behind the ceasefire that Sam’s talking about was reported on by my BBC colleague, Quentin Sommerville… 

 

ARCHIVE: It’s Raqqa’s dirty secret… 

 

BAKER: With ISIS ready to fight to the death — and holding civilian hostages — coalition forces, including the U.S. and U.K., feared a bloodbath. 

 

ARCHIVE: The deal started with a media blackout… 

 

BAKER: At the last minute, the U.S. and its allies cut a secret deal with ISIS. 

 

ARCHIVE: The Islamic State’s escape was not to be televised. 

 

BAKER: The fighting stopped. The jihadists and their families were allowed to leave.

 

ARCHIVE: The group’s final defeat, came thanks not to a battle, but to a bus ride. The convoy left from the city hospital. On it were IS fighters, their families and their hostages… 

 

BAKER: As the trucks moved out of Raqqa, Sam says her brother-in-law, Abdelhadi, managed to find a car.

 

SAM: He was able to get it started so we put all of our stuff, we were able to save some of the food that I’d bought before the war — some rice and, you know, some foods that last, a generator — and we were able to take it comfortably, most people had to take these big trucks and it was, it was unreal.

 

BAKER: A huge convoy around four miles long drove nonstop to the region of Deir ez-Zor — one of the few areas that was still held by ISIS.

 

SAM: So we get to the city, outside Deir ez-Zor, and I’m like, how am I going to get out of here, how am I going to get out of here.

 

BAKER: Sam’s brother-in-law found somewhere for the family to live.

 

SAM: You have to understand, Abdelhadi knows I want to leave, he’s got like seriously strict restrictions on me, people are watching.

 

BAKER: One night, Sam says she spotted a neighbor with a cigarette. Smoking was banned under ISIS, you could be put in jail, beaten or worse. So she suspected he might not support the group. Sam sent one of the Yazidi girls over to talk to him and ask if he knew anyone who could help them escape. 

 

SAM: She goes back and forth, back and forth, and she’s, you know, she’s good at Arabic. So she makes these arrangements. Finally, I go and I meet him. Because he’s scared, I’m scared — everybody’s scared. So it’s, everything is super secret and, finally when it comes down to it, I don’t have cash, all I have is gold, I paid him 10 ounces in gold. I’m pushing, I’m pushing, I’m like — this has to happen tomorrow, this has to happen tomorrow, I’m pushing and pushing.

 

BAKER: Sam says she waited for Abdelhadi to leave the house. Then she made her move. 

 

SAM: I walked into his bedroom, I took his gun, I took all his money, I left a note and said, ‘I took everything with me, ciao.’ 

 

BAKER:And then what? 

 

SAM: I walked out the door.

BAKER: After several hours in the back of a white pickup truck, Sam and her kids, along with Ayham, Suad and the other Yazidi girl, made it out of ISIS territory. The moment they reached U.S.-backed Kurdish forces was captured in the video I’d found on Twitter while standing on the ladder in my dad’s hairdressers. Sam and her kids were taken into Kurdish custody. The others were returned to Iraq.

 

BAKER: So what is your situation now?

 

SAM: I’m living in a refugee camp in a tent. Now we’re just kind of sitting waiting to see what happens from here.

 

BAKER: How is Matthew right now?

 

SAM: He’s good. He’s really good. I bought him a soccer ball the other day. He kicked it outside 

the fence. He goes up to the security guys, he talks so politely, he says, ‘Can you go get my ball for me please?’ you know. They walk with him, he goes and drinks tea with them, you know, he’s very polite and he just really wants to breathe, you know, and he’s happier now. He can get his haircut the way he wants to cut his hair. He can dress the way he wants to dress, he can be cool. 

 

BAKER: Our interview comes to an end. I say goodbye to Sam and a guard escorts her out of the room. She’s heading back to the camp. 

 

Finding Sam, and interviewing her was meant to help me get answers. But half the time I can’t tell if she’s telling the truth or not. And I’m not the only one. 

 

Last time I was here the man who’d granted me access to Sam, had told me she is ‘innocent’ and a ‘good woman.’

 

This time he warns me: ‘she’s a snake.’ 

 

It’s July 2018, I’m back in England, preparing to give a best man’s speech for my mate Will. I’m trying to find the right balance between embarrassing and respectful. It’s not going well. I’m interrupted by a phone call from a lawyer I know. He tells me the American government has decided to arrest Sam. Not for terrorism though… but for lying to an FBI officer.

 

It all happened in America, before Sam even left the country, because Sam had been an FBI informant. 

 

END