Transcripts For BBCNEWS HARDtalk 20170112 : vimarsana.com

Welcome to hardtalk, with me, zeinab badawi. My guest is american journalist theo padnos. From october 2012 to august 2014 he was held hostage in syria by the nusra front, which is allied to alqaeda. He was beaten, abused, not knowing from day to day if he would be shot or spared by his captors. But was he the victim of his own actions . He says the most bitter moment of his captivity was the realisation that it was he himself who was mostly responsible for his ordeal. Theo padnos, welcome to hardtalk. Thanks very much for having me. Why did you decide to go to syria in 2012 to report on the conflict there . You know, it was a very dangerous place, it still is. It was certainly dangerous at the time, but i mean, i felt that i could avoid the worst of the dangers. I felt the real danger to me at the time, i thought, was the regime. I thought they were against western reporters coming in. I didnt have a visa for journalists, and i felt that they were going to come and arrest me. I felt that the resistance, they were going to say, the west is generally on our side, youre a westerner, so well show you around. I anticipated a friendly and heartfelt reception from the rebels. Right, so you went to antakya in turkey, on the border with syria. You met three syrians there who told you they were fixers for the media and that they could help you get into syria, and indeed you went in with them. Yes. What did you find convincing about them, what did they say to you . You know, i was so in my own little world at the time, that i wasnt even interested in their credentials. I just thought, these are people that are. I cant trust any of them is what i thought. So i said why not trust you guys, lets go. Also, they offered me a trip into syria for 0. I was so poor at the time, i was, like 0, thats my price, ill go with you guys. So you went in with them. Shortly after arriving in syria they said to you, we are from alqaeda or the nusra front. No, no, shortly after arriving in syria, firstly i slept one night in the same abandoned house as them and then the next morning we got up, went to binnish, which is where james foley and john cantlie were kidnapped a month later. It was a very dangerous little town. We drove through this town, we had coffee, we walked through the streets a little bit and then we went to another house. They brought out some cables, they started kicking me, they were filming this. Whack, whack, whack. So they were militants of some kind . Well, they were violent people, anyway. They brought out the handcuffs, they tied up my legs and they said, you are a prisoner. We are from the alqaeda organisation, they said, and they said, didnt you know . I said no. A little more violence and then they go, 0k, now we can have lunch. So they told you they were from alqaeda, but you managed to escape . That night i slipped my hands out of the handcuffs they had put me in. I was sleeping next to one of the guys, the chief, he was asleep. I pulled my hands out of the handcuffs, ran away, and then i was in deep trouble when they caught me, because they said he is so clever, he lulled us to sleep and then he undid the handcuffs magically with his cia training and now we really have to show him whos boss. So they handed you over to nusra front, Jabhat Al Nusra, jihadists . Men who were violent and extreme. But tou believe they were from nusra front . Eventually ended up in hands of the nusra. At the time there was just a consortium of violent men. But you then were held in captivity for nearly two years and you were, obviously, treated very, very badly by these captors, abused, beaten and all the rest of it. Who were these people who were holding you, what nationalities were they . At first it was really mostly people from aleppo. Syrians from aleppo, with an iraqi in charge. But later on in came canadians, i met some moroccan and german people, i met some canadians, i met an australian guy. These were converts, were they . I didnt ask them how they came to islam. But when you say they were germans and so on, were they germans who were of arab origin, for instance . Yes, he was a moroccan guy. He probably wasnt a convert, but a born again, you could say. These were people that had recently discovered an enthusiasm for islam, it doesnt mean they are converts. And you say cia, cia, because i have to say you speak fluent arabic and they thought one of the reasons why your arabic were so good was you had been trained by the cia . Yeah. Thejudge, when i first escaped they brought me to islamic court. The Islamic Courtjudge began asking me questions about my education in islam. I told them i had been in yemen. What were you doing in yemen, where did you study in yemen, he asked me . In order to fight the jihad, can anybody fight the jihad . Isaid no, you need to Special Education in islam to fight thejihad. He goes, you know too much. This is very good. He said, youre nojournalist, cia. I was trying to impress him with my knowledge, because he held my life in his hands, but by impressing him with my knowledge, i basically certified myself, in his eyes, as a cia agent. So that was the wrong thing to do. If you ever get caught by these people, do not go on about how much about islam you know, go on about how little you know. And then they go, oh good, youre a journalist. Right. Thanks for the advice, by the way. I should say you were kept in captivity from january 2013 with the us photojournalist matt schrier, and you shared a cell together, indeed you even shared a bed for six or seven months. What kind of treatment did you both receive . Were you treated worse than he was, because you spoke fluent arabic and they thought you were cia . And because he had a card when he was caught that i had no such card. They go, hes the journalist and hes the cia guy. So what kind of things happened to you . I mean, they have various torture methods. Some of these things. I was in a blindfold, so i could hear the electricity and i could obviously feel it, but i didnt know what kind of electricity they were administering to my body, you know . Mostly its just hitting. They immobilise you and they handcuff you and they bring you into a very dark space, its late at night and the elders of the group are standing around and the young people are actually inflicting the pain. They do this for days and days and days, you dont know when its going to stop. You say young people inflicting the pain, because were children involved . Yeah. The purpose of this thing is really, ifelt, in the end looking back on it, i think that the elders of the group are taking the young people and the outsiders and they are terrifying these young people and they are bringing them. They are changing the psychology of these people, by forcing them to participate in this violent thing that they really dont want to do. But these kids learn how to do it eventually. And by learning this violence, it changes their psychology over time. I think thats a part of the point. Were you blindfolded so you couldnt tell you were being tortured by children, or were you fully aware there were children present . Sometimes they said, we want to take this blindfold off of you, look at us. You see this, you see whats happening . And how old were these kids . Some of these kids were ten, 12, 15. They have a lot of kids they have to train. This is the official torture sessions, but those kids are violent with you when its not official. They have licence to do this to you. Once they bring you into their dark space with the chains, whips and cables, then the next time theyre giving you food, they do the same thing, its just not part of the officialJabhat Al Nusra programme. Were they as bad as the adults . Theyre worse. I was more afraid of the kids than i was of the adults. They re unpredictable, and theyre doing it for fun sometimes, the kids are. You were electrocuted with cattle prods . Sometimes with cattle prods. Listen, by the way, i had it much better than the syrians did. Compared to what, compared to the pain and suffering that they inflict on their fellow syrians, i had it easy. But matt schrier converted to islam because he thought it might get him better treatment. Here you are, fluent arabic speaker, able to recite parts of the koran. Why didnt you do the same . Iwanted. I felt that by converting to islam they were going to make me follow all these rules they know much better than i do and then they were going to catch me in a mistake and they were going to make me suffer for making a mistake. Lying about my feelings on islam. So mi thought it was more safe for me to say im doing the christian rules, i know them better than you guys, and god made me a christian. He cant be wrong. They would say no, god made you a muslim, you converted to christianity when you were a little baby. So we would have these arguments about when did i convert. I didnt. They said, yes, you did. At that point i was safe. I would have converted to islam if i had a gun to my head, but i wanted to use this conversion as the trump card, as the last card that i had in my hand to save my life, and i would have used it, i have no objection to it. You had no idea whether you were going to live from day to day. Of course not, no prisoner does, in Jabhat Al Nusra land or isis land. They want you to feel as though your life is in their hands, and if you live, its because theyre giving you back your life. So when you come back to life, youre coming back, you have them to thank for it, and they want you to come back as they are. And a lot of prisoners do, you know . Their purpose is to affect a psychological change in the people that they control. Its notjust the prisoners. Did it have that impact on you . Yeah, i think, yeah, in some ways. I was so terrified of them. Youre like this creature that has absolutely no power in the universe and they have everything, and when they give you an olive you are on your knees in gratitude toward them. So they want you in that relation to them, and i was that way, i was grateful to them. And by the way, they could have killed me at any point, and so i feel that they. Im grateful to them for sparing my life. You devised an escape plan with matt. Yes. July 2013, and he managed to escape through a small window in your cell. He got through you didnt. What happened when he got through and was looking up at you, did he try to help you to get out, what happened . No, no. He didnt try to help you . No, i think he had a moment of war panic, which anybody could have. We were in a combat zone, snipers all over the place, explosions, rockets, and he was looking for freedom. The moment he had an instant of freedom, he was gone. So he wasnt interested in rescuing me. And perhaps i wouldnt have been interested in rescuing him, if i had been in his place. But he said, ill help you. That was our plan. Wed been working on this thing for days and days and days. And when the moment came to help me, he didnt do it. So you could blame him for this personally, i dont blame him for this. Have you spoken to him since your release . No, im not interested in speaking with him. So you did finally, of course, after a couple of various mishaps, you tried to escape again when you saw somebody on a motorbike and you asked to be taken to hospital and then found yourself back in the hands of your captors, that was in the summer of 2014. Then eventually, august 2014, you were taken to a un compound. Yes. And you are handed over to an indian doctor who examined you very, very carefully and very politely and gently. You said that really moved you, and touched your heart. It still does to think about it. The first six months, every time i met somebody who was kind to me i wanted cry and i did cry. Youre so isolated from people who are interested in your well being, youre so convinced when youre in the custody of these people that you are filth and disgusting and like a germ that should be eradicated from the planet. Finally somebody is gentle and gracious to you, it breaks your heart. Thats what happened to me. Im still grateful to the people that were courageous and brave with me. It meant a lot. Yet youve written, when you look back on your captivity, almost two years, 22 months in syria, you said, the bitterest moment of the early weeks of my captivity came when i thought about who was most responsible for my kidnapping me. Thats right. We have this gorgeous gift in life that is our freedom and our capacity to wander the earth, and i threw it away as if it was like a piece of dirty kleenex. I just didnt care. By trusting those three syrian fixers . By walking into this incredibly dangerous place, with people i didnt know, having done no research on them and having an inadequate understanding of the religious passions that were circulating on the ground. Do you think you were being a bit naive . Of course. Its surprising for somebody who has a phd in comparative literature, fluent arabic speaker, knows the arab world, lived in it. Should you not have known better . I certainly should have, however. I know the area, i had been riding my bicycle there before the war. I knew the territory, i knew the people, and i was in over my head the instant i walked across that border. So i think anybody who knows less than i am, is more lost. And i think many, many of the reporters are deep in over their head and they dont know it. But many News Agencies have pulled out their staff, journalists, because syria, since the revolution there, is the most dangerous place for journalists. More than 100 have been killed there so far. Do you feel then that it falls to the Freelance Journalists such as yourself to report on the conflict . I hope it doesnt. Because you take these risks . I hope it doesnt. But it did in your case . It did in my case, and certainly Freelance Journalists are, you can say theyre more reckless. I personally didnt think of myself as reckless at the time. I thought, i know the area, i know the people and i wish to stay away from the violence of the whole thing. I was going to write about the religious tensions and i wanted to interview people distant from the actual clashes. So i wasnt interested in the bang, bang, bang of the whole thing, i was interested in the deeper, underlying causes of this war which dont require you to be in the dangerous places. Is that what motivated you to go into syria . I have to say, you were struggling journalist at the time, trying desperately to get your stories placed as a Freelance Journalist and not having much success. Did you think, i can go in, use my language skills, i want to make a name for myself, get into syria, explain whats going on there . I did think that and i do think that, i continue to think that. But i dont think that its appropriate for anybody to throw your life away, in order to write a thousand word piece or get a nice photograph. This is crazy, its lunatic thinking. What was it that made you want to do that . Was It Recognition you wanted . I didnt realise. Did you want recognition . Did you want a greater understanding of arabs and islam . Yes, certainly i did want that and i continue to want that, but i did not believe i was putting my life at risk. I thought, ill stay away. 0therjournalists are crazy. They go and film guys shooting each other and they put on the flak jackets and helmets and all of this i dont do this. I sit quietly and have tea with somebody. I am not and have never been a combat journalist, its not my thing. Im trying to understand the deeper causes of this conflict. Because the chief of your captors talked to you and said, we want you to explain alqaeda to the world. Yes, yes. Im happy to do that. I continue to want to do this. Its very important, we need to understand the psychology of the people in charge of these Islamic States that are emerging in syria now. We need to understand the culture on the ground, how they control people, how people stay, why they stay in this thing. In fact, theres joy and love in all of these places. We need to understand how, what makes people stay and love it and why theyre willing to give up their lives for these people. Greater understanding, or are you asking for sympathy, even, or empathy . Because some of the things youve said do perhaps suggest you might be. When you were moved one prison outside aleppo, you said you wanted to make friends with your guards. To make friends with the People Holding you . Well, one wishes to make friends with them because theyre giving you food. If they dont like you, if they consider you an enemy, you will not eat, you will not go to the bathroom. You need to be friendly with these people. More generally, im interested in understanding the reality behind the alqaeda talk. Because every last person in alqaeda and isis, and i lived with them for months, i know them well enough to know they all have a line of talk, and behind that is a psychology. Its a vulnerability to certain manipulators, its a love for islam. Theres a whole conglomeration of factors that we need to understand more carefully, and by talking to them carefully, over time, you understand how this alqaeda organisation is constituted. But thats quite different from some of the things youve said. For instance, in the documentary thats been made about your experience theo who lived, its called youve said about the jihadists, they are just young men. There are tonnes of food and guns and people to torture. I mean, most of them are having fun. Theres a lot of fun in the jihad. Its very underrated in the west. Well, its quite true. Can i just say, its fun, theres a lot of fun in the jihad . Thejihadists kill their fellow human beings. They treat them badly, as they treated you badly. Dont you regret that kind of statement . I dont regret it because i think its true. Listen, there are young men that are having the most profound and meaningful experiences of their lives in killing people. This is a very dangerous thing. Were educating people, or by leaving these vast areas of syria and iraq to the control of religious fanatics, were allowing an entire generation of young people to educate themselves into killing and into merciless torture. We dont want this, but they are deriving a kind of pleasure from it. But i put it again to you that it sounds like. An effort to understand what makes them tick is one thing, but another occasion reported in the Los Angeles Times october 2016, about one militant with a shattered, bleeding leg brought into your cell, pleaded with you to rub his leg and sing the eagles song desperado. You said, i would sing to him and at those moments he was not a crazy suicidaljihadist, he was just a normal guy who loved attention and loved being treated affectionately. You did a bit more than you really needed to. Well, in this instance, i mean. I had a man who was very violent in the cell with me and i needed to just calm this person down. I was afraid of him, everybody was terrified of this guy. We were in a cell with one very hard core Jabhat Al Nusra guy that they themselves, the Jabhat Al Nusra<\/a>, jihadists . Men who were violent and extreme. But tou believe they were from nusra front . Eventually ended up in hands of the nusra. At the time there was just a consortium of violent men. But you then were held in captivity for nearly two years and you were, obviously, treated very, very badly by these captors, abused, beaten and all the rest of it. Who were these people who were holding you, what nationalities were they . At first it was really mostly people from aleppo. Syrians from aleppo, with an iraqi in charge. But later on in came canadians, i met some moroccan and german people, i met some canadians, i met an australian guy. These were converts, were they . I didnt ask them how they came to islam. But when you say they were germans and so on, were they germans who were of arab origin, for instance . Yes, he was a moroccan guy. He probably wasnt a convert, but a born again, you could say. These were people that had recently discovered an enthusiasm for islam, it doesnt mean they are converts. And you say cia, cia, because i have to say you speak fluent arabic and they thought one of the reasons why your arabic were so good was you had been trained by the cia . Yeah. Thejudge, when i first escaped they brought me to islamic court. The Islamic Courtjudge<\/a> began asking me questions about my education in islam. I told them i had been in yemen. What were you doing in yemen, where did you study in yemen, he asked me . In order to fight the jihad, can anybody fight the jihad . Isaid no, you need to Special Education<\/a> in islam to fight thejihad. He goes, you know too much. This is very good. He said, youre nojournalist, cia. I was trying to impress him with my knowledge, because he held my life in his hands, but by impressing him with my knowledge, i basically certified myself, in his eyes, as a cia agent. So that was the wrong thing to do. If you ever get caught by these people, do not go on about how much about islam you know, go on about how little you know. And then they go, oh good, youre a journalist. Right. Thanks for the advice, by the way. I should say you were kept in captivity from january 2013 with the us photojournalist matt schrier, and you shared a cell together, indeed you even shared a bed for six or seven months. What kind of treatment did you both receive . Were you treated worse than he was, because you spoke fluent arabic and they thought you were cia . And because he had a card when he was caught that i had no such card. They go, hes the journalist and hes the cia guy. So what kind of things happened to you . I mean, they have various torture methods. Some of these things. I was in a blindfold, so i could hear the electricity and i could obviously feel it, but i didnt know what kind of electricity they were administering to my body, you know . Mostly its just hitting. They immobilise you and they handcuff you and they bring you into a very dark space, its late at night and the elders of the group are standing around and the young people are actually inflicting the pain. They do this for days and days and days, you dont know when its going to stop. You say young people inflicting the pain, because were children involved . Yeah. The purpose of this thing is really, ifelt, in the end looking back on it, i think that the elders of the group are taking the young people and the outsiders and they are terrifying these young people and they are bringing them. They are changing the psychology of these people, by forcing them to participate in this violent thing that they really dont want to do. But these kids learn how to do it eventually. And by learning this violence, it changes their psychology over time. I think thats a part of the point. Were you blindfolded so you couldnt tell you were being tortured by children, or were you fully aware there were children present . Sometimes they said, we want to take this blindfold off of you, look at us. You see this, you see whats happening . And how old were these kids . Some of these kids were ten, 12, 15. They have a lot of kids they have to train. This is the official torture sessions, but those kids are violent with you when its not official. They have licence to do this to you. Once they bring you into their dark space with the chains, whips and cables, then the next time theyre giving you food, they do the same thing, its just not part of the officialJabhat Al Nusra<\/a> programme. Were they as bad as the adults . Theyre worse. I was more afraid of the kids than i was of the adults. They re unpredictable, and theyre doing it for fun sometimes, the kids are. You were electrocuted with cattle prods . Sometimes with cattle prods. Listen, by the way, i had it much better than the syrians did. Compared to what, compared to the pain and suffering that they inflict on their fellow syrians, i had it easy. But matt schrier converted to islam because he thought it might get him better treatment. Here you are, fluent arabic speaker, able to recite parts of the koran. Why didnt you do the same . Iwanted. I felt that by converting to islam they were going to make me follow all these rules they know much better than i do and then they were going to catch me in a mistake and they were going to make me suffer for making a mistake. Lying about my feelings on islam. So mi thought it was more safe for me to say im doing the christian rules, i know them better than you guys, and god made me a christian. He cant be wrong. They would say no, god made you a muslim, you converted to christianity when you were a little baby. So we would have these arguments about when did i convert. I didnt. They said, yes, you did. At that point i was safe. I would have converted to islam if i had a gun to my head, but i wanted to use this conversion as the trump card, as the last card that i had in my hand to save my life, and i would have used it, i have no objection to it. You had no idea whether you were going to live from day to day. Of course not, no prisoner does, in Jabhat Al Nusra<\/a> land or isis land. They want you to feel as though your life is in their hands, and if you live, its because theyre giving you back your life. So when you come back to life, youre coming back, you have them to thank for it, and they want you to come back as they are. And a lot of prisoners do, you know . Their purpose is to affect a psychological change in the people that they control. Its notjust the prisoners. Did it have that impact on you . Yeah, i think, yeah, in some ways. I was so terrified of them. Youre like this creature that has absolutely no power in the universe and they have everything, and when they give you an olive you are on your knees in gratitude toward them. So they want you in that relation to them, and i was that way, i was grateful to them. And by the way, they could have killed me at any point, and so i feel that they. Im grateful to them for sparing my life. You devised an escape plan with matt. Yes. July 2013, and he managed to escape through a small window in your cell. He got through you didnt. What happened when he got through and was looking up at you, did he try to help you to get out, what happened . No, no. He didnt try to help you . No, i think he had a moment of war panic, which anybody could have. We were in a combat zone, snipers all over the place, explosions, rockets, and he was looking for freedom. The moment he had an instant of freedom, he was gone. So he wasnt interested in rescuing me. And perhaps i wouldnt have been interested in rescuing him, if i had been in his place. But he said, ill help you. That was our plan. Wed been working on this thing for days and days and days. And when the moment came to help me, he didnt do it. So you could blame him for this personally, i dont blame him for this. Have you spoken to him since your release . No, im not interested in speaking with him. So you did finally, of course, after a couple of various mishaps, you tried to escape again when you saw somebody on a motorbike and you asked to be taken to hospital and then found yourself back in the hands of your captors, that was in the summer of 2014. Then eventually, august 2014, you were taken to a un compound. Yes. And you are handed over to an indian doctor who examined you very, very carefully and very politely and gently. You said that really moved you, and touched your heart. It still does to think about it. The first six months, every time i met somebody who was kind to me i wanted cry and i did cry. Youre so isolated from people who are interested in your well being, youre so convinced when youre in the custody of these people that you are filth and disgusting and like a germ that should be eradicated from the planet. Finally somebody is gentle and gracious to you, it breaks your heart. Thats what happened to me. Im still grateful to the people that were courageous and brave with me. It meant a lot. Yet youve written, when you look back on your captivity, almost two years, 22 months in syria, you said, the bitterest moment of the early weeks of my captivity came when i thought about who was most responsible for my kidnapping me. Thats right. We have this gorgeous gift in life that is our freedom and our capacity to wander the earth, and i threw it away as if it was like a piece of dirty kleenex. I just didnt care. By trusting those three syrian fixers . By walking into this incredibly dangerous place, with people i didnt know, having done no research on them and having an inadequate understanding of the religious passions that were circulating on the ground. Do you think you were being a bit naive . Of course. Its surprising for somebody who has a phd in comparative literature, fluent arabic speaker, knows the arab world, lived in it. Should you not have known better . I certainly should have, however. I know the area, i had been riding my bicycle there before the war. I knew the territory, i knew the people, and i was in over my head the instant i walked across that border. So i think anybody who knows less than i am, is more lost. And i think many, many of the reporters are deep in over their head and they dont know it. But many News Agencies<\/a> have pulled out their staff, journalists, because syria, since the revolution there, is the most dangerous place for journalists. More than 100 have been killed there so far. Do you feel then that it falls to the Freelance Journalist<\/a>s such as yourself to report on the conflict . I hope it doesnt. Because you take these risks . I hope it doesnt. But it did in your case . It did in my case, and certainly Freelance Journalist<\/a>s are, you can say theyre more reckless. I personally didnt think of myself as reckless at the time. I thought, i know the area, i know the people and i wish to stay away from the violence of the whole thing. I was going to write about the religious tensions and i wanted to interview people distant from the actual clashes. So i wasnt interested in the bang, bang, bang of the whole thing, i was interested in the deeper, underlying causes of this war which dont require you to be in the dangerous places. Is that what motivated you to go into syria . I have to say, you were struggling journalist at the time, trying desperately to get your stories placed as a Freelance Journalist<\/a> and not having much success. Did you think, i can go in, use my language skills, i want to make a name for myself, get into syria, explain whats going on there . I did think that and i do think that, i continue to think that. But i dont think that its appropriate for anybody to throw your life away, in order to write a thousand word piece or get a nice photograph. This is crazy, its lunatic thinking. What was it that made you want to do that . Was It Recognition<\/a> you wanted . I didnt realise. Did you want recognition . Did you want a greater understanding of arabs and islam . Yes, certainly i did want that and i continue to want that, but i did not believe i was putting my life at risk. I thought, ill stay away. 0therjournalists are crazy. They go and film guys shooting each other and they put on the flak jackets and helmets and all of this i dont do this. I sit quietly and have tea with somebody. I am not and have never been a combat journalist, its not my thing. Im trying to understand the deeper causes of this conflict. Because the chief of your captors talked to you and said, we want you to explain alqaeda to the world. Yes, yes. Im happy to do that. I continue to want to do this. Its very important, we need to understand the psychology of the people in charge of these Islamic State<\/a>s that are emerging in syria now. We need to understand the culture on the ground, how they control people, how people stay, why they stay in this thing. In fact, theres joy and love in all of these places. We need to understand how, what makes people stay and love it and why theyre willing to give up their lives for these people. Greater understanding, or are you asking for sympathy, even, or empathy . Because some of the things youve said do perhaps suggest you might be. When you were moved one prison outside aleppo, you said you wanted to make friends with your guards. To make friends with the People Holding<\/a> you . Well, one wishes to make friends with them because theyre giving you food. If they dont like you, if they consider you an enemy, you will not eat, you will not go to the bathroom. You need to be friendly with these people. More generally, im interested in understanding the reality behind the alqaeda talk. Because every last person in alqaeda and isis, and i lived with them for months, i know them well enough to know they all have a line of talk, and behind that is a psychology. Its a vulnerability to certain manipulators, its a love for islam. Theres a whole conglomeration of factors that we need to understand more carefully, and by talking to them carefully, over time, you understand how this alqaeda organisation is constituted. But thats quite different from some of the things youve said. For instance, in the documentary thats been made about your experience theo who lived, its called youve said about the jihadists, they are just young men. There are tonnes of food and guns and people to torture. I mean, most of them are having fun. Theres a lot of fun in the jihad. Its very underrated in the west. Well, its quite true. Can i just say, its fun, theres a lot of fun in the jihad . Thejihadists kill their fellow human beings. They treat them badly, as they treated you badly. Dont you regret that kind of statement . I dont regret it because i think its true. Listen, there are young men that are having the most profound and meaningful experiences of their lives in killing people. This is a very dangerous thing. Were educating people, or by leaving these vast areas of syria and iraq to the control of religious fanatics, were allowing an entire generation of young people to educate themselves into killing and into merciless torture. We dont want this, but they are deriving a kind of pleasure from it. But i put it again to you that it sounds like. An effort to understand what makes them tick is one thing, but another occasion reported in the Los Angeles Times<\/a> october 2016, about one militant with a shattered, bleeding leg brought into your cell, pleaded with you to rub his leg and sing the eagles song desperado. You said, i would sing to him and at those moments he was not a crazy suicidaljihadist, he was just a normal guy who loved attention and loved being treated affectionately. You did a bit more than you really needed to. Well, in this instance, i mean. I had a man who was very violent in the cell with me and i needed to just calm this person down. I was afraid of him, everybody was terrified of this guy. We were in a cell with one very hard core Jabhat Al Nusra<\/a> guy that they themselves, the Jabhat Al Nusra<\/a> commander, had shot. They shot him and threw him in the cell with us. Now, he was furious, and he was making threats to us and we were frightened of him and maybe he was frightened of us. Anyway, we needed to calm this guy down. I did whatever i could to calm him down. But you appreciate that some of these comments youve made, statements youve made, could perhaps, you know, blur the line between understanding and perhaps asking for sympathy. Ill give you just one more example you said, talking about your captors, i think we should send aid, we should send them chocolates and blankets, and i think we have to be nicer to them. Well, i do believe that, i think that the long Term Solution<\/a>. What, send them chocolates and blankets . The long Term Solution<\/a> for us and islamic fanaticism in syria and iraq is to negotiate with these guys. We cant kill them all, theres too many of them. And in order to negotiate we need to be, we need to give them stuff that they want. We cant give them stuff that they can sell, because theyll use that, theyll use the cash to buy guns. But if we give them oranges, theyve basically got to eat them. If we give them chocolate. We understand the argument, theo, that if you try to target to jihadists on the ground and there are civilian deaths, theres collateral damage, thats going to harden a lot of peoples opinions and maybe turned against the west. Turn them against the west. But to actually say blanket them with love and send them chocolates is just a step too far perhaps your statements should be a bit more measured . I am not representing us policy, by the way. Nobodys going to abide by my policy advice. Basically, im speaking metaphorically, 0k . Im not really advocating that we send them love. Im advocating that we negotiate with these people because we cant kill them all, theres too many of them. We have to establish ourselves as reasonable people with whom they can negotiate, and we have to lull them into a peaceful attitude, otherwise they will kill us in the cafes in paris, as they have already been doing. They have an infinite supply of young people that are ready to throw their lives into the breach for them. We dont want to live with the cafes being shot up, the subways being bombed. So you think you can negotiate . Youre saying negotiate with alqaeda, with so called Islamic State<\/a> . Of course. With isis as well. And with Jabhat Al Nusra<\/a> . Of course, theres no choice. I negotiated with these people every day for every little thing for two years. I needed to go to the bathroom, so you negotiate that. I needed to eat, you negotiate. Was it that that released you, or was it. We understand the qataris, qatar reportedly facilitated your release. They were negotiating, yes. Wasnt it that likely, that was responsible for your being released, rather than these tactics . Its not likely, its a certainty. So all these tactics and strategies of yours and negotiating with them and so on. Allows you to get something that you want from them. Now, i didnt have the cash to get myself out, but im not saying that qatar had the cash either, but i needed certain things from Jabhat Al Nusra<\/a> and they gave it to me, because i learned how to talk to them. Vanity fair in october 2016 described you as an out of luck, out of money Freelance Journalist<\/a>. Now youre famous. Am i, really . Youd struggled to make a name here. Theres a documentary made about you, being interviewed on television and so on. You kind of succeeded not perhaps in the way that you wanted to or the reasons you might have wanted to. I wouldnt call this success. But your name is out there, people know who you are now. Do they . Thats good, i hope so. The reason why i hope so is that will enable me to publish articles and speak on television about a peaceful and wise solution for the violence in syria. Thats my goal, is to help the west and help the world help syria. Thats my goal, and to the extent that i can do that, im happy. Theo padnos, thank you very much indeed for coming on hardtalk. Thank you. Good evening. It was a mild december, but winter has arrived with a vengeance. Snow from top to tail across the uk. Heres the picture from the highlands. Across the south east we dont often see scenes like this, and we saw the rain turned to snow, it moved across london and its beginning to clear out now. Further wintry showers across the north and west continuing into a very icy night. Particularly where you have had the earlier rain 01 where you have had the earlier rain or slush, it is all going to freeze. I mentioned blizzards across highland scotland, and through the early hours we will see an area of sleet and snow moving out of scotland, we think, and then the eastern side of england. It could give another covering in some inland areas. But guess what . It turns up close to the london area in time for the morning rush hour. Gales batter in the east coast. This could well be the same first thing in the morning where you are, take it steady on the roads and pavements. The wintry weather clears away from the south east, a lot of northern and Western Areas<\/a> will see wintry showers but many places dry. Storm surge moving down the north sea coast, could well cost cause a lot of coastal flooding. Cold despite the sunshine; 304 degrees. 0nly despite the sunshine; 304 degrees. Only a school bus back a slow fall. 0n only a school bus back a slow fall. On saturday the worst of the girls we re on saturday the worst of the girls were these from the east coast. The showers further west beginning to die down. Cast your mind back 30 yea rs die down. Cast your mind back 30 years ago exactly to the day, these we re years ago exactly to the day, these were the highs. The highs, across the uk. Minus eight degrees in some spots, and blizzards ranged across southern and eastern parts of england. So perhaps this cold spell is not quite as bad as we think it is. I say cold, from saturday into sunday across North Central<\/a> and eastern areas, but france pushing from the west will introduce poor cloud and somewhat higher temperatures in the second half of this weekend. All the latest on your Weather Warnings<\/a> can be found on the bbc weather website. I will be back in halfan bbc weather website. I will be back in half an hour. Hello, im ros atkins, this is 0utside source. Donald trump says the Us National Intelligence<\/a> chief called him to denounce the report as fake. Thats not quite how Director Clapper<\/a> described it. Well get into that in a moment. Meanwhile the Confirmation Hearings<\/a> for the Trump Administration<\/a> continue. Todays featured the man nominated to be the new head of the cia. It is pretty clear, about what took place here, about russian involvement in efforts to hack information and to have an impact on american democracy. 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