Peter Theo Curtis

Peter Theo Curtis (a.k.a. Theo Padnos; born 1968) is an American journalist who was released by the al-Nusra Front in August 2014, after being held hostage for almost two years. He was the cellmate of Jewish American war photographer Matt Schrier, who escaped after seven months of captivity. Curtis got stuck in a window during the escape and was left behind after Schrier refused to continue helping him and ran off (according to Curtis's version of events), a fact he left out of his 10,000 word article in the New York Times.^[1][2]

Early life and career

Peter Theophilus Eaton Padnos was born in Atlanta, Georgia, to Michael Padnos, a writer now living in Paris, and Nancy Curtis.^[3][4][5] He received his bachelor's degree from Middlebury College in Vermont and his doctorate from in comparative literature from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.^[6][7] He is fluent in French, Arabic, German, and Russian.^[8][9]

He moved to Vermont and taught poetry to prisoners of a local jail. His first book, My Life Had Stood a Loaded Gun, was written about this experience.^[9][10] He then relocated to Yemen, where he continued writing under the pen name Theo Padnos.^[11] Padnos began his study of Islam in Yemen at Dar al-Hadith,^[12] before moving to Damascus, Syria, to enroll in an Islamic religious school.^[13] He published a second book, Undercover Muslim, about Islamic extremism. After its publication, Padnos changed his name to Peter Theo Curtis to make travel in the Middle East easier.^[14][15] Since he had declared allegiance to Islam in public, the book could be interpreted as apostasy.^[12] In 2012, he became a freelance journalist.

He then moved to Antakya, Turkey, near the Syrian border. He was kidnapped in October 2012 after entering Syria with the intentions of writing an article about abducted journalist Austin Tice.^[16]

Abduction and imprisonment

Curtis was held in a series of prisons run by Syrian rebel groups with ties to Al Qaeda. His family received ransom requests between $3 million and $25 million.^[11] According to his account of his captivity published in The New York Times Magazine on November 2, 2014, he was held by al-Nusra Front and later by Abu Mariya al-Qahtani, who also released him.^[13]

Curtis considers himself "most responsible" for his kidnapping, believing he was reckless in crossing into Syria with smugglers he did not know and who held him captive. Commenting on the torture and mistreatment he endured at first, he says,

It seemed to me that I had been walking calmly through an olive grove with Syrian friends, that a rent in the earth had opened, that I had fallen into the darkness and woken in a netherworld, the kind found in myths or nightmares.^[13]

Curtis said that he escaped twice, each time seeking refuge with the Free Syrian Army, and that both times they delivered him back to the Al Nusra Front.^[17]

Release

Relatives were not told the terms of Curtis's release, which came one week after James Foley's beheading by the Islamic State. A team led by editor David G. Bradley^[12] and the Padnos family contacted Ghanem Khalifa al-Kubaisi, head of Qatar State Security, who mediated for Curtis's release and according to what it told the Padnos family it was "on a humanitarian basis without the payment of money".^[18] The kidnappers had demanded ransom reaching 22 million euros.^[12] Curtis states that he was released to the UN mission in the Golan Heights.^[13]

A documentary about Curtis' time in captivity was released in 2016.^[19]

See also

• 2014 American Intervention in Syria
• Foreign hostages in Iraq
• Hostage Working Group
• Kenneth Bigley
• Nick Berg
• Daniel Pearl
• Steven Sotloff

References

External links

• Theo Padnos on Twitter