Former Al Qaeda hostage: Dealing with the government was as bad as torture

Matt Schrier was held by Al Qaeda for seven months until he escaped. During that time, he was tortured severely.  His feet were whipped until he couldn’t walk anymore, he received electric shocks, and was held in a dark room for so long that he had no idea how many days had passed. He eventually escaped through a window, meeting American officials hours later across the border in Turkey. But for Schrier, the nightmare wasn’t over yet. It was just beginning.

Schrier says the bureaucracy he and his family had to endure was as bad as the torture he received at the hands of Al Qaeda. It started when he was kidnapped.  Schrier had entered Syria in December of 2012 as a news photographer, then believed to be safe because Al Qaeda was not believed to have a presence there.  But his taxi was surrounded by jihadists, and Schrier was taken. The FBI never informed his father that he was a hostage of Al Qaeda at all, because after informing the agency that Schrier was missing, his mother told the agency that she and his father were estranged. To this day, his father, Jeffrey Schrier, still has not heard anything from the FBI. “The next time the FBI calls me will be the first time,” he said.  “I thank God my son was able to escape, because if he was waiting for the government to spring him he would still be waiting in that hellhole.”

Schrier’s mother initially didn’t know that her son was just one of several Americans being held. She found out when the FBI created missing person posters for the other Americans, but not for her son. They finally put one for Schrier up on the FBI website after she complained, six months after he had gone missing. They told her that they could not access his e-mail, but when she called AOL herself, they gave her the password.

The FBI also did nothing when the terrorists used Schrier’s credit card and emptied his bank account, spending $17,000 on Ebay purchases. They then paid off the Discover card, created a clone of the card, and went right back to using it. The card was used this summer in New York, leading Schrier to believe that a sleeper cell is operating there. The FBI never called, even though Schrier reported the credit card fraud to them multiple times.

In addition to allowing the jihadists to spend Schrier’s money, leaving him broke, the FBI also charged him money.  When he escaped, they refused to take him home until he signed a document agreeing to reimburse the government for his airfare — a formality, he was assured. But just weeks after he returned home, he received a bill for over $1,600, and the government refused to issue him a new passport until he paid. Schrier also needed a new ID and social security number, since the terrorists continue to use his.  After five months, he finally received an ID. He has not received a new social security number.

Schrier stated that the government uses hostages to get intelligence on the groups holding them, and that’s why they don’t move quickly to rescue them. He was treated as an intelligence source on the jihadists, and he was briefed for weeks, telling the agency that the rebel groups are fighting each other. But they have still done very little to help him in return. He was initially given a hotel room by the FBI to live in. But a month later, they told him to move to a homeless shelter when he could not get an apartment. The reason he couldn’t get an apartment was because the government had not issued him a new ID and social security number. Rather than helping Schrier, they told him that they heard that the homeless shelters “aren’t that bad”.

After all this time, Schrier calls the FBI’s victims services a scam.  For him, the FBI didn’t help him at all — it was the exact opposite.  “The FBI has made it impossible for me to recover.”