The two US journalists who were released by Syria on Thursday were quoted yesterday by the paper they worked for, the Jordan Times, as saying they were “kidnapped and taken by force into the Syrian territory.”
Taylor Luck, 23, and Holli Chmela, 27, arrived back in Jordan early yesterday after the Syrian authorities handed them over to the US embassy in Damascus.
The two journalists arrived in Lebanon on Sept. 29 for a vacation, but were missing since Oct. 1, when they reportedly departed Beirut en route to Byblos and Tripoli and then to Aleppo.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that the two US citizens entered Syria “illegally” with smugglers and did not obtain entry visas.
The pair told the Jordan Times that they were “kidnapped by a taxi driver and an accomplice” who were supposed to take them to the Lebanese-Syrian border crossing where they intended to obtain visas and complete their vacation in Syria before returning to Jordan by land.
“We had planned to take a bus from Tripoli to Homs, but the bus station was closed and a taxi driver offered to take us across the border, saying he was licensed to make such trips,” they were quoted as saying.
“He took us with another driver and on the way went off the main road,” Luck said. “I asked him where the border was but he did not answer. As he continued driving, he locked the car doors and asked us to hand over our money, but we refused to give him anything.”
“At that moment, a military car showed up and pulled him over and without a word took our bags, passports and cell phones and took us into their vehicle,” Luck said.
The two journalists said that they did not reveal their profession to the Syrian authorities and told them they were just tourists.
The Syrian police told them they would take them to a bus station in Homs.
But their destination was in fact “a prison, where they both were held for eight days.”
“I found myself behind bars with more than 30 people, while Holli was locked up in another room. I refused to be separated from her and they finally put us in one room for one night before we were separated again,” Luck told the Jordan Times.
However, Luck and Chmela said they received kind treatment from Syrian officers.
“Most treated us well and some policemen even allowed me and Holli to meet late at night and talk,” Luck said.
On Wednesday night, the two were transferred from Homs to a Damascus prison.
However, when an officer recognized Luck and Chmela as journalists from media footage, the transfer was cancelled and they were handed over to the US embassy in Damascus instead.
“We may have exercised a poor judgment, but at the end of the day, we were victims,” Luck told the Jordan Times after being released on Thursday.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
Thailand has netted more than 1.3 million kilograms of highly destructive blackchin tilapia fish, the government said yesterday, as it battles to stamp out the invasive species. Shoals of blackchin tilapia, which can produce up to 500 young at a time, have been found in 19 provinces, damaging ecosystems in rivers, swamps and canals by preying on small fish, shrimp and snail larvae. As well as the ecological impact, the government is worried about the effect on the kingdom’s crucial fish-farming industry. Fishing authorities caught 1,332,000kg of blackchin tilapia from February to Wednesday last week, said Nattacha Boonchaiinsawat, vice president of a parliamentary
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
DEFIANT: Ukraine and the EU voiced concern that ICC member Mongolia might not execute an international warrant for Putin’s arrest over war crimes in Ukraine Russian President Vladimir Putin was yesterday visiting Mongolia with no sign that the host country would bow to calls to arrest him on an international warrant for alleged war crimes stemming from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The trip is Putin’s first to a member country of the International Criminal Court (ICC) since it issued the warrant about 18 months ago. Ahead of his visit, Ukraine called on Mongolia to hand Putin over to the court in The Hague, and the EU expressed concern that Mongolia might not execute the warrant. A spokesperson for Putin last week said that the Kremlin