Book provides insight into efforts to repatriate American held in Syria

Five years ago, Sam Goodwin, 30, arrived in Syria from Iraq as part of a years-long quest to visit every country in the world.

His visit to Syria, country 181 of 193 for the St. Louis native, will be brief. Goodwin stayed in Qamishli, a city on the Turkish-Syrian border that he believed was controlled by U.S.-backed Kurds.

After checking into the Asia Hotel and grabbing a bite to eat, he waited to meet a friend of a local fixer who would show him around northeastern Syria.

As he walked down the street to meet his guide at a nearby restaurant, Goodwin decided to FaceTime his mother, Ann, near a statue of former Syrian President Hafez al-Assad — the late father of Bashar al-Assad, the country’s current president — to show her some of the scenery.

Portraits of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (L) and his late father and predecessor, Hafez, hang on the wall of a destroyed apartment in the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil on August 17, 2006. (Patrick Baz/AFP via Getty Images)

A man in military uniform called out to him, and Goodwin instinctively explained that he wasn’t taking pictures; he was just talking to his mother.

It was the last thing Ann heard before the phone went dead, and it was the last conversation she had with her son until his release from the Syrian prison system 62 days later.

Goodwin spoke to Fox News Digital ahead of the release of his book, “Saving Sam: The True Story of an American’s Disappearance in Syria and His Family’s Extraordinary Fight to Bring Him Home.”

“I was taken to the basement of a facility that I now know is called Branch 215 of Syrian Military Intelligence, a facility known for housing political prisoners, and I was held there in solitary confinement for 27 days. The only human interaction I had was a few seconds in the morning and evening, when the guards brought me bread, boiled potatoes and water,” he said.

Side by side view of Sam Goodwin at the Lebanon-Syria border after his release and Branch 215 in Damascus. (Sam Goodwin/Ashley Carnahan, Fox News digital reporter)

Goodwin, a former Division I college hockey player, told Fox News Digital that he relied on a number of things, including his Catholic faith and his travels around the world, to help him get through his incarceration at Branch 215 and Adra Prison.

“I relied on the belief that I had a purpose in life and the desire to see my family and friends again. In that cell, even though I was really at my lowest, I found strength in relying on gratitude, which is a bit paradoxical, in controlling the things I could control and recognizing that this period of uncertainty is an opportunity for growth,” he explained. “And that’s what I learned, and that’s what I try to communicate today, after being put in a difficult situation.”

He added that he did not have much information about the reasons for his arrest and was still looking for answers.

A map of where Sam Goodwin was taken while in Qamishli, Syria in 2019. Courtesy of Sam Goodwin

“Northeast Syria is largely controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces, but there are still some Assad regime presences,” said Andrew Tabler, a Martin J. Gross senior fellow at the Washington Institute.

“These are areas that you want to avoid because if you’re stopped at these checkpoints and you’re a U.S. citizen, you could be detained for a variety of reasons.”

From Adra to Lebanon and back home

Goodwin said he was interrogated for hours, blindfolded, by a man who spoke perfect English. The man threatened to hand him over to ISIS if he did not confess to being a spy.

On his 27th day in solitary confinement, Goodwin was transferred to another large prison building before being taken to Adra, a prison on the outskirts of Damascus, a few days later.

Aerial view of Adra Prison, located on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria. (Google Earth/Fox News Digital Ashley Carnahan)

“The other inmates at Adra became friends. We cooked and shared food together. They taught me Arabic. I taught them English. There was a basketball court in the prison, and I taught several of them how to play knockout. One of them even smuggled a note out of the prison in my name, a note that made it through a geopolitical game of telephone and made its way to my father here in the United States. These men truly risked their lives to help save mine and were a remarkable display of humanity,” he recalls.

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“These men reinforced some of the most important lessons I have learned in my travels. For example, never judge people by the actions of their government. I learned that those who have the least often give the most. This is a truth I have seen in every corner of the world.”

Police officers stand at the gate of Damascus Central Prison in the Adra region near the Syrian capital Damascus in this May 28, 2010 file photo. (Reuters/Khaled al-Hariri/Archives)

“I’ll never forget, about two weeks into that second month, one of the inmates came up to me and I said to him, I said to him, everybody here is so nice to me… And he said to me, Sam, in Syria, all the good people are here in prison, because all the bad people are out there putting us here. And that was a very sobering comment to hear,” he continued.

Goodwin’s family worked with the FBI, the CIA, the State Department, the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, Vatican envoys, Middle East experts and many others to bring him home.

The Goodwin siblings and matriarch Ann meet with former National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien. Courtesy of Sam Goodwin

The family even wrote a letter to Pope Francis, asking him to help them in their efforts to secure their son’s release.

Joseph Abbas, the uncle of Goodwin’s sister’s friend and a former college roommate, contacted an old friend – General Abbas Ibrahim – who was appointed head of Lebanon’s General Directorate of Security in 2011, to help him with the case.

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Sam Goodwin (left), General Abbas Ibrahim (middle) and Joseph Abbas (right) meet in Lebanon. (Courtesy of Sam Goodwin)

General Ibrahim traveled to Syria and met with Ali Mamlouk, a close adviser and security advisor to President Assad, to explain to him that Goodwin was not a spy; he was simply a tourist.

After months of prayers, meetings and phone calls, Goodwin’s release was secured and he was flown to Lebanon, where he saw his parents, who had flown in to meet him, for the first time in two months.

“The real heroes of this story are my family. The fact that they were able to reach a head of state halfway around the world in seemingly different ways is extraordinary and it humbles me. And I still struggle to figure out how to describe how I feel about that,” he told Fox News Digital.

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“On the one hand, I think it’s an unforgettable story that involves traveling to every country in the world, high-stakes diplomacy, heads of state, celebrities. But on the other hand, and I think more importantly, it’s also about what we all learn through this experience.”