A horrifying tale of survival from a Chatham man, held captive and tortured in Syria.
Sean Moore traveled to Lebanon last fall to try to help a Chatham woman, Jolly Bimbachi, rescue her two sons who’d been abducted by their father.
However, plans to smuggle the boys into Turkey were foiled when they were captured by a branch of al-Qaeda.
“The capture took place in Lebanon, we were held politely for the first nine days, we didn’t know we were kidnapped, but there was already a plan in place for them to try to get more money,” Moore says. “Luckily, and thank God, Jolly was kept politely kidnapped the entire time, however I wasn’t quite as lucky.”
Moore was then tortured for almost a month.
“They were like coyotes,” he says. “Ripping my clothes off, trying to find anything that was on me, I couldn’t breathe, they were laughing and giggling.”
Moore was finally released after 26 days after being held in what he describes as a “disgusting, feces-filled cell,” interspersed with beatings and and psychological torture.
In the end, Moore says the kids they were trying to save were given back to their father.
“We did fail horribly,” Moore says, and believes the children’s father is connected to the terrorists who held him captive.
“He was on social media video, a live video chat, with what he called the superintendent of the jail watching while they were doing some abuse, he knew exactly what was going on.”
Moore says that while he’s been to the Middle East over half a dozen times to help with various missions, this was his last trip and he’s just thankful to be home, safe, with his family.