"Oh God! I'm here, I'm here !!! ISIS has arrived at our village! Pope..."
The line stops.
It happened last year in Tal Jazira, February 23, in a small, predominantly Catholic Christian village in the Al Hasaka Governorate, in the northeast of Syria.
Jozephine, Tamrass and Sharbel Joseph are three guys from 22, 21 and 16 years. I am at home with my grandfather eighty-seven when at four in the morning the first shots of firearms echo. After three hours the country falls into the hands of the beasts. Terrorists break through the doors of the houses and start raiding ...
Martìn, the father, is a carpenter; together with his wife he is at 30 kilometers from home for work commitments. Just received the tremendous phone call from his daughter does not hesitate and immediately goes on a journey. He must know what is happening to his family!
When he returns to the village he finds the desert. Nobody in the street.
The doors of the house are closed. Begins to cry out desperate names of their children. In response only the echo of his voice and a deafening silence of fear and death ...
There is nobody inside.
Outside you hear a voice followed by bursts of machine gun. The terrorist enters the house by shooting. Martìn throws himself on the ground, trying to hide. When the weapon runs out of blows and the man changes the magazine comes out into the open.
"I'm looking for my family, do not shoot! My children were here ... "
The man reloads the AK, inserts the shot into the barrel and with a sadistic smile pronounces an atrocious sentence:
"We killed all your children! We took them to the river and we cooled them. You will be next! "
Martìn remains stone but manages to keep his eyes on that sadistic jackal. He is a militant of the United Arab Emirates, or so he will present himself later.
It is not carried to the river but to a structure where 97 inhabitants of Tal Jazira and a nearby village were gathered. Find your children and the elderly father. One has a broken arm and the father loses blood from his head.
"They were ISIS militants and were from half the world: Morocco, Libya, Iran, Emirates, France, Germany ..."
It is not surprising to hear about European countries. The phenomenon of the foreign fighters It is well known: second- or third-generation immigrants who are not integrated into Western societies that seek a life purpose in the famous jihad of the Caliphate.
Martìn makes clarity on one point; he raises the tone of his voice and inhales his short cigarette more forcefully.
"But which jihadists? !!! Those were French and German Europeans! Whites, not arabs. The doctor who bandaged my son's arm, broken during the seizure, was a French doc. The same has also taken care of the head wound with the butt of a rifle to my father!"
Then he adds another detail: none of them spoke Arabic.
We ask if he had also met Italian jihadists during his imprisonment. The answer, in a framework that is disturbing and the possible unprecedented outlines, is comforting: Uzbek, Kazakh, French, German, Saudis, Emirati and many others, but no Italian!
A thought begins to make its way, a hypothesis difficult to prove but which would prove the abject involvement of Western governments in the indiscriminate support for fundamentalist terrorism in Syria: the testimony of the extermination of an entire platoon of soldiers, which took place in the desert just last year (v.articolo). Can Western special forces have been used to kill regular Syrian soldiers? The effectiveness in the massacre told us in February would seem to work. The presence of so many European citizens in the ranks of ISIS could imply less indirect government support than one would have us believe?
Let's go back to the man we are facing.
"We were divided: I, my father and my two sons were taken to the 5 October in Al Shaddadi, some tens of kilometers south of Al Hasaka, an area known for an oil refinery. Then, until the moment of liberation in Raqqa. My daughter Jozephine was separated from us and sent elsewhere along with the women of the village ... "
Having read so many stories about the female destiny of those who undergo the domination of ISIS, with a little 'modesty and embarrassment, we ask if he has been abused ...
The answer seems sincere.
"Until the release has not been touched. At the time of the seizure he took drugs, lethal if taken in excess. He told us he promised to take his life if one of those animals had raped her. On his return home he still had them ... Same fate, however, did not reach a friend of only 15 years: she was married to the magistrate of Raqqa. A fifty year old ..."
We ask how he managed to resist not having news of his daughter.
"It was tremendous. The answer I received from my jailers was always the same. They told me that it had been sold with the others and that it had ended up in Iraq or Raqqa as a slave. After six months I managed to convince one of them to get her a message".
From an envelope Martìn pulls out a whole sheet and a small piece of paper written in Arabic: a long letter and a short reply message.
"I could write you a letter. His response was brief but reassuring: he told me to stay close to his brothers, to his grandfather, and not to worry".
We ask how they were treated.
"They enslaved us. However, we did not suffer physical torture. We often heard screams coming from outside. To torture they often used electricity. For a whole year we did not see the sunlight".
We ask why in other episodes in Syria the "infidels" were immediately executed while they were spared their lives.
"Because the Christian is considered a rich community from which to obtain profit. And indeed, the time has come to solicit the ransom. They made six of us wear the orange tunics of the Guantanamo detainees ..."
Martìn pulls out the phone and lets the images tell what words can not fully.
Three of his companions are brutally slaughtered with a blow to the back of the head. A few moments later Martìn is on her knees behind the corpses with two other prisoners.
"I thought it was over. The last thought went to my wife".
The wife is sitting near us. The eyes of both begin to get wet without a brake. We have to stop for a few minutes.
"Our second shift in front of the camera was to solicit the payment. I had to say that if the money had not arrived we would have done the same end as those on the ground in front of me".
A lot has been written about the videos of the ISIS performances. In particular, it has often been written that victims would be accustomed to numerous simulations to be relaxed at the time of the real one. However, in the video, three humans have just been chilled!
How did you stay calm? Have you not tried to make a last desperate gesture trying to grab a weapon to your executioners?
Martìn smiles - "In the videos you can only see the victims and the terrorists behind them. What never appears is the twenty armed men behind the camera!"
6 million euros should be paid by the Church, through Catholic organizations, for the release of hostages.
After exactly one year from the moment of the seizure of Martìn, together with his sons and father they were able to embrace his wife. The woman for a whole year has not received news of any of her loved ones.
What do you think of the war?
"Which was caused by countries like those that ravaged Libya for humanitarian purposes. Today in Libya there is not a single square meter of land in which those empty words have materialized ... We have long trusted the West. Today we have a high price realized that the only institution worthy of trust is the army of our country".
The last question concerns the message that one would feel, as a Catholic, to the Western world and the European Union.
The answer comes fast, dry and sounds like a whip:
"Please stop your media, have caused more weapons deaths ".
text: Andrea Cucco, Giampiero Venturi, Giorgio Bianchi
photo: Giorgio Bianchi (above: letters written during his detention and a cross made with olive pits. Third last and penultimate of the interviewee: liberation)
