She says she’d already given agents permission to monitor her electronic communication, and that eventually they took over speaking to the Florians on her behalf - making occasional requests for new photographs.Īnd then, at some point, the contact stopped.īy August 2017, Lori hadn’t heard from Sam for months. Lori had been in touch with the FBI since the very beginning. And that felt wrong.”Īfter weeks of talking to Florian it dawned on Lori that she was actually communicating with at least three different people: they had distinct writing styles and made different demands. I felt guilty, not that I was flirting with him but that I was manipulating him to get what I wanted. Lori hated it, but felt she had no choice, and would spend hours agonising over which photo had the right sort of suggestive appeal to a supposed people smuggler who appeared to be her only hope of getting the family back alive. He became “very flirtatious” and asked for photographs, Lori says. Florian would call or message when she was driving, at work, or while she was asleep, and she would immediately have to devote her full attention. Overnight Lori went from spending her evenings cooking and knitting, to negotiating the escape of Sam's family from a terror group on the other side of the world. Yeah, English I learned by myself which is why I can’t speak good English, but inshallah it will get better inshallah.” “Salaam-Alaikum… forgive me for my English my English is not good because I did not learn English in the school. In the email, Sam said she’d given Lori’s number to a man she said was a people smuggler, and it wasn’t long before her phone pinged with a voice message. She’d thought Sam, Matthew, his little sister and Moussa had spent the last two years in Texas. I love you, I miss you.”Īttached to the email was the video I'd seen in London of Sam's son, Matthew, being forced to build a suicide bomb. It rains shrapnel, everything from rocks to metal sheets to glass shards. Almost every day five to 10 bombs are dropped around us. I’ll have to be forward with you because I don’t have a lot of time. Moussa brought me and the kids illegally to Syria. Lori opened her computer and read it to me. But then, on 4 February 2017, an email arrived. Over a cup of home-made cinnamon and chilli tea, Lori told me that she hadn’t spoken to her sister in years - they’d fallen out when Sam started dating a man called Moussa. My contact told me if I wanted to know more, I needed to talk to a woman called Lori, who lived in the American Midwest - Sam Sally’s sister. I’d just lived through a suicide bombing, and now I was seeing a boy being forced to build his own suicide bomb. Seven hundred of these metal balls, these steel metal balls, three kilos of TNT.” To which the boy responds in perfect English: “Yes, it is, it’s my new toy. It was a video of a nine-year-old boy being forced to build a suicide bomb.Ī man's voice can be heard asking the boy, “Is that your new toy?” ![]() Then he reached into his pocket, took out his phone and hit play. ![]() While we were talking, he mentioned an American family who were trapped in Raqqa. Back in London, while recovering, a contact I'd lost touch with reached out to see if I was OK, and we arranged to meet.Īs I shuffled back and forth in my seat, trying to find a way to avoid putting too much pressure on my fractured spine, a waiter walked by and asked if we’d like some more tea to go with our scones - we were in a posh London hotel, my contact’s venue of choice.
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