Vice News via the BBC reports on the story of a woman and mother named Sam Sally and her 10-year-old son, Matthew, who left America and ended up at the heart of the ISIS caliphate.
To begin with, Sam claims that she was tricked into leaving the country by her husband, Moussa. But after a four-year-long investigation, Josh Baker, an investigative journalist from the BBC, notes that this situation is complex, and it appears that Sam was both a victim and a villain.
Josh came across the Sally family through a contact that showed him a heartbreaking video of a young boy in Syria walking around with a suicide belt on.
To authenticate the video, Josh traveled to the States to visit Sam’s sister, Lori, who was able to corroborate her family’s story, with a plea for help from Sam in the form of an email as well as another video.
Just as Josh was investigating where exactly the Sally family might be located, a video ended up on social media that showed an American family coming out of the ISIS caliphate, and Josh almost immediately spotted Sam and her son.
Soon, Josh was in Syria and able to sit down with Sam for a long-awaited interview. One of the biggest questions in Josh’s mind was how on earth did this woman and mother end up in Syria with her family and at the dangerous center of the ISIS caliphate?
According to Sam, her family planned to make a move to Morocco for a change of pace and ended up vacationing in nearby Turkey, which is on the border of Syria. Sam claims that one night when they were on the way to the airport, things took a devastating turn when the car suddenly stopped and Moussa grabbed her kids and took off.
To watch the rest of this story get pieced together, check out the video.
