Washington D.C. – Washington Examiner, September 09, 2024
Sam Goodwin, an average millennial with a love for travel, would “never want to relive” the 62 days he spent in a Syrian prison unsure if he would ever see his family and friends again, yet he “would never want to give up everything that’s come from it.”
Prior to his detention, Goodwin was on a mission to visit all 193 countries, not to relax and sightsee, but to connect with and learn from people all over the world. The 13 that he had left in May 2019 were Syria and 12 Caribbean and South American countries.
When he was in Syria in late May 2019, Sam was grabbed off the streets near Qamishli and thrown into a notorious regime prison without due process or a trial. When they hadn’t heard from him, his family members began exhausting every connection they could think of to track down their son and brother who seemingly vanished.
Goodwin spent two months in Syrian detention in two different prisons. He was in solitary confinement in one, and he could hear other prisoners being beaten and tortured by guards, though he never was. In the other prison, he was able to meet and connect with others, some of whom he found to be political prisoners whose crimes were speaking out against Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
He was able to smuggle messages out of the prison through his fellow inmates-turned-friends to his family with no idea if they would be received. Goodwin’s family, who did get the messages, wondered if they were real or simply a ploy by the Syrians to incriminate him.
“I am incredibly grateful for the journey and the perspectives that came from it,” Goodwin told the Washington Examiner of his conquest to visit every country in the world even though his adventures nearly came to an abrupt end when the Assad regime in Syria effectively kidnapped him.
