Rescued from Isis : The Gripping True Story of How a Father Saved His Son (9781250147592) by Bontinck Dimitri

Author:Bontinck, Dimitri
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Macmillan

Chapter Fifteen

THE POLICE TOOK JAY TO their headquarters and began questioning him. This went on, I later learned, for five or six hours. When he was hungry, they bought him a tuna fish sandwich and a soda. They didn’t have him chained to a metal chair under hot lights or anything you’d imagine from the movies. They spoke to him kindly. They agreed with me that he’d fallen into a kind of cult that had used cunning techniques to brainwash him.

The police had a forensic medical examiner look Jay over. What he found backed up my son’s story: there were dozens of scars on his stomach, back, wrists, and the tops of his feet. It was clear evidence of the torture he’d experienced in the bunker prison and elsewhere. When I heard about them, I felt a pain deep in my gut. What must he have gone through in that bunker prison, alone, betrayed, whipped like a dog? I wanted to get my hands on Amr al-Absi and the men who’d tortured Jay. It was the same feeling I’d had after being tormented in the villa basement: a desire to demolish the place, to run through it with a tank and crush everyone inside.

Still, he had to show them that he was no longer a member of that cult. It wasn’t just a friendly conversation. In the early hours of the next morning, they arrested him and charged him with participating in a terrorist organization.

The only way to avoid a long sentence was to tell everything he knew: about Sharia4Belgium, about escaping to Syria, about Kafr Hamra, everything. Without that testimony, Kris estimated he would get five years in jail. But would he do it?

At home, we sat in the condo. None of us wanted to talk. His sister went to her room. It was devastating. I knew Jay was safe and wasn’t being beaten or tortured. I knew he was getting good food and was sleeping on a mattress and even had access to a therapist if he really needed it. You tell yourself, he’s safe, he’s OK, stop worrying. But it still left me with an empty hole in the middle of my chest. I felt that I’d failed him a little. I’d brought him back to this.

It was exactly the same feeling as losing him the first time. You feel your child is at the mercy of huge forces you have no control over. I was depressed.

After a few days, we had our first chance to visit Jay. Helen, his sister, and I went together. When we were brought into the meeting room, I was relieved to see that Jay wasn’t behind glass. He was sitting in a chair. Helen embraced him, and so did I. Then I went down the hall to the vending machines and bought him a Snickers and a Fanta.

He told us he was fine. The prison officials let him exercise and socialize. They even let him use a PlayStation. I could tell

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