Kidnapped in Iraq: A Christian Humanitarian Tells His Story

Alexandre Goodarzy describes in gripping detail his kidnapping by Islamic terrorists in January 2020, how prayer and his Catholic faith sustained him, and why he now sees the entire ordeal as a blessing from God in Kidnapped in Iraq.

Alexandre was among a group of young men who agreed to help Christians in danger after learning about the fate of untold Christians in the Middle East. As the Syrian civil war devolved into a religious conflict, Alexandre aided Christians caught between a hardening regime and increasingly bloodthirsty Islamist groups.

Because the true story was frequently distorted by the media, the brutalization of Syrian Christians was only recently revealed. In recent years, Syrian Christians have had to choose between fleeing ISIS and abandoning their homeland, or facing barbaric martyrdom. Their cities had been levelled, and their churches had been destroyed. Goodarzy describes how these patriotic Christians were periodically kidnapped by Kurds and held for ransom or forced into military service. In Syria, priests provide both spiritual and temporal care, assisting with basic necessities in the community and working to preserve their culture while mediating with secular authorities.

Alexandre describes the perilous twelve-hour bus ride from Damascus to Aleppo, as well as numerous face-to-face encounters with Islamic rebels, the last of which resulted in his abduction and sixty-six-day captivity by Iraqi terrorists, in what reads like a dystopian thriller.

“What is affecting us here today will strike you tomorrow!” people in Iraq and Syria told Goodarzy, predicting that radical Islamic atrocities in their countries would soon strike France and other Western countries.