NBC News' Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel and two of his crew members were kidnapped last week, and held for five days before they were released by an unnamed group today.
Engel appeared to the Today Show this morning, and said, "We weren't physically beaten or tortured. It was a lot of psychological torture, threats of being killed," Engel said, appearing to be in relatively good spirits. "They made us choose which one of us would be shot first and when we refused there were mock shootings. They pretended to shoot Ghazi several times. And when you're blindfolded and they fire the gun up in the air, it can be a very traumatic experience."
The three were able to escape when their kidnappers began fighting with rebels on the streets of Syria, allowing Engel and the two members of his crew to flee the van in which they were being transported.
NBC has also released the following statement following their reporter's safe return: "After being kidnapped and held for five days inside Syria by an unknown group, NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent
Richard Engel and his production crew members have been freed unharmed. We are pleased to report they are safely out of the country."
Richard Engel is widely regarded as one of America's leading foreign correspondents for his coverage of wars, revolutions and political transitions around the world over the last 15 years. Most recently, he was recognized for his outstanding reporting on the 2011 revolution in Egypt, the conflict in Libya and unrest throughout the Arab world. .
Engel was named Chief Foreign Correspondent of NBC News in April 2008. His reports appear on all platforms of NBC News, including "NBC Nightly News," "Today," "Meet the Press," "Rock Center with BrIan Williams," "Dateline," MSNBC, and msnbc.com.
Engel, one of the only western journalists to cover the entire war in Iraq, joined NBC News in May 2003. He previously worked as a freelance journalist for ABC News, most notably during the initial U.S. invasion of Iraq. He remained in Baghdad as NBC's primary Iraq correspondent until his appointment as Senior Middle East Correspondent and Beirut Bureau Chief in May 2006. Engel also covered the war between Israel and Hezbollah in the summer of 2006 from Beirut and southern Lebanon. Prior to working for ABC News, Engel served as the Middle East correspondent for "The World," a joint production of BBC World Service, Public Radio International (PRI) and WGBH-Boston radio from 2001-2003. He has also written for USA Today, Reuters, AFP and Jane's Defense Weekly, a British publication in which he authored the magazine's in-depth profiles of Egypt, Yemen and al-Qaida.
Engel's work has received numerous awards, including five News & Documentary Emmy Awards. In 2011, he was honored with the Daniel Pearl Award, the David Bloom Award and the Overseas Press Club Award in recognition of his coverage of the war in Afghanistan. In 2010, Engel received a Gracie Award for his work on "Unlikely Refugees," a "NBC Nightly News" story about Afghan women who are treated as criminals for attempting to leave abusive marriages. Engel was honored in 2009 with the George Foster Peabody Award, an Edward R. Murrow Award and the Society of Professional Journalism Award for "Tip of the Spear," a series of reports from Afghanistan that focused attention on the hardships and dangers faced by American soldiers. Engel also received the 2008 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award and the Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism, the first ever given to a broadcast journalist, for his report "War Zone Diary." The one-hour documentary, compiled from Engel's personal video journal, gave a rare and intimate account of the everyday realties of covering the war in Iraq. In 2006, Engel received the Edward R. Murrow Award for his report "Baghdad E.R.," the first ever to win in the category "Feature - Hard News."
Engel has lived in the Middle East since graduating from Stanford University in 1996 with a B.A. in international relations. He speaks and reads fluent Arabic, which he learned while living in Cairo. Engel has also traveled extensively in the Middle East and can comfortably transition between several Arabic dialects spoken across the Arab world. He is also fluent in Italian and Spanish. He is the author of two books, "A Fist in the Hornet's Nest" and "War Journal: My Five Years in Iraq," which chronicle his experiences covering the Iraq war.
