Swedish scribe freed after a week’s captivity in Syria

A Swedish journalist has been freed from captivity in Syria after a week-long detention by Syrian government forces, local media reported on Sunday.

Joakim Medin, a 30-year-old freelance reporter, told the Expressen newspaper that he was seized at a road block along with his Kurdish interpreter Sabri Omar while working in the Kurdish town of Qamishli on the border with Turkey. Both were reportedly freed late Saturday night.

“I was taken by the regime,” Medin told the newspaper. Swedish Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Ulla Jacobson confirmed Medin’s release but could not provide further details. “He is free, we have been in touch with him,” she told AFP. Medin told Expressen he was not subjected to violence but was interrogated and held in solitary confinement in a tiny cold dark cell “full of dirt and blood”.

“I was there to report on the situation and hadn’t entered the country the official way via the Syrian government,” he said, adding that Syrian soldiers questioned him about his links to the Kurds, Turkey, Israel.