Kayla Mueller was in a detention cell, face to face with her Syrian boyfriend. Had she told her captors she was married to Omar Alkhani, she might have been freed from the hands of Islamic State militants, he said. Instead, she denied being his wife.
After posing as Mueller’s husband and persuading a string of people to let him plead for her release, Alkhani left the room empty-handed. He said he saw her face for just a few seconds when guards uncovered it.
The guards had assured Mueller, 26, that Alkhani would not be harmed if she told the truth, so she apparently stuck to honesty to save him rather than take the slim chance to save herself, he said.
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A spokesperson for Mueller’s family said they didn’t have any reason not to trust Alkhani’s account.
“They know that he deeply cared for her, and when he went back to try and rescue her by posing as her boyfriend, they knew he was taking extreme risks to do that,” the spokesperson said Sunday. The spokesperson talked to the AP on condition of anonymity because the person works in media relations for other families in Middle East hostage situations and wants to remain anonymous for safety reasons.
