Richard Engel and two members of his crew, Ghazi Balkiz and John Kooistra, appeared on the "Today" show Tuesday morning to discuss their "traumatizing" experience as captives of what they believed were government militia loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad's government. Looking unshaven and tired but otherwise remarkably composed, Engel still held bandages made from bed sheets during his captivity. Engel said he feared execution every time he and his crew were blindfolded and moved.
We weren’t physically beaten or tortured. It was a lot of psychological torture -- threats of being killed. They made us choose which one of us would be shot first and when we refused there were mock shootings. They pretended to shoot [NBC producer Balkiz] several times.
