Officials have arrested a 61-year-old man suspected of keeping him prisoner.

Officials have arrested a 61-year-old man suspected of keeping him prisoner.

Archived version: https://archive.ph/NLYpz

  • Jo Miran@lemmy.ml
    782·
    7 months ago

    Me: I am sure the headline is clickbait and the story is not that weird.

    * reads story *

    Me: W…T…F???

    • hypnicjerk@lemmy.world
      981·
      7 months ago

      Mr Bin Omran told his rescuers he had at times seen his family from his prison, but claimed he had been unable to call out for help “because of a spell that his captor had cast on him”, local media reported.

      i uh… huh.

      • unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de
        65·
        7 months ago

        We have no idea about the conditions he lived in, but i think 26 years is easily enough time to turn a humans brain into complete goo. You can make a human believe anything with that sort of timeframe.

        You can see that from the most extreme forms of military training. You take a human that has empathy and a fear of death and you just completely eliminate those things from that persons entire existence.

        • hypnicjerk@lemmy.world
          4·
          7 months ago

          still, i’m shocked to read that his survival instincts wouldn’t overcome his conditioning. that doesn’t happen by accident, his captor knew what he was doing.

      • livus@kbin.social
        43·
        7 months ago

        He was only 19 when he was stolen and may not have had a science based education.

        Reminds me a bit of the Jaycee Duggard case, she ended up interacting with lots of people without telling them that she was being held by a kidnapper.

      • Juniper (she/her) 🫐@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        24·
        7 months ago

        Bad translation/cultural interpretation? Maybe they meant something along the lines of “if I spoke he would have hurt my family” which is a verbal phrase that holds power over him, sort of like a spell.

        • Flyswat@lemmy.ml
          51·
          7 months ago

          No translation issue there. Northern Africa is quite known for witchcraft. People here might have trouble coming to terms with this, but it is what it is.

  • pete_the_cat@lemmy.worldEnglish
    342·
    7 months ago

    He was only 200 meters from home and it took them twenty six years to find him? I just looked up what a “sheep fold” was and it’s just a simple sheep pen.

    This story can’t be real.

    • Juniper (she/her) 🫐@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      561·
      7 months ago

      Most of the people who lived in the same building as Dahmer had no idea he was killing, dismembering, and even eating his victims in the same building as them.

      Josef Fritzl managed to hide his daughter in a secret room in his basement, with his wife convinced she had ran away. She gave birth down there six times and her mom, just above her head, was completely unaware.

    • floofloofEnglish
      37·
      7 months ago

      He went missing in the middle of a civil war when lots of people were being kidnapped and/or killed. Maybe because of this they didn’t look as hard as they otherwise would.

      • pete_the_cat@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        7 months ago

        That’s not what confuses me, the dude didn’t try to escape for 26 years even though he was only being held in a sheep pasture?

    • Deebster@programming.dev
      3·
      7 months ago

      There’s the idiom “return to the fold” which means come back to a group, but aside from that I don’t think many non-farmers know that meaning of fold.

  • jlow (he/him)@beehaw.org
    221·
    7 months ago

    Mr Bin Omran told his rescuers he had at times seen his family from his prison, but claimed he had been unable to call out for help “because of a spell that his captor had cast on him”, local media reported.

      • IzzyScissor@lemmy.world
        7·
        7 months ago

        A 35 year old man kidnapped a 19 year old man and kept him hidden for 26 years. I would be shocked if there WEREN’T a sexual aspect to the story.

          • IzzyScissor@lemmy.world
            51·
            7 months ago

            What? Where did you get that? No one is saying that, and also that makes no sense.

            I’m saying that the reason for the kidnapping in the first place might have something to do with homosexuality being illegal. If you would already go to jail for consensual sex, the threat of jail for kidnapping/rape isn’t as menacing.

              • CoffeeJunkie@lemmy.world
                31·
                7 months ago

                Nah, it tracks. In a bizarre, backwater country where homosexuality is persecuted, it is possible that the kidnapper (perhaps both men)…to borrow from your words…enjoy acting on the tip. 😏

                Things aren’t always as they appear & we might not know the truth. We know only what they tell us. A man being restrained in a sheep pen for 26 years? A man “put under his captor’s spell”? At this point, it is remotely plausible that this great war was seen as an opportunity to run away from his family, disappear entirely & be presumed dead, to live with his lover that he knew. ¯\(°_o)/¯