American citizen home after release from Syria

BEIRUT — An American traveler was on a quest to visit every country in the world. He had only 10 to go when he decided to travel to Syria.

Within two days of entering the country, he disappeared.

Two months of captivity later, the traveler, Sam Goodwin, 30, has been reunited with his family, his parents said Friday.

There was no information available Friday about how or by whom Goodwin was detained. His parents said in a brief statement that Abbas Ibrahim, the head of Lebanese internal security, had helped negotiate his release.

“We are grateful to be reunited with our son Sam,” the parents, Thomas and Ann Goodwin, said in a statement. They thanked Ibrahim but declined to offer further details.

Goodwin quit his job at a startup company in Singapore last year with the goal of visiting every country in the world.

A handful of Americans are being held in Syria, but most of their families have kept quiet about their status while they attempt to negotiate their release, making it difficult to track how many there are. Until Friday, Goodwin was not publicly known to be among them.

The best-known exception is Austin Tice, a freelance journalist and Marine veteran who had gone to Syria to report on the impact of the civil war on ordinary Syrians, and whose parents are still pressing his case. A few days before he was due to leave the country in August 2012, he was detained at a checkpoint outside Damascus. He remains missing.