American released after being held captive in Syria

BEIRUT — An American who was held captive in Syria for two months has been reunited with his family, his parents said Friday.

Sam Goodwin, who grew up in St. Louis, had traveled to Syria as part of a personal quest to visit every country in the world.

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

“We are grateful to be reunited with our son Sam,” Thomas and Ann Goodwin said. “Sam is healthy and with his family.”

They thanked Ibrahim, but declined to offer further details.

According to his website, Goodwin, 30, quit his job at a startup company in Singapore last year with the goal of visiting every country in the world.

“I couldn’t be more grateful for the perspective on the world I’ve developed through my experiences,” he wrote on the site, Searching4sam.

His family lost touch with him about two days after he had entered Syria, a person familiar with his case said. He was held in Syria for about two months. The Lebanese general security directorate did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to his website, after Goodwin graduated college, he and a friend moved to Singapore to work for a startup. It was there that he began to travel widely, inspiring him to quit his job and see the world.

“Having spent the past seven years based in both Singapore and Dubai, I have traveled to 180 countries and am aiming to complete my quest to travel to all 193 within this calendar year,” he wrote this year.

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. Before Friday, Goodwin was not publicly known to be among them.