Writer who fought in Libya back home

LINTHICUM, Md. – An American writer who went missing in Libya for months returned to the United States on Saturday night, telling reporters he went to the north African nation to participate in the uprising against dictator Moammar Gadhafi and was on a reconnaissance mission when he was captured.

But Matthew VanDyke, 32, said his mother and girlfriend didn’t know when he set off from Baltimore for Libya that his goal was to support the revolution.

“You don’t tell your mother that you’re going to go fight in a war,” he said. “When I got out of prison, I was going to finish what I came to do. So the past several weeks I’ve been in combat on the front lines in Sirte fighting Gadhafi’s forces.”

VanDyke, dressed in his military uniform with a scarf tied around his head, held up a Libyan flag as he walked out of the concourse at Baltimore Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport into his mother’s arms. He was also met by friends and family waving flags and holding up signs. Later, as he talked to the media, his girlfriend, Lauren Fischer, arrived and planted a big kiss on his lips.

Earlier this year, VanDyke was in Baltimore working on a book and film about a motorcycle trip across the Middle East and southeast Asia when he began to hear from friends in Libya about their relatives disappearing.

“I wasn’t going to sit back and let this happen to people I care about and not do anything about it,” he said.

VanDyke said he was on a reconnaissance mission in Brega with three other fighters with weapons in a truck when he was captured by Gadhafi forces. He was questioned once, he said.

VanDyke spent more than five months in solitary confinement in Libyan prisons. He said he sang Guns n’ Roses songs to himself and tried to name all of the “Star Trek” characters to pass the time. He said he also suffered from the psychological effects of solitary confinement.

When the Abu Salim prison in Tripoli was bombed in August, fellow prisoners broke open VanDyke’s cell and he escaped. The fleeing prisoners made their way to a compound, where he was able to borrow a phone to call home.

He was pressured – by Fischer, the State Department and Human Rights Watch – to return home, but he wanted to finish what he went to Libya to do.