#389 | Colin Freeman | War Correspondent | Kidnapped by Somali Pirates

The Protectors Podcast ™ Presents Colin Freeman.  What is it like to cover the Ukraine war?  What is it like to be kidnapped by Somali pirates?  Colin joined the show to talk about his incredible experiences covering hot zones all over the world.  

Colin is a war correspondent and author of several books including KIDNAPPED and BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA: THE MISSION TO RESCUE THE HOSTAGES THE WORLD FORGOT. 

Transcript

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Speaker 1 0:17

Colin , welcome to the show. I've been , you know, I get excited about having guests on, but I'm really excited about this one. You have such a, a breadth of knowledge and experience over the past decades, so , uh, what's up? Welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 0:30

Uh , not thanks. Finding me on Jason. Uh , it's a privilege.

Speaker 1 0:33

Uh, and what I mean by breadth of knowledge, it's like you've been all over the place and, you know, doing my little quasi research for the show. It's like, you know, captive by Somali Pirates , uh, landmine initiatives, Ukraine, writing about , uh, the Band , Riot, every , I mean, it's just a different, different spectrum of skill. And let's, let's take it back. How did you get into this world of world-class travel, investigative journalism and, and just taking that step?

Speaker 2 1:04

Well, I've been lucky enough for most of the last 20 years to have worked for , um, uh, a , a newspaper in the UK called The Daily Telegraph. And , uh, for part of that time I was based in Iraq as a freelancer , um, just after the fall of Saddam Hussein . Um, so , uh, was there for two years. During that time, that was when I started working for The Telegraph. I'd previously worked on the London Evening Standard, which is , um, kind of like the New York Post or something. Um, London's equivalent of that for about four or five years. I got kind of bored of that. So I went to Iraq for a bit of excitement, basically, to be honest. Um ,

Speaker 1 1:45

What year were you in Iraq? Hmm ? What years were you over there?

Speaker 2 1:49

Uh, I, I got there , um, I went there to cover the invasion. Um , well, that was the plan. Anyway , I , uh, proved harder to , uh, logistically than I thought. So I ended up getting there on the day the war ended. Um, the , literally within hours of my arriving in Baghdad , um, George Bush declared major hostilities over, so I was in what classed as a war zone, technically. Oh, I think for sort of three or four hours. Yeah. Um, just enough time to get a beer before sundown, I think. And , um, uh, so it wasn't a terribly promising start to my career as a kind of grit foreign correspondent covering wars and so on. Although, as it turned out, it wasn't a bad move because as we now know , um, the , the, the invasion of Iraq , the operation that Topal Saddam was saying, went pretty much like clockwork , um, quicker in fact, than people expected. It was the bit afterwards that didn't kind of go quite according plan . And so from a journalistic point of view, that was a good time to be there. So I was based there for a couple of years. Um, it was an interesting time. It began to get pretty dangerous towards end with kidnappings and so on of, of , of foreigners. Um , several journalists I knew , uh, um, uh, were, were abducted for periods of time. Um, and then as a result of , uh, being a stringer, like a kind of part-time Baghdad based freelance correspondent for the Sunday Telegraph, they took me on in their London office as a London based foreign correspondent , um, where you , they , uh, you , you basically traveled around the world covering whatever stories broke here and there. And that's how I've been lucky enough to travel to so many places, whether it's back to the Middle East, Somalia , um, where I was kidnapped back in 2008, west Africa , Eastern Europe, and , um, most recently Ukraine. I'm now freelance from The Telegraph. I'm not staff on staff anymore, but essentially I've been doing that kind of job for the best part of , uh, 20 years now, which is , um, it is , it's , it is been a , a great experience. I'm very lucky, really to , uh, to have that opportunity.

Speaker 1 4:04

Yeah . When you, when you bring up Iraq, I was there in oh six, so I was probably almost quasi the same. I I gotta stop using that word quasi. But around the same timeframe when it was getting really heated over there, a lot of direct action from our forces . A lot of different , uh, different groups popping up. I think about journalists out there, you know, when the US goes outside the wire, you know, they bring a convoy, they bring a bunch of people. Now, when I think about journalists, I'm like , uh, you might be out there with a translator, maybe a guide that's gotta take a lot of , uh, I don't know what it is. Is it courage or is it like just you gotta jump into it? Or what is that like to go outside the wire?

Speaker 2 4:44

Yeah , it was a difficult period that , um, I was there till the, I was based there permanently until the , uh, spring of 2005, and already it was getting dangerous. Um, contrary to what , um, most people think the journalists were not based in the Green zone or the, the international zone in Baghdad. Um, they all lived out in hotels , um, and there was a lot of kidnapped gangs crawling around in those days, trying to kidnap journalists or basically any foreigner they could lay their hands on. By that time, the were hardly any foreigners around anyway, so you stood out like Billy had bought , frankly . Um, and , um, uh, I pulled out in spring of 2005, partly cuz it was getting a bit dicey , um, dangerous. Uh, and also the number of places you could actually visit as a foreigner , um, as a journalist were very limited. You couldn't go to , uh, west Baghdad because it was too dangerous. Round Apple grave . You couldn't go to the northern area. You couldn't go the East round side , the city, because of the threats and the shear militias. You had different, different groups everywhere. Um, by 2006 that had got even worse. And , um, that year , uh, a friend of mine, a girl called , um, Jill Carroll , um, was , uh, was kidnapped , um, by a group of Al-Qaeda , um, militia Men and health for about three months. So that , that kind of gives you an idea of the, the , the , the level of risk you were running if you stayed as a reporter in Baghdad . I was also a freelancer as well, so I wasn't part of one of those New York Times teams that would have security guards and , um, uh, armored cars and a large staff , um, to, to kind of keep, keep an eye out for them, which was what a lot of the better resourced , um, uh, media teams had at that point. And justifiably so. Um, and I , I th it also the , the , the , the sheer levels of danger that pretty much every media faced and that the lack of access meant that by mid 2006 actually, there was the , the , the Iraq was not getting the coverage that it should do. And certainly the , the period that you were just talking about there, mid 2006, I think was about the absolute, you know, the absolute low point where you had the sunny sheer civil war at its height and, you know , people getting killed in the street's , death squads wandered around everywhere. When you look back at that time, it was horrific. And yet it wasn't getting that much coverage at home, I think partly just because it was very, very difficult for any journalist to actually cover it. And also, frankly, I don't think it was somebody, something that people really wanted to shout about. There wasn't much , um, the , the , you know, the , the American public and , um, uh, the , the American military, this was not something that, a story that was a very attractive to anybody, but , um, it , it , it really, by Iraq was really plunging in , you know, into the depths of despair at that point. I'm sure you probably remember it very well.

Speaker 1 7:57

I do. And that's the reason, another reason I really wanted to have you on the show too, is cuz the importance of journalism and history and documenting what is going on in the world. It , it's, it's critical. Journalists provide a critical snapshot of our history. And if we don't have someone out there documenting it, you're either gonna get a skewed viewpoint. Are you gonna get a viewpoint from one party or not? Not the other party as far as like, you know, the, the militants terrorists or anything else out there. Or you're gonna have it from the military who's gonna provide different types of views. I like having journalists out there who are gonna step into the, into the, the arena, so to say and see what's going on and document the facts. And that's the kind of journalism that I'm very , uh, supportive of.

Speaker 2 8:44

Well, yeah, I mean , um, I , I must say, but back in that period, I went back to Bo Dun , I think for the first time, just kinda traveling around the streets of Bo Dunn in 2007. And by that time, we, we also were , I I I was on staff at The Telegraph by then. We had the budget to afford an armored car , an armed guards and all that sort of thing. Uh, even then though, it was difficult. Um , and we spent time embedded with , um, US military units. We were involved in the troop search, which I think many of your listeners will probably remember those who've served in Iraq. Um, and that at that time was a , a , a real last throw of the dice by the US military to just throw extra resources at a problem that seemed hopeless at the time , uh, this burgeoning civil war. Um, and there was a lot of people, military and otherwise who thought it was a bad idea. It was a gamble, but it did pay off. Um, and I remember speaking there , spending a few, some doing some very memorable em embeds with US Army off units on the ground who were doing the search , risking their lives a lot of the time. Um, it was one of the, the , the , the most difficult em embeds I've ever done in terms of the risk. And yet they managed to turn Iraq, you know, the , the , the , they managed to put a stop to that civil war. I'm not saying it was perfect, but my session , my sense is that , um, Iraq managed to kind of go on a, a relatively level plane after that, thanks to the, the saa , the sunny awakening that the Americans managed to organize, which again, a lot of your listeners will probably remember. And I , I , I, I'm not entirely sure that , uh, the US military gets all the credit for that, that it perhaps deserves in some quarters . But if you, if anybody who had seen or was aware of the depths to which Iraq was going at that point , um, in the previous year in oh six, would realize that, you know, even getting the murder rate down to, you know, a thousand a month , um, doesn't sound great, but when it was 3000 a month before, that's, you know, that's a result. And Iraq had some peace relatively peaceful years after that.

Speaker 1 10:59

They did. And that's the, the per the concept that nobody really understands is , and you and I were talking a little bit before we started recording about becoming a snapshot, becoming a soundbite . A lot of the , the US media is sound bites . You know, you're gonna , you could show a true buildup back in oh six or oh seven, and it's gonna be on there for three or four minutes, and they're gonna move on to the next story. But unless you actually document it and , and actually look at the metrics and read it, a lot of times people need to read it to understand it. You , you don't get like, a really good perception of what's going on. Does

Speaker 2 11:35

That make sense ? Yeah , yeah. News , news media tends to be history written by Amnesiacs, you know, people who just forget what happened last year or the year before. Um, and, you know, if , if you follow the news, it's not hard to, to, to document the ups and downs. You didn't , you didn't have to go to Baghdad like I did to be made to be able to find, find out what was going on to some extent in Iraq. But , um, it does require people who follow it and follow a particular story through the ebbs and flows to sometimes really see that bigger picture and say, well, like, okay, Iraq right now isn't quick , but Christ, it's a lot better than it was , um, three years ago or five years ago. And, and that's when you can also sort of say, look, you know , uh, hold off on dishing out blame here, or on dishing out credit because you need to see where the graph was , um, you know, earlier on in , uh, in , in, in the decade, or , well , to really see where the long-term path is.

Speaker 1 12:36

Now you, you know, you're always in hot zones, you know, I'm , I'm looking at your career. You head to Africa, Somali and Pirates, that man talk about <laugh> just going the , from Iraq, you're in Somalia now. What , how did that come about? You're like, ah , you know, I think I'll go to a story and another one of the most dangerous aspects of, of the, of the world back then.

Speaker 2 13:00

Well, yeah, the , uh, to , to refresh , um, your listeners' minds, for those who don't remember the Somali piracy crisis , um, basically just first a , a , a , a quick little bit of pot and history. Somali after, after 1991, went through a , a very devastating civil war , um, with , uh, a failed un intervention that , uh, led to instance like Blackhawk down , um, in Mogadishu. Um, and , um, uh, after Blackhawk down the US pulled out of Somalia , um, and , uh, the country basically went into meltdown. It had no government really for the next , um, two decades. And in a country where you've got no government , um, you have no law, and that allows militias and lawlessness to thrive. And , um, what , uh, happened in Somalia really was that , uh, uh, um, you , you used to have a lot of passing fishing, fishing boats coming in , foreign fishing vessels coming in and stealing the country's fish, just poaching it because the waters were on policed . Um, some of the local Somali fishermen, these guys basically just artan who also had access to weaponry , decided they didn't really like that. And they started forming their own kind of Robinhood vigilante patrols, dishing out punishments to any , um, passing fishing vessels that they caught stealing their , um, their fish. That at least was the , uh, the , the , the, the roots of this. Um, there's a bit of a folk myth around it, though, to be honest. I think that probably happened a few times. But once word got round that , uh, there were vigilante groups going around robbing , um, passing fishing vessels, it didn't take long for other militia men to kind of realize, Hey, you know, we can go around just robbing any old fishing vessel or any old cargo vessel indeed, and say that we're doing it in the name of , uh, you know , um, uh, protecting our waters. And from there, you got this situation of growing Somali piracy. Um, it, it , it went from vigilantism to outright piracy. Uh, and it was the biggest , um, outbreak of piracy We've seen really on the certain sea since the golden era of piracy in Elizabeth. In times , you know, when you had , uh, kind of black beard and people like that sailing around the Caribbean, there was a difference, though. Um, the Somali pirates didn't steal the ship's cargo like pirates would do of old , um, you know, because if , if you are boiling a big , um, kind of container vessel containing a hundred thousand tons of cement, that's kind of hard to get rid of, especially if it's stolen, it's hard to transport. How many people do you know, want to buy a hundred thousand tons of stolen cement? So what they would do instead, they would take the crew hostage and they would use them , um, uh, they , they would , uh, try and extract ransoms for them. And the other advantage they had was that all they would have to do was sail the ship , um, the hijack ship just to, just off the Somali coastline. And then if anyone tried to intervene, say the US military or anyone else, they could just take the, the , the pilots could just , uh, whisk the hostages onto the, the , the mainland and , um, hide them out somewhere. The US military nor any other military would want to go anywhere near the Somali. Wayland was just considered too , too dangerous and out of jurisdiction. So effectively you had a kind of safe haven for the pirates. Um, this then kind of began to escalate around 2008. The , the pirates got ambitious and they got good , um, and at one they started stealing, you know , hijacking more and more ships. And at one point in late 2008, they hijacked a , a big oil tank, a big Saudi oil tank worth about a hundred million plus, about 150 million worth of oil on it. And at that point, the world kind of realized, hang on, you know, these guys are now, are now threatening our strategic oil supplies. This is a strategic threat. This is not just a bunch of guys hijacking the odd dodgy fishing tour that shouldn't have been there in the first place. Um, and at that point, my boss said , um, listen, can you go to Somalia and , um, see if you can do a bit of reporting on the ground about how these pirates operate and what local people feel about them. Um, so because I've, I've been to Somalia once before on a previous trip, two years before , uh, that counted me as the office expert on Somalia. Um, not exactly an expert, but better than, than , than not having been there at all. So off we went , myself and a photographer, and the idea really was just to get a bit of a flavor of , uh, a bit bit of color from the ground. We weren't obviously expecting to go to a Pirate haven or anything like that and meet these guys face to face because , you know, they're basically professional hostage takers, and it was fairly obvious what the consequences of that might be. However, we did hope that we'd be able to get a bit of color , um, find out what local people thought about the pirates and so on and so forth. Um, so off we went, and we flew to a town in northern Somalia called Bus Saso . Uh , it's a very poor city. Um, and , uh, not much employment, anything like that. Also, pretty lawless, not just piracy going on there. There's weapons trafficking, drug trafficking, people trafficking. There are all kinds of maritime crime. Um, the other problem , uh, if you are a foreigner, there is that boasso , uh, uh, has, and most of that coastline, the kidnapping culture that the privacy brought , um, also spread onto the land. So if you are there as a, as a foreigner and a westerner like me , um, it's, you know, you , you , you've got a target on your head. Um, so toward that, off, what you do is you hire local bodyguards. Um, these are not like ex Navy Seals or Delta guys or anything like that. These are , um, usually friends or cousins of your translator. Um, often people from his clan. You get about six or seven of them guys with AK 47 s. Um , will they lay their life down for you? No, but it's better than nothing. And it's also generating income through a particular clan. So if anybody kidnaps you, then you are , they're depriving that clan of their income, and that might not be such a good idea. So it makes people think twice. So we thought, anyway , um, uh, we had about a week in Boasso got our story done , more or less headed back to the airport wherein one pickup truck, the bodyguards are in another, and then they decided to kidnap us themselves, the very people we had paid to keep us safe. Um, their car suddenly shot in front of ours. Um , they pulled up , um, brandished their guns and cut along story short, they , um, they pulled us out the , uh, of our , our pickup truck, my photographer Jose and myself, and , uh, stuck us in their pickup truck. And at that, there was a few seconds where I was thinking, Hmm , you know, I don't speak Somali. Maybe there's just a bit of a mix up as to what truck we're using, or something like that. And then when they point their gun in my face, it very became, it became very clear that we were getting kidnapped , uh, which was a sort of, oh moment to put to , to say the very least.

Speaker 1 20:39

Oh, I can't imagine that one. I mean, seriously, I mean, you're u2 , it's not like you're the US government or the, the UK government where you have, Hey, you know what , we're gonna send all the resources. They got one of our diplomats, they got one of our soldiers. They got this, they got that. You're a reporter. I mean, what happens next? Do you, do they say, Hey, call up your editor, call up your boss and get us some money?

Speaker 2 21:01

Well , um, basically, yeah, they , so what they did was they drove us off at the mountains and they , uh, they route marched us for two days at gunpoint , um, across this very remote mountain range. If any of your listeners have any ever been to the remote regions of Afghanistan, you'll know what I mean, a place where you just don't see a leather living soul for, you know, at all. You don't even see any footpaths, any signs of habitation. And through all , throughout all that, I was thinking like, well , you know , uh, this is , uh, not like Iraq or Afghanistan, actually , we don't have a coalition presence here, anything like that. There's no groups of special forces waiting to come in and get us out. We might as well been abducted to another planet in terms of how anyone's gonna come and help us. You know, the nearest UK embassy is in Kenya, that's 1500 miles away. Um, so yeah, you , you felt very much beyond , uh, reach. Um, the, the gang did make it fairly clear , um, early on that they wanted money for us , um, which , uh, was not great, but it was better, I suppose, than being told , um, that this was some kind of political kidnapping and that these were jihadists. Um , Somalia has a , uh, a big jihadist faction that Al Shaba who were affiliated to Al-Qaeda, and we were worried to start off with that. That might have been who had taken us. And you could see a situation where they would issue some kind of unreasonable demand, like, you know, pulling, you know, all US troops out of Muslim countries or anything like that. Um, and something that they knew we would, that , that the us , uh, would, would never concede to, and that we would end up getting headed . Luckily, that didn't seem like the situation at the time. Um, they demanded 3 million for us. Um, my office , uh, refused to pay. Um, and they said, look, you know, these are journalists, they are visiting Somalia as , um, uh, you know , um, to try and highlight the problems the country's facing, the usual spiel, frankly, I'm not sure anybody bought that. But , um, uh, the idea was to bring pressure to bear on local clan leaders and politicians and so on to say, look, if this kind of thing keeps happening, then , um, uh, no foreigners, be they journalists or perhaps more pertinent , the aid workers or business people are gonna want to come either, and that's not gonna be good for , um, somalia's future reputation.

Speaker 1 23:40

So you're there for weeks. How long were you like, yeah, yeah , let's talk about that. What is it like to be in captivity for that long and just never knowing?

Speaker 2 23:50

Well, we were stuck in a ca We , we were held in caves, a series of caves in this remote mountain range for the next six weeks. Yeah. Um, by Somali standards, kidnapping standards, that's not actually that long. Um, the , a lot of other kidnappings on the land of people, foreigners, typical turnaround time, maybe six months, maybe. Um , I know people have been held there for three years, which is, so our ours in a sense was a kind of kidnapped light, you could almost say. But it didn't feel like that at the time. No. Um, time. The , the first couple of weeks were okay. We , uh, my fellow hostage and I , we sort of bonded in captivity quite well. Um, we spent the time chatting a lot about our past lives. It , it's a feel the first couple of weeks. It feels a , when you get kidnapped feels a bit like being a , in a kind of awaiting room before the afterlife. Um, like you , you know, you feel like your, your fate is hanging in the balance. You dunno which direction you're gonna go, and you , you're feel in a mood for sort of talking about your life to whoever you've been kidnapped with, if you're lucky enough to be kidnapped with somebody else and have someone to talk to. Um, and so you, you know, you kind of unburden yourself. You talk about, you know, everything under the sun, and that keeps the time, you know, that helps the time pass and also keeps your morale up. You find funny things to laugh out . You , you , you get this sort of strange, heightened sense of the absurd. Um, but after a couple of weeks, you know, you begin like any, you know, when you have a , a weekend away with your other half, for example, you often find like , you know , there's lapses in the conversation when you get a bit , uh, God, you know, and that's, that kicked in after two or three weeks. We began to find it hard to make conversation. It would be an effort a lot of the time to do. So we used to do it just on point of principle, and you could maybe sort of pass an hour or some doing that. But , um, uh, the , the , the , and that's where it starts getting scary because the, the more time you spend not talking or doing anything, the slower time , uh, passes a minute , seems like an hour , an hour seems like a day, so on and so forth. And that's when you begin to think, you know, what's this doing to my mental health? Um, uh, I , I got to the point where I found it was big , hard, even just to pass the time by daydreaming. And , um, that , that's kind of way you sort of think, look, you know , this goes on for months and months. I , I'm not sure how easy I'm gonna be able to cope . That that is much harder. The boredom is a far harder , um, prospect than just say , like , having , uh, crappy food or uncomfortable conditions. How did this all end? Well , um, uh, we would , we, we were able to keep contact with our office. The , um, the, the , the pirates were pretty efficient actually at , uh, within about five days, they made us , uh, they, they produced a mobile phone, took us up to the top of a mountain where we could get a phone reception and made us call our office. And , um, they made us is issue this demand for 3 million for million , 3 million for my , uh, my fellow hostage. And from then on there was, there was sort of ongoing every few days, proof of life phone calls home, and we, we, we were aware of some efforts at negotiations. We didn't know . To this day, I don't really know what those negotiations were that brought about our release. As I said, money was asked. I also said though , um, the office said, look, we don't wanna pay money. We want these guys released. And they tried to bring diplomat pressure. I'm not sure what the , uh, uh, what the clinching factor was, but six weeks in, after a few false starts, and after one very last day, right towards the end where they said, there's a deal for you. And then they changed their mind and said, Nope , uh, the deal is off. You're gonna stay here for another year. Uh , luckily they , uh, a few hours late , they said, no , no, no, we're , we're back. You know , Evan's back , back to Square. Well , again, we're , we're back on track to get you released. And , um, we were, Julie handed over to a group of clan intermediaries, the , uh, on about day 41, I think it was. And , um, that's always a kind of , we , we were told by, we had a phone call from the office saying, look, this, this is, here's the, the choreography of the handover is gonna be like this. You'll get taken tomorrow morning to a spot in the mountains, a renez point where you will meet a group of Klan intermediaries, Klan elders who are trusted by the pirates and also trusted by our side. Um , not sure what someone does to be trusted by both sides in these situations, but that's the way these things work. And you will be handed over to them if all goes well. Um, and then, we'll, you'll be driven back to BAAs overturn where you were , uh, um, first picked up , uh, first hi , uh, kidnapped, and a plane will come and pick you up. Okay, fine. Um, uh, but it , it's, it's always a nerve-racking moment because the, in any kidnap , the, the handover is the moment when the gang have to show themselves. And also they, they have to hand over the goods. So they're nervous. They're worried that they're gonna get , um, uh, a ripped off in some way. Um, you know, that they might not get the money or whatever concession it is that they wanted. They're worried that it's gonna be a police trap , um, possibly. Um, so it , it's a bit like being in a major league drug deal. Um, and you were the kind of, you were the contraband, basically. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> <affirmative> , um, and everyone's trigger happy . Have you ever seen , seen Scarface that bit where the Coke deal all goes horribly wrong? Mm-hmm. <affirmative> , um, that's a bit like how you feel. And sure enough , the day we were , uh, we were due to be handed over, we , um, we were woken at dawn and a , a small army basically assembled. It wasn't just the dozen odd kidnappers that were regularly guarding us, but there was about 50 of their mates there as well with rocket propel grenades, technicals, you know, like , um, SUVs with heavy machine guns mounted on them, so on and so forth. So they were clearly worried about trouble. Um, uh, they drove us up to the top of Mountain Pass , and , uh, down at the bottom, we could see a few other SUVs where the Klan elders were, they said, right, you guys walked down there with your hands held up. Don't do anything stupid. We'll be right behind you. Um, they were sure enough, and , uh, we wandered down expecting things to be wrong any minute . Um, but luckily they didn't. We were handed over this Klan elder , uh, a chap , uh, an elderly kind of grandpa, aged guy in a suit, and he said, congratulations, you offered. Um, and I think I said, okay, great. Um , do you have a smoke by any chance? Um, and that was it. We were basically whisked off at high speed back to Baso , stuck on a plane, and , uh, was safely in Kenya a few hours later.

Speaker 1 31:07

Talk about a sense of relief when you touch back down at home, right? And then you're like up . Yeah .

Speaker 2 31:14

Yeah. We , we were told on the way back, the , the one of the guys who picked us up on the plane from Baso was a sort of ex-military guy , um, who had worked in Africa doing these kind of situations a lot. Um, uh, and , um, he was there ba basically just to been sure that everything went smoothly. Very nice fellow, I am a lot . He said to us, look on , on the plane back , he said, look, you know, you will get a kind of delayed shock reaction of some sort. You've had a lot of adrenaline going. You may kind of crash down to earth at some point , um, and suddenly get depressed or upset or anxious or what have you. Uh, so I , I braced myself for that, but to be honest, it never happened. I was just really, really glad to be out of there and , um, really, really happy just to be home and to be free . It was like being born again . Um, and I did worry about a crash at some point, but I never hand .

Speaker 1 32:09

Well, it's been a long time, so hopefully it doesn't, you never know it's gonna happen , you know , we gotta gotta watch out for that stuff . That's like, a lot of people don't understand that they always equate like post-traumatic stress and everything to military and law enforcement, but civilians also get it, and it can , you know , it's like, that's what I was gonna ask you about that is like, about like, you know, how did you deal with that, that, that well post that trauma , uh, that trauma?

Speaker 2 32:37

I didn't get any P T S D at all. I , I put that down for a few reasons. Um, one was just, you know, we weren't held that long. Um, and we weren't mistreated. We weren't tortured or hurt in any way. Um, uh, I didn't get any p t PTs d I put that down to a number of reasons. Uh , first of all, we weren't held that long and we weren't mistreated that badly. Uh, it , it , while we were in captivity weren't tortured or anything. Um, they threatened to do that a few times , which is bad enough, I can tell you. But , um, uh, generally we, we emerged physically unscathed , um, also as a journalist, or indeed perhaps as a soldier or an aid worker or anybody like that, you , you , you're kind of signing up for a deal when you do a job like that, that you sort of , Hey , my , I wanna see the world . I wanna know what, you know, the, the , the kind of the , the other side of life is like.

Speaker 1 33:41

Now, did this perspective you had as a hostage, is that the reason you wrote the book Between the Devil and a Deep Blue Sea ? Uh ,

Speaker 2 33:49

I think the, the, the reasons I didn't get P T S D , uh, well, one is that we were only held for six weeks, which is not actually that long. Another is that we were not physically harmed while we were in captivity , um, although they did threaten or torturous a few times, which is bad enough. Um, uh, a a third though is that , um, you know, if you're a foreign affairs journalist or indeed a soldier or a , uh, a law enforcement officer, I , I , I think you, you , you know, you , you sign up for it partly to sort of see the , the kind of wild or edgy sides of life to some extent. And, you know, kidnapping is, is an insight into that. So <laugh> , you can put it down to sort of being one of life's valid, you know, experiences , uh, not a pleasant one, but a valid one. Nonetheless, if I had been, say, just a regular sort of, you know, office worker or something on holiday in the Caribbean, and something like that happened to me as a kid , you know, I was kidnapped, you might think, Hey, I didn't sign up for this. I , I , this is not sort of , this is not part of my life that I want, then it might be harder to deal with. Um, but , um, to anyone out who's been through a similar thing and is wondering, he still finds it hard wonder , you know, to figure out why I didn't get P ts d I think one of the other things is , uh, you know , um, there , there were no, there was no sort of issues about whether we could have done something to avoid happening or any kind of , if only or what ifs sort of thing. Um, some of the people I know who've , uh, who've had kidnapped experiences have, I've found it hard to get over because , um, you know, somebody got killed chewing the , um, abduction, or they felt it was their fault in some way or something like that. At the end of the day, you know, none of that sort of thing happened in mine , and therefore it was possible for us to come out the other on the other side and laugh and joke about it. Whereas if people have got hurt or killed , um, somewhere in the process, whether it's, you know, the, the innocent parties or even the kidnappers, then I think it's harder to kind of make it, make light of it. And that makes it harder to , um, to move on. You know?

Speaker 1 36:16

Now you went on to write the , between the Devil and a Deep Blue Sea, the mission to rescue the hostages, the world forgot . Now that I , your passion for, you know, the hostage situation in Somalia probably stemmed from your own captivity, I would imagine.

Speaker 2 36:30

Yes, it did. So , um, after being in captivity myself, I , I wrote a book about my own , um, uh, hostage experience, and I kept pretty close terms on what was happening with the Somali piracy crisis generally. And it petered out off by about 2012, after about four good years , um, the , uh, for the Pirates anyway , um, ships just began to take the view like we , we need to protect ourselves. And , um, they all , they started posting armed guards, mainly ex US and British military people on board . And that pretty much nipped the problem in the bud . Um, however, there were a few ships , um, that spent a lot , I noticed, while , while kind of keeping chambers on this , that seemed to be hijacked for a great deal longer than any others. Um, uh, you know, three particular ships that were hijacked for three years, four years, and five years a piece . And I remember thinking, you know, why are these ships never getting released? Most ships get released after, you know, three month , six months, a ransom gets paid, and that's that, but bad enough. But at least the guys the same as get to go home. In these cases, that was not happening. Nobody with any what was going on on board these ships. Um, but it transpired that the owners of the ships did not have any money to pay the ransoms demanded by the hijackers, either because they were in financial trouble because of the recession that was biting at that time in 2010 or so, or because they didn't have any kidnapping, ransom insurance, which is true of a lot of vessels from the developing world. These were ships owned by pla , you know, companies in the Middle East and , uh, uh, and the Fire East. Um, and , um, as a result, the, the hostages, the sailors were stuck there . Um, I , I think the owners gamble , uh, was that after a while, the pirates would get tired of holding the hostages for no ransom and would just release them for free. However, Somali pirates don't do that. Um, they're , they come from a country that's very poor , um, and they're not going to lightly give up the prize of , um, uh, a a ransom of a million dollars or $2 million. Um, and also that they've invested money in the thing themselves. If you look after a bunch of guys, a bunch of hostages , um, for a year or two , um, you are already paying a group of guards, maybe 10 guards, 20 bucks at each , even five bucks at each . Um, you do the maths over a thousand days, or, you know, sort of several hundred days that money begins to add up. Mm-hmm . <affirmative> . Um , so the pirate gangs were saying, well, look , um, even if we wanted to, we would not be able to , um, release these guys , um, because we're , we , we , we've run up thousands of dollars in debts that we need to pay off. Um, and they also , they owe , they owe that money to our other pirate clans. We're not the kind of guys who are gonna , you know, just go away. Um, and so in order to increase the pressure on the owners, the pirates started torturing the crews . So they're not just stuck there for, for years on end , but they're also getting tortured , um, all kinds of awful things like kind of medieval piracy stuff , uh, being left out on the deck for days on end in the boiling , um, you know, tropical sun , um, being just beaten to with an inch of their lives, having their fingers pulled up with pliers being scolded , um, being stuck in the put put in the ship's, deep freeze naked for 45 minutes being dipped over the side , uh, trust up and dipped , uh, headfirst in the water, like the sort of stuff that you used to read in Pirate's story books , um, and think, thank God that kind of thing never happens anymore. Um, so there, these guys were , they were, this was happening all the time. They were also being put on starvation diets. And of the 50 guys or so that were on these three ships , um, one was executed in cold blood , um, uh, about eight died from starvation , um, just from diseases brought on by malnutrition. And the rest were, you know, tortured to with an an inch in their lives. Um, and nobody was doing anything about it. Um, and some of your listeners at this point are probably thinking, right , okay, well, the , the owners aren't paying up . That's, that's not cool. But there you go. Uh, what about all the big a piracy fleet that we had at that time with American British vessels, Russian vessels, you know, pretty much everyone around the world, all with Special forces cruise owners. Somebody our listeners will remember from the film, captain Phillips, where you get a bunch of sharpshooters , take out the Pirates. Um, uh, un unfortunately, special forces crews on British or American ships will not get involved, involved in rescues for third country nationals. Um, not unless one of their own , um, members of one of their own citizens is present on the vessel. Um, there's two reasons for that. One, it's the, the risk of , um, injury or death to the special forces crews . And then there's also just rescue operations. Force rec , rescue operations tend to be very, very high risk . And , um, no , no one , you know, no one wants to risk , um, injury to the soldiers or, or indeed to the civilians , uh, for anybody other than the own citizens. That's just one of those unfortunate fights of life. So nobody was coming to get these guys. Um, and , uh, a as time went on, nobody even knew where they were. And , um, I , I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that these, these guys would still be there now , uh, or would've just died in captivity , um, had it not been for the efforts of a British diplomat , um, guy called John Steed , who was a former British , uh, uh, a British diplomat based , um, in Kenya , uh, which in neighbors Somalia. Um, he was the military at attache officially. Um, and so he had quite a lot of , uh, involvement in the, in , in , in counter piracy stuff. Um, and , um, it , it tried to equip the samali , the Samali government with some kind of naval force, for example. Um , and he, he kept close tabs on what was going on. Like, like I did, I realized that these ships , uh, these three sh hostage , uh, hydro ships were stuck with no one , uh, no nowhere to go. And , um, uh, because he also worked for the un , um, in LA years as well as a sort of counter privacy advisor , uh, he undertook this mission to try and get him freed , um, realizing basically he, if he didn't do it, nobody else would. Um, and his first , uh, idea was that if he could establish some kind of humanitarian rap rapport with the pirates, he could at least find out how many of the crews were still alive, and then hoped to get some aid packages through to the humanitarian aid. Um, and that , um, after a while, once some relationships, some rapport was built with the pirate gangs, basically just say to them, look, guys, unfortunately, you picked the wrong , um, the , the wrong , the wrong ships to hijack here. Um, the , the , these owners don't have any money. These are poor seafarers from the, the poorer parts of Asia, that they're not much wealthier than you are . Um, just please just let 'em go. He thought that would work. Uh, but at that point, the Pirates said when he established contact with them , well , sorry, but we , we've got debts. We owe hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to our, you know , um, our fellow pirate clans. And at that point, John Steed realized having gone down, that gone that far, that he was gonna have to raise around some money himself, <laugh> . Um, and again, you think, well, maybe there's a short answer to the story here . He goes to some billionaire philanthropist, a kind of Elon Musk type . Yeah . Um, uh, or, you know, and the guy, right , Musk says, sure. Right . There's a check for , um, you know, tell me how much it's gonna be. Just assure me that this is for good purposes. Okay? You're a British Army officer, I trust you , um, uh, right , Jeff for a couple of million, and everyone's free and they go home . Doesn't work like that. Um, philanthropists are very wary of paying up money for ransoms for a start in the United States. They're all kinds of laws are against it. And also, it doesn't really look good for your average philanthropist on his kind of list of great deeds that he's done that year. Hey, I gave a bunch of money to a bunch of Somali criminals. So , um, uh, yeah, that, that option was not available. It took John several years to raise the money during which he was involved in a kind of race against time to, you know, knowing that the pirates, you know, the , the , the conditions of these hostage was getting worse and worse. And , uh, it , it just generally made it a very, very , a much tougher mission than it should have been, but basically stuck with it. And , um, after , uh, um, after the best part of three years, he managed to raise the money for all three ships individually and get the hostages freed. Um, which

Speaker 1 45:55

Yes ,

Speaker 2 45:56

Man, you know , uh, which is a , which is a pretty impressive achievement. Yeah .

Speaker 1 46:01

I can't get over three years.

Speaker 2 46:04

Yeah. I mean it , yeah . Uh , that , that was one of the reasons I wrote the book. I thought like , well , six weeks in poet captivity, I was going up the wall and I wasn't being tortured. Mm-hmm . <affirmative> , what is it like to step there for three years, four years, five years when you're getting tortured, when your friends are dying around you, and when you know also that there doesn't seem to be anybody who's coming to rescue you. It's , uh, you know, it , it is just a suffering of a, of a completely different league,

Speaker 1 46:37

Ugh . Has me thinking now it's like, it's like three years incarcerated being tortured someone like being pws, except you didn't , like you said before, you didn't sign up for this type of stuff. You know , these are crew members , you know ? Yeah .

Speaker 2 46:49

These are ordinary guys. These are seafarers from places like Thailand, from Cambodia, from India, or Sri Lanka. They're not doing the job , you know, what's the old saying? Uh , become a , a merchant sailor and see the world. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> , most of these guys have been this just to feed their families. Yeah . Yeah. Um , the poor guys, often previous generations are till in the fields, and so , you know, fields , um, peasant farmers in places like India , um, th these are not wealthy guys, and , um, uh, yeah, they did not sign up for this kind of thing at all. Uh, and, you know, if a , again, a lot of your listeners will be thinking like if they were, if, if they were kidnapped or taken p o w while serving with the US military abroad, they, they would know that there would be a high priority, and that there , there would be efforts to, to get them back, even if it came down and swapping them in and out for Taliban prisoners, something like that. They'd know that, you know , uh, their country had their back and that wasn't something that these folk , um, uh, had to come for them ,

Speaker 1 47:56

You know, at this point, you've seen a lot already. You know, you've been a journalist for decades plus in starting in the nineties. Now, let's flash forward to here, Ukraine this year. You're there , you've been there. Yeah. What is it like on the ground?

Speaker 2 48:14

Well, it's , uh, it's interesting. Um, it's, it depends on where you are. If you are in somewhere like Kiev at the moment, if you watch the TV news, it looks terrifying. You see bombs landing on the ho , you know, it , it's de destroying tower blocks , uh, and you hear of stories of drones buzzing overhead and so on and so forth. I was there , uh, pretty much right at the beginning. Um, I was in the west when the war started. I'd flown in the night before expecting it to all be fi kind of fairly, you know, to , to sort of fizzle out basically. Then all hell broke loose. Um, and then , uh, I think about five days into the war, I , uh, had to get to Kiev to take over from a colleague who was pulling out. He'd been there for a month already. Um, uh, and , um, uh, you know, the , the, by that point, everybody was fleeing from Kiev. The roads were jammed. It was impossible to find a driver who would be willing to take me to Kiev . You didn't know what was on the roads, what roads might suddenly have Russians popping up on them. Remarkably, the train service was still running. Um, so I got a train in Te Kiev , and at that point, the city felt very, very empty. The streets were pretty much deserted, air raid sirens going off all the time. It felt pretty spooky, like World War III was about to erupt. Um, uh, and yet a , a as time went on , um, you realize that actually even when the city was under siege, much been in New York, and you've got one or two districts where there's fighting , um, and then some missiles raining in here and there a few a day. Um, as long as you stay out of those districts, and as long as you are not unlucky enough to be one where one of those two or three missiles, it comes in per day is, which is a kind of lightning strikes thing, you are relatively okay . Um, uh, you know, it's , it's not pleasant, but it's, it's a kind of manageable deal. Um, it's not like the kind of thing you saw with say, shock and awe in by , in 2003, where you literally see every kind of major building getting taken out, left, right in the center behind you. Um, so it , it was surprisingly manageable actually. Um, uh, although it , it , there was a , that that was the impression you got , uh, that was how I felt after sort of a couple of weeks there, you began to kind of get a , a handle on it. Um, right at the beginning, it wasn't like that. Right at the beginning you felt like, you know, hang on, this is not Iraq or Afghanistan or some war in Africa. This is , uh, uncle Vladimir Putin and his army. Um, this is the world's second superpower. These guys could be landing anywhere at any time. Even in Lavi , I was thinking, what happens if they see all the border? What happens if Russian paratroopers blow up the, all the roads from Lavi , one of teams of Russian undercover saboteurs suddenly emerge on the streets of Lavi in the West and start killing people at random and targeting people like me just to cause trouble and strife, which was sort of what people were expecting. All kinds of asymmetric , uh, coming down. Um, and yeah, it was scary. Um, nevermind the fact that you also had nuclear weapons as well. It just, I , I've never covered a war where you felt like you were on the, the weaker side against a much bigger malign power. Um, uh, uh, you know, not only is Russia, militarily, militarily was militarily superior to Ukraine, you also felt like the , these were people who would not be playing by the rules of war, very much China. So there was every reason to feel scared. Um, but then as time went on, it became apparent that they weren't gonna take Kiev in a matter of 72 hours. Then everyone said, oh , it'll be a week. Then it was like , uh, three weeks. And then it was like , uh, actually they're not gonna take at all . And by the end of the month, just before I pulled out for the first, for my first stint, I've done through there , um, there was already talk with the Russians , um, the Russians leaving. So , um, yeah, it , it was an interesting lesson in the fact that even a major power like Russia is, yeah , they're not, they're , they're not , um, omnipotent in the way that we perhaps expect, certainly when it comes to conventional warfare.

Speaker 1 52:57

You know, I, I, I kind of want to , you know, if for someone like me who's, and I'm gonna be outta law enforcement, but do investigations for years, journalism kind of seems like a , a natural fit investigative journalism for, you know, people who have done investigations in the past. Cuz it's kind of cool you're pulling facts together. How do you get into journalism? I mean, what was your push like, you know, let's, let's go back to the way back machine and um, you know, you and I probably took the different path in the nineties. I went into military, you went into journalism. What, what took your path into that, into that world?

Speaker 2 53:32

Um, well I became a journalist in 1994 , um, mainly cuz I couldn't really think of anything else that , uh, would interest me. And I thought, well, journalism's gonna be doing something different every day , um, rather than sort of doing banking or law or what have you, you know, the civil service. Um, and that's certainly true. Um, but I , I , I started off the old school way . I started on a , a local newspaper in the north of England doing , um, uh, the kind of stories that you do on local papers , court stories , um, uh, human interest stories , um, planning meetings, of which I think you call zoning meetings in, in the United States, all the kind of usual humdrum stuff of small town life. Um, and yet it is, it is the world in microcosm. Um, individually, a lot of those stories might not be that exciting, but collectively you are getting an amazing kind of window in how society works and also how it all connects up, you know? Um, and it , you , you also, you get out the office a lot , um, and you , you cover those stories firsthand. You're not doing them remotely. You go to that courtroom , you sit in that court , you see the defendants, you speak to the lawyers, et cetera , et cetera . You speak to the victims. Um, you , you , you, you , you do all these things firsthand. It's a lot of actual foot shoe leather reporting. Whereas if you, you know, if you, in a big newspaper in somewhere like London or , um, say the New York Times, sometimes you'll get, go out and about , but quite often you'll sat in , you know, at HQ writing about events hundreds of miles away, not enough time to go and see it firsthand. Um, which is why I would always say to people, do some small town reporting first. It's no different being, I often think it's similar to being a , a police officer. Um, you start out on the beat , uh, often in a small town or something like that, and you , you , you , you learn the trade slowly , um, and then you kind of gradually move up the ranks. But , um, there's , there's a fashion these days for taking on interns and so on , um, uh, at , at National New National newspaper level, whether it's , um, the Washington Post or the , the Daily Telegraph , uh, in my country , um, the big national papers . Um, and, and you go straight out the college and you, you go , you join the nationals. But I still think it's worth doing those early years in the, you know, in the provinces, in the , on the , on , in the local areas where you really learn the trade properly and you , uh, you , you really see what it's like. And certainly within the profession , um, there's a certain respect for anyone who's kind of done, done the local paper route . Um , even if it doesn't mark you out as the kind high flyer who straight away on or ,

Speaker 1 56:24

Uh , you see there is , I, I still think there's a very big, and I think you would agree, there's a, a big duality between being a special agent, being an investigator. You're gonna So me as like, let's say when I used to work in the field, I would have to develop sources and if to gather information. Yeah . And I had to put it into a report. And to me, I , it's gotta be factual, you know? It's not gonna be like, okay, making up some stuff in the same way with journalism. And that's what I really like about the journalists. That's what I like about investigative journalists. That's what I like about people who are out there digging into the stories and bringing stories to light. Like, like who would've brought up the, you know, wrote a book or wrote stories about Somali pirates unless they went out there and got the information. You can't get that kind of stuff from a keyboard 2000 miles away and get the real ground truth.

Speaker 2 57:10

Yeah. It's, it's true. And also I do this a sense of c curiosity in finding out about how, how the world works , um, and being interested in what life is like for the people who are not, not so lucky in the world. Who, who live on the kind of wilder , more lawless fringes. Um, you know, I'm , I'm a kind of pretty regular middle class individual. Um, I didn't grow up around that. So I have a curiosity, see what life is like outside my own kind of comfortable little bubble. Um, whether it's in my own country or elsewhere. I , I think that motivates , um, a lot of law enforcement officers as well. They have , they have other motivations too , um, to write wrongs and generally protect people. Um, and I would also say law enforcement is tougher because you are in , uh, when you're trying to unravel stories, you've got people who are gonna be much, much more actively conniving not to tell you the truth. And , uh, and it matters more. Um, if somebody doesn't, you know, tells me a few lies in the story, well, you know, maybe it's the kind of story where I maybe let them let them off the hook of it , or we never got it published. Whereas with law enforcement , um, you know, that can mean the matter between, the difference between somebody going to prison , uh, for a crime and getting away with it. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> or indeed being wrong, they're convicted of a crime, you know, or whatever. So , um, it , it's, it's a , it's a much bigger challenge , uh, what you do. But it is no surprise that , um, uh, there's always been a kind of close relationship between journalists and the police. Um , the journalists see police officers as one of the primary sources of, of news. Um , definitely. Although increasingly, unfortunately, certainly in my country , um, the , the days have been formal contact , um, between journalists and police , uh, are pretty much over these days. It's all , aye you know, you've gotta gotta call our public affairs bureau Yeah . And everything , which is a shame because , um, public affairs bureaus in every walk of life always have a certain interest in creating a kind of , you know, avoiding an unspun version of events. Um, and , but that's just in the modern world, sadly.

Speaker 1 59:29

Well, I appreciate you coming on con I got , there's a lot I can learn from you and I look forward to keeping in contact and I, I appreciate being a guest on the show.

Speaker 2 59:36

Not at all. It's been, it's been great. Thank you for having me on .