[MUSIC PLAYING]
[MUSIC PLAYING] It's 2008 in Somalia. Nigel Brennan and Amanda Lindout just had their world ended in an instant.
“A car stopped, guns raised, and just like that,”
two journalists who had gone to Somalia to tell other people stories became one. What Nigel and Amanda were now facing
is something most of us will never experience.
But something that is actually far more common across the world than most people realize. Between 20 and 30,000 kidnapped for ransom incidents are reported worldwide every year. [MUSIC PLAYING]
This is our 27th day in captivity. So far, we have been provided with adequate food and water and facilities. And so we are unharmed and in reasonable physical health.
“Mentally, we are in the great stress and threatened.”
An expert's belief is that nearly the tip of losing. Because one of the first instructions can happen to give is-- We don't do that at all for 30 months.
Nobody knows how many cases never actually
get reported at all. Somkitnapp experts estimate that only 11% of kidnapped victims of freed without a ransom being paid. And when a ransom is paid, only around 40% of those taken will return home.
But everyone taken hostage for ransom around the world in war zones, conflict regions, in countries where life is cheap and foreign nationals are seen as a walking paycheck.
“Only a fraction will make it home in one piece.”
And the ones who do are often changed so profoundly by what had happened to them, that the person who comes back is not quite the same person who was taken. Nigel and Amanda were now part of those statistics. Bundled into a vehicle, disappearing
into one of the most lawless countries on Earth would no guarantee that anyone would ever find them, or the finding them would even be enough. About 15-month nightmare, I'd only just begun. Chapter 4, if the ransom isn't paid in 24 hours,
we'll execute you. The car was just pounding up and down. And I had a mandra on my lap, so I sort of bracing my hands on the roof, because it was that rough. And then the garbage side maze, like mobile phones,
mobile phones, the two drivers, and then Amanda, basically,
handed their mobile phones to them. And my mom was in my pocket in my, like my ass, and asked you a pocket, and I couldn't get to it. So I just didn't do anything and left it there. And we threw out a long following the car in front.
And again, it's hard with timeframes, I guess, when you're on such stress, but it felt like about 10 minutes. We drive, we were driving for carrying through little villages and then back out into sort of bush cross-country. We stop a man is then basically ordered from the vehicle,
and she's put in the front car. And at that point, I was sort of expecting us to go into different directions, and was quite concerned that we had obviously been separated from one another. Cars again continue to take off and move forward at high speeds,
drive for another 5/10 minutes. I'm assuming, and then we stop again, and then I'm taken out of the vehicle. So, abdomen to drivers are left, I'm putting into the vehicle with Amanda.
So there's obviously a guy driving, and then there's another man who introduces himself as Ahmed, who speaks fluent English, says pretty much that I don't need to be concerned,
That they are part of the smiling, which are herding,
and their ladders are aware that we are in the country, and they obviously want to meet us to understand what we're doing in morbid issue. Did any out of you believe that whatsoever? - Oh, I guess there was part of me that was sort of
wanted to be like, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no."
“But look, I think that was sort of evaporated very quickly”
once we pulled up in a small little village. And there was a bit of confusion between the people
that had taken us, and then finally,
they opened these large metal gates to a compound, so pretty much everyone in Somalia has those massive 12 or 14 foot high walls with razor wire and stuff like that, on the big middle gates, and when those gates opened, I could say, and so I've then there were more guys
with mass faces and guns and stuff like that. And it's just like, I could still this has obviously been world plans. When they arrive, the pair are bundled into where they would be being kept for now, anyway, because over the course of the next 15 months, they would be moved time and time again.
In fact, over 11 times, to different houses and makeshift cells. But for now, this was where they'd stay. There were three rooms inside the building side by side with an outside toilet. Amanda and Nigel would be kept together and placed in the very end room.
As soon as they arrive, Amanda asks to use the bathroom. It's a strategic move, because the day prior the pair have been out with the African Union forces, and Amanda had numerous photos on her camera of the soldiers. Photos that she feared might be seen by their captives'
reasons for violence. And she wanted to try and get rid of them as quickly as possible. They obviously thought she was trying to hide something, so when she got back into the room, they came in,
and like I was, they walked in, and they basically told me to close my eyes.
“And honestly, which I did, listening to what they were telling me to do,”
and then put their hands down Amanda's breasts and down her pants, which she screamed at. And it's like, OK, this isn't just a meeting. This is more sinister for sure. And then from then, it was, I guess, over the next few hours,
you know, was fortunate that stage to have a packet of cigarettes, and was smoking like an absolute thing, because I think in a stressful time, it was just like, this is going to calm me down, it probably didn't. They came in, they wanted a passport, so I wanted our cash.
And it was interesting. The one thing that I did do the morning before we left, when I did have that, I guess, intuition. I was carrying my passport, I was carrying almost 2,000 years in currency, and I actually, I'm going to lay this at the hotel,
and I'm going to put it in the manager's office. But they're like, where are your passport?
“So we're like, we're at the hotel, where is your cash?”
It's like, we don't have any cash. Obviously, I had my camera bags with two digital cameras and a film camera and the lenses and those sorts of things they weren't interested in that. I still had my mobile phone in my back pocket at this stage,
and we're thinking about, do I try and call someone? Obviously, just completely full of fear, too, that, you know, if I get caught with that, then what are the ramifications for it? And then maybe an hour after we'd got to that compound,
they came in and they looked at me now, like mobile phone, and I was just like, yep. (laughing)
So you never asked me twice.
But yeah, that was first, you know, a few hours were really intimidating. Having mass gunmen sort of come in and point at AK 47s out here, and look at the room that they put us in was, you know, dilapulated all sort of lane two with the dirty old staying mattress. And it was just like, this looks sort of like a Bangkok-yleton,
but worse. (dramatic music) - It was all happening so fast, just out of nowhere, you know, all of a sudden you've been taken. You don't know where you are, you don't know who these people are.
Does anything go through your mind? Or is it happening so fast that you don't really have what to think? - No, like a man or an hour of this you're talking, and we've been kidnapped, like, ship, we've been kidnapped. Like, I think it is that, but I still think there's that,
I think even that trauma responsive is this real, is this actually, is this happening? Is this a dream? Am I gonna wake up back in the hotel? And this is just something I'm for saying in my future,
or, but it was, yeah, like we're obviously talking,
To one another, and, 'cause I can remember,
the room was sort of a pink-painted color, and a man is like, this is a good sign. Pinks my safe color, and it's just like, oh my god, what? So that was sort of, you know, there were funny things like that, and it wasn't until, look, light at that evening,
when, you know, they had come in during the day, and what do you want? Water, cigarettes, your hungry, it's just like, yeah, what do you want to eat? And I don't want any meat, can you get 10 tuna?
“And that's what I ate for the, over 100 days.”
Morning and night, so 10 to 10, morning 10 to dinner at night with a bread roll, and sometimes some past, or something like that.
The first night in captivity, four men would come into the room.
One, then Achmet, the man who'd been in the vehicle with them when they were kidnapped. Another man who called himself Adam, and would be the group's negotiator, when it came to rants of money.
There was an older gentleman referred to his captain, Yaya, at another guy who remained masked, and it would seem would be acting as the more intimidating member of the group. - He's a coming in that first day, he would sit there
and just stare at us for like 40 minutes and say nothing, and just like, "This is awkward." Be it, I came in, and basically he said, "Who are you, what are you doing in Somali?"
And we explained who we were from, that we were freelancers. They then very quickly said, we believe that your spies,
“were working for the transitional government,”
which Amanda and I basically laughed at and said,
"If you've got the internet, which I'm sure you do, even in Somali, like if you do a simple Google search, you're finding information about us, and you'll see that we're telling the truth and stuff." So, they disappeared for 20, 30 minutes, something like that,
and then they came back, and they said, "Look, we believe that you are journalists, but unfortunately, Nigel, because you come from Australia in Amanda, because you come from Canada,
both of your countries are at war with Islam at the moment, because they have forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Therefore, we're going to basically hold you for ransom, and we're going to demand money from your governments." So, of course, we've touched on government ransoms
in our previous story with British journalists, Sean Langan. When we spoke about the fact that the UK government does not negotiate with terrorists, for the simple reason that they believe that should they start doing so,
“then their citizens become a much greater target”
for the use types of groups. And Australia is no different as is Canada. A Nigel and Amanda knew this, but their captives seemed to believe otherwise, and stated plain and simply that if they didn't pay,
they would be grave consequences. - We said to them, like, neither of our countries will pay, and they said, "Every government pays, every single government in the world will pay for a citizen, they'll just do it under the table."
And it's like trying to not argue with them, but trying to get that point across it. In this case, there were wrong, and there was no other Australian government, or the Canadian government,
we're going to pay cent for either of us. And they said, "Look, we're not interested in money from your families. We only want money from the governments. We're not going to involve your families at all."
And I think, you know, some of the, I don't know, humor that's involved in a kidnapping, when they said to me, "What's the number for the Australian government?" And it's just like, "Fuck knows, I've got no idea, like Google it." And that was the, I guess, the crushing point,
where they're like, "Well, who, we need a phone number." And it's just like, "We only phone number." - You're your families. - My mum and dad's landlord. - And they don't even know you're in Somalia. - And they have no idea that I'm in Somalia.
- Oh, you're in me.
- But they said we're basically going to demand a ransom,
and if it's not paid within 24 hours, we'll execute it. - Nah, there's no planning for such a end. Besuch the road kept in a leapness world in Freiburg, with Euren Mellets, Dürr Omer, or the Canalertücken von Neben,
a big, aller-jagginger. And take our interactive exhibition by the Ellittens Tour, Med Audio Guide, and a classic, and the next part of the world, from Road Caption, the Road Caption,
the Ellittens world, just a segment I found. - Chapter five. If you become Muslim, then we wouldn't be able to kill you.
I mean, hearing those words would be insanely sobering,
I would imagine.
“- But like I think, like even trying to contemplate better”
is this a bluff, is this true.
I then got thoughts of Daniel Pearls, running through my head and other journalists who'd been executed, and it's just like, am I going to end up as like a propaganda video for the world to see?
Which was terrifying, like, not only scary, but, you know, obviously my family, if my family would have to sit much that, that would just be sold aside. - The situation is as serious as it can be.
Nigel and Amanda are now stuck in a foreign country being held hostage by a group that says if they don't get their money within 24 hours, they will be dead. The reality of their situation
hits home even harder, later that evening. - You know, later that not real ad to actually leave the room and sit outside on a mad outside, and it was dark and sitting outside smoking and talking to Amanda and obviously the guys
that had taken us were listening to the baby world service in Somali, and I can remember hearing a Australian Canadian journalist kidnapped. And it's just like that, there's the hang grenade that I've just loved into my family's home.
- Oh my God. - Literally just loved hang grenade and someone's gonna have to jump on it. - How was it in the news so quickly? I think whether a juice was made aware
and I guess obviously very few Westerners in Mogadishu and when two to Westerners go missing that would be fairly hot news or a drink. - Obviously you're now sitting there not only with the fear of becoming one of these videos
and death but I'm assuming quite a bit of guilt. - But I don't think that it's sort of kicked in at that stage but it was like, you know, mum and dad had had sold their family farm in 2005 and it had set them up for a comfortable retirement.
At that stage, I have group had an informed us what they were asking for. It was only days later that I found out
that the initial demand was three million US dollars
for the two of us and I knew that would basically decimate my parents' retirement fund. - It was also, you know, very aware that a man's family were incredibly poor. They did not have the financial means to pay a rent.
Not that my family had the financial means but they did have money and investments and property and stuff like that.
“But I think the realization that if I was gonna get out”
of life, it was going to be my family, we're going to not only just have to pay for me but they were gonna have to pay for a mander as well. (dramatic music) - So the deadline comes and goes
and of course no money is handed over. However, Adam from the group comes back to Nigel to inform him that he's spoken with Nigel's sister and that the money was going to take some time to organize. So they're planning on moving them
to a more permanent location when they said was more comfortable. They say that the most stressful part of kidnapping is simply the unknown. Not knowing what will happen to you
where you might be moved to what the kidnappers might do to you in the form of violence and torture if they will let you go home at all. Nigel says their situation had an extra element of the unknown and that was the personalities
of the men who had taken them. - But I guess when you live with 13 hostage takers, I think the longer it went on, it was like living with 13 schizophrenics 'cause you just didn't know what you were gonna get
on any given day because people's moods and things like Ramadan when people are obviously fasting and people get cranky. So someone that you thought you had a relationship with
could basically just scream at your slap you on the face.
“So it was weird, but I think looking at those first few days,”
it was just trying to, I think for me, come to terms with reality, it's just like, is this reality? Is this actually happening? That just the complete disbelief that was occurring in my mind.
And obviously it was great from my perspective, being kidnapped with another person, just having that connection with another human being. I think having to do that by self would have been incredibly difficult, but just having a man to there
said that we could talk about things, we could, I guess, try and survive what was happening, trying to bolster each other's spirits, those sorts of things, and then trying to get an understanding of who our captives were as well,
like trying to start to get to know them, even the young guys who used to bring our food. One of the young guys, Jamal, who was,
It was like six or three, dark as the night,
had the widest teeth on the planet's massive big smile,
spoke English.
“And I started up a relationship with him, not a friendship,”
but a relationship. So I started talking to him about who he was, and what he wanted to do with his life, and those sorts of things, and just trying to show general interest and for me, it was about trying to make myself a valuable asset
to like trying to get people to like me. So it maybe would be harder for them to kill me. Maybe that's a stupid idea, but that was like, my survival mechanism sort of kicking in. - Well, Nigel, it actually wasn't a stupid idea,
at all. You see, what Nigel was doing, deliberately, consciously, strategically, was something that hostage psychologists and crisis negotiators have studied for decades,
and the evidence suggests it was absolutely right to do it.
The instinct to humanize yourself to the person holding your captive is not weakness, it's not naivety. It's one of the most intelligent survival strategies a hostage can employ.
“Research on civilian abductees has found”
that those who sought to build reciprocal relationships with their captors through conversation, acts of care, finding common ground, did so as a deliberate strategy to reduce the harshness of their captivity.
The logic is straightforward. It is significantly harder to hurt someone you know, harder to execute someone who's children's names, you know, who's dreams you've heard, who's faces have become familiar rather than foreign.
By asking questions about their lives, families, ambitions, Nigel was not making friends. He was making himself a person, not a commodity, not a paycheck, a human being. There's actually a quote from one of the original Stockholm
bank robbers, the incident that gave us the term Stockholm syndrome. It speaks directly to this. Years after the robbery reflecting on why he hadn't harmed
“the hostages he simply said, they made it hard to.”
They made us go on living together day after day, like goats in that filth. There was nothing to do, but to get to know each other. That is exactly what Nigel was counting on. Hosted survival research consistently shows
that those who come through captivity intact, tend to contain their hostility. Maintain routines, seek flexibility where they can find it, and crucially, mask any hostile reactions to their captors rather than act on them.
Nigel wasn't just surviving day to day, he was thinking ahead, building something. However, fragile however, one sided, that he hoped might one day save their lives. And in fact,
but it's something even more, and we'll play up to the group's extreme religious ideology.
- Even in the first week or so, asking for both a mander
and I asked for English versions of the Quran, which the group were like quite excited about us wanting to read the Quran in English. And then after a few days, they said, "Well, if you become Muslim,
we wouldn't be able to kill you, but if you don't become Muslim, then the outcome will probably be, or we'll get around some and then we'll execute it." And it's just like,
I don't really have much to tell you. - No, no, no, no, no, no, no. - I mean, it's the best recruitment technique I've heard of so far, I mean, I don't think too many people will get angry with that one.
- Well, a mander and I sort of talked about that, and it's just like, "Well, we don't really, "it doesn't feel like we have an option." So again, here's a survival technique that we convert, and we become Muslim and perhaps that allows us
some basic privileges. So it's worth pausing here to acknowledge what this moment actually was, because in other hostage situations and other conflicts, conversion has been used as a weapon against captives,
a tool of psychologically pressuring and humiliating. There are accounts of hostages being offered food, better conditions, small mercies in exchange for renouncing their faith. Many have refused, at great personal cost,
because to them, the identity was the last thing that remained entirely their own. However, Nigel and Amanda made the opposite calculation. They weren't people of strong religious conviction being asked to abandon something sacred.
They were two people in an extraordinarily dangerous situation looking at every available lever that they could pull to stay alive. And religions, specifically, the deeply held religious ideology
of the men holding them was a lever.
The psychology behind this is well understood,
hostages who sought to build reciprocal relationships with their captives through shared experiences, through acts of alignment, did so as a deliberate strategy to reduce the harshness of their captivity.
Share belief or the appearance of it
is one of the most powerful bonds
that exist between human beings. If your captop believes you are now, in some sense, a brother or a sister in faith, the calculus of whether to hurt you shifts. However, Nigel does say that the decision also did come
with a number of downsides. Like, I don't understand anything about Christian religion, let alone the Islamic religion.
“And I think I'd read maybe five pages in and was like,”
I want to conduct. And there was super excited about that. And we went through the whole, you know, saying the profession of faith and doing what you've got to do to become Muslim.
And afterwards, there was lots of high fives within the group that were really excited that we'd become Muslim. And it was like, okay, now you're Muslim, then it's just like, okay, what does that mean?
Like, I mean, like, were you gonna pray? You obviously have to wash all of those things, which not that they're really taught us how to do those things. But there was this expectation now as a Muslim man and a Muslim woman
that we would have to basically pray five times a day
and do all other things like fasting when Ramadan and those sort of when those things came around. But it was a day after we had converted, I got to speak to my sister Nick back in Australia. So I think it was day 11.
I got to speak to Nick, so I was informed that I'd be talking to my sister. I was told to write a script of what they wanted me to say. You know, I was brought a phone with a couple of guys sitting around me pointing guns at me just to ensure
that I didn't go off script. And you know, to hear my sister's voice was, was both beautiful and heartbreaking. So because I'm like a near that I was, you know, causing so much trauma for them as well,
which was, you know, that's where the guilt and shame started to kick him. It's just like, you know, you're a puppet. Like, you really didn't think about the consequences of your actions at all,
like, and what that meant for your family to are going into to Somalia and being kidnapped. I'm not that I had a thought that I would get kidnapped. That's the, there wasn't even in my thought going into Somalia. But I think with that guilt and shame, you know,
comes a form of depression too. It's just like, it's hard enough to sort of head into the darkness.
“And think the worst thing of I'm gonna end up here dying.”
I'm gonna end up financially destroying my parents. I'm not even having ethical dilemmas of, do I want my family to pay a ransom? Like, I'm 35 years old. I've had a pretty good run.
It's been a good 35 years. Do I ethically feel it's okay for my parents to be paying this money so that the white guy gets to go high? Like, what is that money going to be useful? So I would, I guess having these arguments with myself,
which no sound strange, but it was, it was this thing of like, well, is that fair that the white, Western guy goes home because he has money and then that money gets used for buying weapons and then innocent people are being killed in Somalia with those weapons.
Like, is that fair and it's not fair at all? The stress guilt and depression would begin to spiral for Nigel
in those first few weeks in captivity.
But thankfully Amanda was there and able to bring him out of it and focus his mind on the situation and just how they were going to get through it and out the other side.
“- Again, that's why I was really grateful to have Amanda there”
because I started to even get angry with her because it was like, you were the one, this was your idea. You know, not wanting to take accountability of getting on the plane myself, like she didn't drag me on the plane. I walked on there quite freely, I can will.
But it was just like, you were the one that suggests you're coming to Somalia. This is your, like, not saying that to her, but this is in my thought process. So it's sort of withdrawing from her and not really speaking to her and looks, she gave me a fairly stand talk around to Wakemark
and just said, look, we actually need to work together because I'm struggling as well and I need your support and I think you need my support and probably from that point on we sort of worked as this well sort of oiled peer support now, worked between the two of us.
So we spent a lot of time in the room, like we were allowed to go out twice a day for 15 minutes and sit in the open air and which was sort of fairly daunting
When guys are standing around, pointing out K47's ears.
So I think I'd actually just be shooting at that stage. - To my soul, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Well, there's a toilet and basically got a little bit of privacy
and we were never locked in rooms through that the whole ordeal
like the doors were just shut, but I guess with complete boredom, I've nothing to do, I created like a back-ended board. So I used, like I got a couple of panodol and carved dice and obviously put numbers on them so that we could play and use them. Cutton tips as little pieces and we drew up a board
and stuff like that so we can actually we're playing games and even famous faces, things like that, a man to like to play the food game which I didn't like so much. - Well, I just fantasizing about what you would eat.
“- Oh yes, what would you eat if you could right now?”
So this is not a fun game, I don't know if I like that.
Or even as time went on, she's like, "Okay, let's have a bet." What date do you think we're gonna be released? - Oh, dearie, no. So it kept us entertained, but you know,
and Matt, that we sort of, I guess for the next six weeks, we're working together really well and obviously you know, just talking about life and just going into my new detail about things that we've done in life and stuff like that and getting to know each other better
and our families and those sorts of things
and then around the two month mark things, sort of, that's where things changed. - Night's on Amanda's captives, apparent excitement that the pair had chosen the religion of Islam would seemingly be short-lived
and in fact, it would enable them to remove the one thing that was keeping night will focused Amanda. - And that was, that was, you know, fairly scary
“'cause it was like, well, where are they taking her?”
- Although the pair had been separated, they would find ways in which to communicate. - And I can remember Amanda will pass my room and push it up and just flick the note in, and she said we can leave messages for each other
in the bathroom in this spot. - Communications that started out as simple messages of support and love to those around the discussions of escape. - The next morning, thinking about it,
I sort of said to Amanda, I think we need to seriously consider an escape. If fifth kills, out three colleagues who have been Muslim their entire life, what are they gonna do with a couple of worries
who have literally converted for five nights. - Next time, on what I survived. ♪ Morning the sky ♪ ♪ I'm looking at the moon in the sky ♪ ♪ The shooting calm as a surprise ♪
♪ But I can't sleep ♪ ♪ Or am I mine ♪ ♪ I'm trying to fight all in my mind ♪ ♪ I don't know who's the winner tonight but it ain't me ♪ - Nah, there's no Flene for such a ending.
Besuch the road kept an elitness world in Freiburg with Euron Mehl's "Durona" and in the "Kanalartypen von Neben"
“and that's why our interactive exhibition”
with the "Littness Turm" and "Audio Geid" and "Auntlasseck" and "Auntlasseck" and "Auntlasseck" and "Auntlasseck" from "Road Catching" the "Road Catching" is one of "Littness World"
only one of "Sickling" in Freiburg.
