I Spent Three Months As Hostage Of The Taliban | Minutes With | @LADbible TV

can i make one request uh do you mind though if you sh i could be shot in the head and they then discuss this and the muller another muller was discussing and they said yeah yeah okay uh you will grant you that so then it's like my goal so i am being executed [Music] i've been a print journalist in london in my 20s writing for magazines newspapers style journalism used to go nightclubbing get paid to go to clubs and write about it and then somehow shifted into documentaries my first documentary series the bbc was about the taliban and i became the kind of go-to guy after 9 11 for islamic terrorist insurgents and so i spent the next 20 years covering the wars in afghanistan and iraq and i think it was the first one of the early documentaries ever made about the taliban when they were in power i knew very little i just knew rumors that they'd banned kite flying football and it was like going entering the dark side of the moon or landing on the dark side of the movement you had to cross from pakistan along the road and kabul at that time looked like hiroshima completely destroyed and because filming was banned it made my life very difficult so i kept being thrown out of the country in jalalabad it was like a terrorist training camp and i near my hotel where psalm bin laden's house was about a mile down the road there were lots of arab terrorist training and i remember thinking this is bound to come and bite us you know on the nose and uh a year later 9 11 happened so in 2008 i'd made a documentary for channel 4 called meeting the taliban i was only expecting about six or seven taliban to show up this compound is now full of taliban one of the commanders taliban commanders i interviewed actually warned me you don't want to do this too often he said before you came down i met them in helmand we took a vote on whether to kill you kidnap you or let you do the interview and he said this time the vote went your way but you'll never know so uh and i i'm smiling but i'm slightly embarrassed too because you know i had two kids so i was warned um what could happen so when channel 4 said after that success of that film uh uh why didn't you go to the uh tribal areas of pakistan just across the border and it was considered the most dangerous place in the world and it was full of taliban training camps al qaeda training camps secret training camps why don't you go there and be the first to film those training camps and when i look back that's not really a tv proposal more of a suicide mission but i said yes when i went to pakistan in peshawar in two in 2008 uh we arranged to meet these uh this muller who picked me up in the side of a car so when the muller arrived i knew his name and my fixture had already met him when he appeared and said hey you know salaam alaikum walakum salaam and i get into his car so i sat in the back of the car and pretty much i'd already that was the beginning of my kidnap i actually thought oh this is good things are going well and we drove into the uh what's called the tribal areas of pakistan just on the border of afghanistan and it was a no-go area for foreign in fact it says got big signs you know no foreigners be on this point i remember thinking well that's no florence unless you're sam bin laden or other foreign al-qaeda fighters suddenly as i'm driving up and we arrive in this marketplace in a area called bajor and i'm looking around it was like just full of taliban al-qaeda arabs chechens all carrying guns and we stop uh to buy some fruit juice and i'm sitting in the back of the car going oh my god this is just like you know open territory here it's there it's their home territory it's their safe haven and then i was driven up into the mountains and i i mean i all the time i felt very tense but i i'd always felt very tense because when you go and meet insurgents terrorists they're risking their life to meet you they don't know if you're part of a trap so in fact the whole thing is incredibly tense i used to have this routine of battening down the hatches because you don't want to make people nervous i'd often met taliban where you suddenly appear and they're like you know with guns what's happening and they're terrified for good reason that they could be ambushed by u.s special forces so i used to sort of batten down the hatches and just try and get incredibly calm and i would have little routines of thinking about friends and home so you'd lock down the emotions uh so when i then get to this remote area in the mountains uh one of the taliban said to me uh do you mind if we blindfold you and as he says that i'm looking out over a precipice and i was like sure he said you know it's for your own security and then you put the blindfold and then i remember coming to the edge of this clear fight scene and that's that was the beginning when i was thinking wow this this has been a trap but you know what they brought me up here and i slipped and i stumbled uh and then i heard boots running down the hill and i heard the sound the clickety-clack of an ak-47 uh the bolt being pulled back and i thought this is it i'm now going to die here and then i heard these voices saying are you okay you fell down the hill and they then i thought oh they said you know you've lost your footing sorry and they brought me into this safe house where i was blindfolded but at this point they were keeping up the pretense that i was there to make a documentary about their training camps and also they promised that i would meet the leader of this group uh siraj siraj shakarni who's now one of the de facto leaders in afghanistan you understood that you've been kidnapped yeah what were your initial emotions i think what the truth was i already knew i was kidnapped but you don't want to admit the worst has happened when you don't have to you don't want to confront that news and when there was no doubt was uh uh the muller who i'd met on the side of the street he was in the room with us and he'd been our point of contact you know in the chain of trying to get access to these taliban commanders he was sitting in the room suddenly this taliban commander comes in with two guys with their black turbans around their face and guns i'm lying in bed this is my second third morning in in captivity and i've been told don't worry you're just in here and the muller was sitting there who'd set up our meeting suddenly this commander comes in and starts gesticulating and shouting and i i could understand the command is gesticulating and the muller was pleading and then obviously when something went wrong and suddenly these two guys put hood over his head pulled him outside of the room of this tiny room and i could hear him outside the door and i could then hear this the the the the flurry of blows of ak-47s hitting his bodies and boots and the thwacks and what sounded like you know the barrel of the gun hitting his teeth and and the whole time as i'm listening to this man being beaten this commander then i realized became he was the guy in control of our kidnap he just looked at me and held my stare the whole time to see my reaction and then i heard this body being dragged off into the distance he said don't worry about it we kill and arrest our guys all the time nothing to worry about and he said uh we're going to investigate you uh so we'll stay here for a few days and my fix wasn't there at that point he traveled separately so i'm in a a very tiny it was like you know seven foot by six foot it was a cell but it had a window they'd bought it up and it was two day beds and a little hole you know the toilet and i spent a day in there too until my fix arrived and then three days later the same commander came back in and whilst handing out gifts like your favorite uncle arriving at crystal he said look what i bought you i quickly realized this commander might be a sociopath because he could be very charming and smiling and at the same time orders someone's death uh as he was showing me gifts like a new show alchemy's big family-sized shampoo from pakistan look i brought you uh toffees from iran see how nice i am and then you say see how nice and he had his arm around me he then handed my fixer my afghan fixer piece of paper and that i could see my fixture literally like the films go white as he read this piece of paper and the commander walked out and said yeah answer those questions and i said to my face you know what what happened what what are you reading what is it and it was on headed no paper taliban headed no paper signed by the emir uh you've been hereby charged with working for foreign enemy governments and you're now under arrest and my fixment we're dead did you at any point had any thoughts of escaping yeah there was uh so i i you know as a journalist in that part of the world i knew a lot of cases of kidnaps in the past kidnapped people had been beheaded i'd seen the videos the al-qaeda videos from iraq and that's always in the back of your head cage in the forefront i also didn't want to my last regret on life to be just as i'm about to be beheaded thinking i could have taken an opportunity to escape but we knew escape would be uh beyond risky because we we were you had to get out of this house compound wall compound you're immediately in there full of uh uh pashtun villagers who've never seen a foreigner and then you've got taliban training camps arabs every night you could hear them day and night test firing weapons and the ricochet you know i realized the place was full of uh taliban al-qaeda and their checkpoints so we we never escaped never tried but they they this house was a pashtun family home was like a compound and it was a grandmother living there the grandfather three or four sons men grown men and their wives who i never saw but i i i became intimately uh aware of of through the sounds i could hear the women outside in the courtyard making bread in the morning and putting on the firewood and making tea uh and the taliban would come and go and at the beginning the taliban had told this family it was a tribal well-respected tribal family and the owner the the main man of the house they told him we were spies unbelievers so it was like again like the movies where they would open up the door and we just had a little bit of sunlight coming through this gap in this window so it was there was light in there until the afternoon then it became twilight and then we'd be sitting there in the dark but at the beginning they were just kind of put in a tray of food some bread and tea or some rice and nan bread and but slowly i developed a relationship uh predominantly with the owner of the house this man who was about a strong taciturn man and obviously i'd read somewhere that you know it's much harder to kill a fellow human being if you see someone as the label uh unbeliever spy or terrorist much easier but to kill them so i i drew in all my experiences of living and working in islamic middle east countries of how to present yourself and be polite and i could sense it change but there was one evening where the taliban came in at night with a long list of questions and it was the same commander with his guide and uh talk with shawls over their faces and and they interrogated me i had a long they had a long list of questions and for some reason as i'm sitting there the family from this house the father that there's about eight of them all came in these men sitting in the crammed into the room watching and then up until this point this was about four weeks into it they believed the taliban that i was either a spy or an unbeliever or something not to be trusted and it came to this point where of course i was answering and you know everything i'm a journalist i couldn't keep a secret save my life and suddenly in the middle of this polite firm interrogation they asked the names of my children and i just suddenly felt i i can't give you their names uh and i just said i said i'm sorry i i don't mean to be rude but i i i really i just can't give the names of my children this taliban come commander said like no you've got to it's not i'd be given this you've got to tell us because they need those things for proof of life questions like that can be used in a ransom negotiation it wasn't courage or stupidity i just was unable to hand out the names of these two innocent children and i actually said look i i don't mean to offend you and i wouldn't ask a pashtun man the name of his wife i i can't bring in such innocent light into this dark business and the guy said well we'll have to shoot you i've been ordered to shoot if you don't answer any questions and then a mask gunman puts a gun to my head and and i felt no i just like i'm really i actually felt like i'm sorry to let you down i can't give you the names of my children and they pulled the gun to my fixer's head i said well if you don't uh give us your children's names we're going to shoot him um i i'm on stage at this point because the family are looking but i'm not aware of them and and i thought they're going to kill my fixes so i was like okay it just and i and i was careful before you never condemn them or get angry and i i couldn't help myself this was the only time i got emotional i said well my oldest son is called luke and my youngest son is gabriel and tomorrow he's gonna next day he's gonna turn four and wonder why his father hasn't called and i started crying and to my the great luck of course gabriel is one of the holiest names in islam the archangel gabriel brought down the quran to the prophet uh muhammad so this had a transformative effect because the these tribal elders and the family who've been told all these men warriors that i was a unbeliever uh suddenly seeing this weak western man realizing that he's prepared to die rather than give up the name of his children and he's named one of them after an islamic one of the holiest names in islam at that point the family everything changed and the taliban lost face it was a bit embarrassing for them and from then on the family used to come in bring me nice food they actually offered me tribal protection panna in in afghanistan which which meant the taliban wouldn't be allowed to kill me on the roof it's kind of weird protection if you if you leave the house you can get killed what kept you going through all of that time my children were both a source of strength and my source of weakness so you know uh so i hid two photographs from the taliban and uh of my sons i hid them into my boots and at night i would take out the photo and uh look at them and if you look to them for one minute it gives you strength if you look at it for longer than a minute it breaks you because i realized i'd let them down and uh and it's strange you know i'm talking about it now and it's i think when you've had a a very intense traumatic experience you know it never fades from memory so the minute you know i've just you know you can immediately be back there so i remember writing a letter uh dear sons i'm not your father you don't know me uh but i loved you more than anything in life and i realized my son age seven when he grew up to be 17 who didn't know me he never had a father around to ask questions he'd be like [ __ ] you you know if you loved me so much why did you go off playing russian roulette with terrorists so one thing i would do is feeling so connected i would kneel by my bed uh as i would buy the bath in london when i would give it a bath time for my two boys so there were no babies so at the time i knew there were being baths in london i i would kneel down close my eyes and because i was just stuck in this dark self of every four months within seconds i was there and i could feel the contours of the skin beneath i could hear them squealing with delight so i would bathe them every day so things like that to keep you going so how did you escape well it was it was like this thinking back now i'm now and in fact the worst point is where you think you could be released uh because then you let down your guard and and and then you you're you're the worst thing to happen to a hostage is you'll get your hopes raised so there was at one point uh the taliban commander came in burst into the room with a sat phone saying great news your tv company want to negotiate i'm like i know and i could think i'm going to see my kids at last and he said but thanks conrad something's going on with negotiations so i want you to phone them phone your tv company and say we're going to kill your fixer if they don't pay this money and then he looked to me conspiratorially like we're all in this together he said look don't worry we ain't really going to kill him uh we just say that when we're negotiating kind of this is just a game i make this telephone call and i get the switchboard and i get this hello channel 4 switchboard and and somehow feeling that beautiful estuary voice that london voice it was like oh god i could almost feel like i was back home and i said look i'm really sorry uh a bit of an odd one this my name's sean langan uh worked for channel four i've been kidnapped i'm calling from the triballers can you put me through to current affairs head of news and and then i hear this delay and then she goes how do you spell sean langan and i'm like i am really shawn as you got kidnapped and i'm like i'm really sorry i don't mean to freak out but i'm pretty sure he's going to shoot my face if you don't pull me through whatever you do don't put me on hold or voicemail just put me through to someone she goes putting you straight through and i get put through to voicemail and i'm down to like ten dollars and i take it off and trying to explain to taliban commander that you've been put through to voicemail i because i could hear them i think so at that point was in a bad state in passion all like the only word i got was voicemail the commander who seconds early said don't worry i'm really cool but he was like what the [ __ ] his voicemail he said and he just said don't these foreigners get it we killed people just to prove it and he just at this point pointed right at me he said call the [ __ ] back and i just see this he just goes and i and i i just think oh god and i go down there and there's my fixer and i think he shot him and he's just sprayed over the head and he just he just looks me he says someone wants you [ __ ] dead something's wrong and he leaves the compound and then we're backing ourselves so that was and then and then that was the hardest time because then it looked like uh negotiations had failed someone had messed up because then it's like all hope was lost and probably the one of the worst periods was when the uh the family now came in one they said would you like to convert and and and gave me a hot shower they were but we were using a bucket of cold water but they warmed up so i had a hot shower and a new chihuahua comedian they're asking me to convert and i was convinced because they said it's not good to die without converting these were my last rights i'd been given a hot shower some food and then in fact when the taliban came back it looked like there was a guy there whose job it was he had a big knife and i said look uh i can't can i make one request uh do you mind though if you sh i could be shot in the head and they then discussed this and the muller another muller was discussing and they said yeah yeah okay uh you will grant you that so then it's like oh my god so i am being executed and without thinking about and then said the earl of the house you know i'd really go on and i said do you mind very much can i ask him to be the guy who shoots me because my feeling was if you're going to be shot it's that horrible moment of fear like a mugging but actually if it's someone you like and you spend time with who's putting out your misery it's it's just like he was so touched that i pointed in my executioner he cried and then four days later the negotiation starts again and the taliban commander sits down and it's like a court hearing and i have to sit there and he's acting as the judge and he he opens up these official papers and he reads out he says the the taliban sure uh has found you innocent of all charges and accepts you are a journalist and i'm like and so it was literally when you're innocent of all charges and i went good one and then he said with great comedic time you pause he let me enjoy my moment said but they voted to kill you to send a message to other journalists not to try this again i'm like and i literally oh and i'm sitting there and then he pauses he says but don't worry the emir strategy and i we vetoed the shura so you're free to go and i was just so within a space of a minute i'd been told you're innocent we're gonna kill you don't worry you can go and i'm just in tatters and then they read out my fixes charlie said you've been the court sure find you guilty of all the charges uh but we're going to allow you to go in fact we knew that meant he wasn't going to be allowed to go and uh and the year before an italian journalist and an afghan fixer had been kidnapped and they let the italian go and they killed the afghan fixer they were friends of ours the afghan and i made a promise to my fixture that i that we would either both live or we would both die so they separated us and we were brought out into this courtyard now i hadn't seen sunlight for three months and i see my skin for the first time and i'd lost three stone in weight and i'm thinking so this point uh i leave the mountains this house get in a car and then they asked me to put a burke on so i i had to change cars in the back of the car i had to put a blue birken and these little patent leather ladies shoes i said you need to swing the side of the road we're going go and get another car and as i'm looking at the filament i see about 30 guys afghans and arabs covered in dirt guns obviously coming back from the front lines across the border and they're walking directly towards me and i'm thinking what is the lifespan of a white guy dressed in a woman's outfit i mean i'm dead twice over here and they just ignored me and then the taliban came in their car and said come on in you get and they drove me to peshawar and then i'm kept in a little room in a third place and that's when they're negotiating with my negotiators and they say we've got it and they talk about this package we've got the package we're going to deliver and that's you know i've made this vow to my afghan fixer that i'm not going to do what the italian journalists did and leave them so i say no i refuse to be released uh and i said to the guy on the phone i said no no you tell him i'm not going you have to kill me. and i and he's looking at me and all the guards looming i'm like well unless you release my fix i'm not doing it and i turned away and i'm say to god i've got about 10 seconds of this kind of faux courage that if if by if if this doesn't work every single in my body wants to be released to meet my children they look thinking steel's about to fall through and then all right we'll release the fixture as well and we were released together and some we've bonded out the back of a car i've got hood taken off and this big fat american guy shakes my hand says welcome home sir and i start crying [Music] you know one thing you should know about espionage as well as bomb making the first mistake is your last mistake you're not going to live to make another mistake and therefore you have to be absolutely careful you know one wrong word you know and you are a head shorter and six feet under

Channel: LADbible TV

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Keywords: the lad bible, lad bible, lad, bible, videos, viral videos, viral, funny, comedy, funny videos, documentaries, exclusives, interviews, taliban, kidnapped, afghanistan, pakistan, al qaeda, british journalist, media, documentary filmmaker, documentary film, tv film, channel 4 taliban, hostage, captivity, survived being hostage, escape, escape taliban, war journalist, kidnap survivor

Id: saeNJXCic8g

Length: 27min 29sec (1649 seconds)

Published: Sun May 22 2022