Seal Team Rescues Jessica Buchanan

we begin with the rescue of Jessica Buchanan it is the story of a secret mission by SEAL Team 6 that few people had heard about until we first reported the story last year on a January night in 2012 members of SEAL Team 6 jumped from a plane into the skies of Somalia Jessica Buchanan was being held hostage and the seals were descending just in time Buchanan was a humanitarian aid worker who had come to help children in one of the most dangerous places on earth hers was an ordeal that ended in a flash of violence but had begun 93 days earlier when her car was stopped by bandits in a place she calls hell we stopped very abruptly like silh abruptly but I felt like everybody just fall forward and then I start hearing all of this pounding on the windows and the windshield and all this shouting in Somali and there's a man standing there screaming and he has an ak-47 and he's shouting and he's pointing it at us and then he climbs into the car next to me and he points an inkay in my face and they're hyped up like they're on speed and all of a sudden we just take off the driver just takes off and we just start slamming all over the place down these camel tracks what did you think they were going to do I figured they were going to rape me and then kill me Jessica Buchanan was facing the end at the end of the earth Somalia on the farthest tip of Africa is war-torn and lawless the shizz battle over an unforgiving land as we saw while covering a famine there in 2011 it was the same year that Buchanan was with a Danish charity teaching children how to avoid landmines on October 25th her car was hijacked okay this is it like I'm bracing myself to be shot in the back of the head and I think that there's mercy and the fact that maybe they're not going to rate me first but that it's just going to be quick and I'm waiting and I'm waiting and then all of a sudden somebody shouts from behind us sleep I think oh my god I didn't hear that correctly today he just said sleep she collapsed slept through the night and the next morning was met by the man who led the bandits and we asked him are you going to kill us is that why we're here he says no no no money we just want money how much were they asking for they started out at forty five million dollars they thought you were pretty value I guess so the bandits used her cell phone to call her husband Eric Lander mom the two had married on an African beach two years before but his number and the numbers of Buchanan's family had all been disconnected it was part of the charity's emergency plan the one number that worked was her Nairobi office with a hostage negotiator standing by and so began months of talks where did they keep you day in day out under trees outside you were outdoors for 93 days mm-hmm yep and in and the night they forced us to sleep out in the open you and Pole came up with nicknames for a lot of the people who were keeping you that's one of the ways you kept yourself occupied did the ten year old boy crack baby because he was cracked out all the time he was chewing cotton he had two black holes for eyes there was nothing inside this is one of the camps where she was held the bandits hitter pointed their guns at her and put a knife to her throat but it was exposure that took a toll she lost 25 pounds after three weeks the bandits made a video to prove that she was alive have you seen the video I have I can tell I'm starting to lose hope at that point but home would have to last for two more months as the many weeks went by did you think the American government's watching me they know where I am and somebody's going to get me out of here you know why because I'm just an aid worker you didn't imagine that the President of the United States knew your name never never in a million years after three months in the desert Buchanan had a serious urinary tract infection and in a final call to the hostage negotiator she said this I become so ill that I couldn't stand up I couldn't walk so I was in so much pain and I said I think I have a kidney infection and I started to cry and I said I think I'm afraid I'm going to die out here when that call was received here in Nairobi it set off a chain of events that led all the way to the Oval Office the FBI and the military consulted doctors who said that if Jessica had a kidney infection she might have just two weeks to live that was transmitted to the president who was also informed that in just a few days there would be a new moon perfect darkness for a SEAL team rescue Jessica Buchanan had chosen a star in the somali sky to represent her mother who had passed away a year before she spoke to it every night and with no moon it was especially bright on January 25th what did you say that night please tell God that I need some help we need to get out of here you couldn't have known that that prayer would be answered that night I had no idea she was on a mat trying to sleep when she heard a faint scratching noise one of the bandits she nicknamed helper heard it too and I see this look of just sheer terror on helpers face and then all of a sudden it's just this eruption of gunfire and I think okay well this is it this really is truly Lynde and I cover up with my blanket again and I just start saying oh god oh god oh god and I just remember thinking or maybe I'm saying out loud like I cannot survive this she thought she was being taken by a rival group maybe al-shabaab Islamic extremists who would surely kill her and then all of a sudden I feel all these hands on me roughly grabbing at me and I try to protect myself and I pull the blanket closer on top of me and then I hear my name but it's not a Somali accent it's an American accent and I can't compute like I can't understand that somebody with an American accent knows my name and they say Jessica were with the American military we're here to take you home and you're safe pull the blanket down from my face and all I see is black black mask's black sky and all I can say over and over is you're American you're American I don't I don't understand you're Americans thinking how did you get here and I'm still alive and they asked me where my shoes are and I don't know and one of them picks me up and starts running he runs for several minutes and and it puts me down on the ground and then they identify themselves and that they knew I was very sick and they have medicine they have water they have food and they've come to to take me home at one point I think they thought they heard something I don't know this group of men whose risk their life for me already asks me to lie down on the ground because they're concerned that there might be somewhere someone out there and then they make a circle around me and then they lie down on top of me to protect me and we lay like that until the helicopters come in when all of those seals lay down on top of you you were the most important thing in the world to them it's really hard to comprehend they were going to take a bullet for you mm-hmm and they're so kind and they're so gentle and they are trying to assist me to get to the helicopter but I think I've been out here for months I can run to this helicopter myself and so I just break away and I just take off running through the scrub through the bush and I throw myself on to that helicopter and push myself up against the wall and I don't start breathing until we actually lift up off the ground and they hand me an American flag that's folded what did you think of that I just started to cry at that point in time I have never in my life been so proud and so very happy to be an American the seals left on other helicopters she didn't see their faces didn't hear their names they appeared and they were gone the only thing left in the camp were nine dead bandits

Channel: Leopold M Llonch

Views: 2,642,653

Rating: 4.8262424 out of 5

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Id: 2ZrE_jwef-E

Length: 10min 43sec (643 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 21 2014