- From: news.com.au
- September 02, 2013
Kidnap victim Amanda Lindhout tells of abuse 0:47
Amanda Lindhout, who was kidnapped and tortured for 15 months in Somalia with
Australian Nigel Brennan, spoke about her ordeal. Courtesy: Carleton
University.
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Amanda Lindhout has written a book
about her horrific experience as a hostage of Somali warlords. Source: Supplied
SHE
was looking for adventure and sought it out in exactly the wrong place, one of
the deadliest countries in the world for a westerner to visit.
She ended up living in a rat-infested room and being raped
nightly by jihadists who planned to sell her off for a ransom.
This is a young woman's horrific
tale of 15 months in captivity, the New
York Post reported.
Bored with her life and fresh off a New Year's Eve epiphany, in
May 2007, a 24-year-old Canadian named Amanda Lindhout quits her job as a
cocktail waitress and decides to become a journalist.
To get famous fast, she'll start in Afghanistan, landing in
Kabul.
She moves on to Iraq in January 2008, and is held hostage for
several hours in Sadr City before paying off her captors.
Amanda has no training and is using "TV Reporting for Dummies"
as her manual.
She gives an interview in which she says every other journalist
in Baghdad, aside from herself, is too scared to leave the Green Zone.
She's so naive, she doesn't realise her fellow reporters -
"fancypants," she called them - will see this boast online.
Her disdain and bravado make her persona non grata among the
press corps, many of whom are reporting from the Red Zone.
She has to find somewhere else. She calls an ex-boyfriend,
36-year-old Nigel Brennan. He is Australian, a former photographer, and she asks
him to come along to Somalia.
Amanda Lindhout on patrol with
Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan, June 2007. Picture: AFP Source: AFP
Although he has a new girlfriend and no experience in war
zones, he agrees; Amanda has enough confidence for them both.
No matter that there are no longer any international bases of
operation in Somalia, or that Doctors Without Borders is just five years away
from leaving, or that few journalists will venture in.
For Amanda, this is a plus: "The truth was, I was glad for the
lack of competition."
On their third day in Somalia, Amanda and Nigel are
kidnapped
Robert Draper, a journalist on assignment for National
Geographic, remembers meeting "recklessly perky" Amanda Lindhout at the Shamo
Hotel in Mogadishu in August 2008.
She looks like Kate Middleton and asks Draper and his
photographer, Pascal Maitre, where all the bombings are, because she wants to go
there.
Draper is horrified and that night sends an e-mail to his
girlfriend. "She's going to get herself or someone else killed," he writes.
Later, Amanda would learn that her kidnappers had been
watching the hotel, and that they'd initially planned to abduct the National
Geographic crew.
But after Draper and Maitre bulked up their security, the
targets changed.
Now it would be Amanda and Nigel, who would never know whether
their fixer was in on it.
Saturday, August 23, the two set out for "the Wild West of
militia-controlled Somalia."
Even the bodyguards they've hired won't go there, and when
their fixer tells them they'll need to drive a few miles alone, they go ahead.
Nigel's gut tells him to turn back, but he says nothing; Amanda admits her
grievous naivety.
"It wasn't like I could say, Well, last time I drove across
the line where the Islamic militias battled the uniformed soldiers, here's how
we did it ..."
Not a minute out from a checkpoint, there's a blue Suzuki
blocking their path, then 12 gunmen, the bulk of whom shove themselves into
Amanda's and Nigel's SUV and drive them away. "Sister," one says, "don't worry.
Nothing will happen to you."
Australian photojournalist Nigel
Brennan and Canadian Amanda Lindhout before their kidnap. Picture:
Facebook. Source: Supplied
The first house is 45 minutes away. They put Nigel and Amanda
in a room empty save for two mattresses.
They announce themselves as jihadis, take what little money
their captives have, then pull Amanda into another room, where one of them
molests her.
"This is wrong," she tells him. "You are not a good
Muslim."
He pushes her down. "You think I need this?" he says. "I have
two wives. You are ugly, a bad woman."
He orders her back to the room with Nigel.
The next day, a jihadi named Adan introduces himself as the
commander and tells them they'll be going home soon: "Allah has put it into my
heart to ask for a ransom."
The price is $3 million for both.
Now they know - though they can't yet admit it - that they are
very likely going to die there.
During their captivity, Nigel and Amanda agree their best
chance of survival is to convert to Islam.
Screengrab from Al-Jazeera TV of
Somali kidnap hostages Amanda Lindhout and Nigel Brennan while in
captivity. Source: Supplied
Neither Nigel nor Amanda know what conversion means. Life
immediately gets worse. Newly Muslim, they are now held in separate rooms.
It is against the religion for an unmarried man and woman to
share the same space.
They are now to eat with their right hand and wipe with their
left. They are to pray five times a day, and still they are beaten and starved.
They cannot smoke.
They are told constantly that they might be sold to
Al-Shabaab, the Somali offshoot of al Qaeda. Nigel curls up in the fetal
position as he hears Amanda's screams through the wall, her jihadi captors soon
raping her nightly.
During the day, Nigel and Amanda try to bond with their
kidnappers, learning their names and asking their goals. One says he dreams of
being a suicide bomber.
They work out a system to communicate, stashing tiny notes in
the disgusting bathroom, and once they realise that their barred windows are
adjacent, they open their Korans and pretend to pray while quietly talking.
Forced to clean her contact lenses in fetid water, Amanda soon
develops an infection, a fungus growing its way from her mouth to her cheek.
Her toenails fall out. Nigel develops dysentery and begins
bleeding. Their captors refuse to provide Amanda with sanitary napkins.
Freelance photographer Nigel Brennan,
was freed on November 25, 2009 after 15 months in captivity. Picture:
Supplied Source: AFP
Finally, one day in November, packages arrive for both, their
respective consulates having gotten supplies through: medicine, prescription
eyeglasses and feminine products for Amanda, fresh underwear and, just as
desperately needed, something to read other than the Koran: Hemingway for Nigel,
Nelson Mandela's memoir for Amanda. They are relieved and alarmed.
"The downside to receiving a package," Amanda writes, "was
that it made it clear to me that nobody - not our families, nor our governments,
nor our captors - thought we'd be free anytime soon."
One hundred nights in, Amanda is ripped from her bed and
driven to the desert. She is made to kneel on the ground, her head yanked back
by her thinning, shedding hair, a knife pressed to her throat.
Her captors fight loudly among themselves as she begs for her
life and they throw her to the ground. "I sobbed in the dirt, sounding like an
animal, like something wounded and incapable of speech."
They give her a phone and tell her to talk to her mother. One
million dollars in one week, or Amanda dies.
The next day it is decided: Nigel and Amanda will try to
escape.
He has noticed the loose bars on the bathroom window, and they
decide they will shimmy their way out and make the 12-foot drop, then run and
run and run.
They make their escape within days, sneaking off to the
bathroom midafternoon, hitting the ground, only one place to go.
They race toward a nearby mosque, screaming "Help me, I am
Muslim!" in broken Somali. Everyone in their path turns away.
By the time they reach the mosque, their most lethal captor
awaits with his AK-47. They barge in, frantic, electric with fear.
The congregation freezes, and the lone woman present hugs
Amanda, holding her tightly.
An imam must be called, they say, to determine whether these
two should live or die.
Their captors pull them away, Nigel and Amanda clawing like
animals.
They are beaten savagely in public and placed in a new home.
This one has rooms like coffins, three feet by seven, pitch black, prone to
rats.
Now time disappears.
Amanda Lindhout, second right, and
Nigel Brennan, right, sit together after their release from captivity, with
unidentified officials at the Presidential palace in Mogadishu, Somalia,
November 26, 2009. Picture: AP Source:
Supplied
Amanda is gang-raped and bleeds for a month. She is hogtied,
gagged and beaten for days. She obtains a razor and contemplates suicide, and
then she sees a bird in her window and opts for hope.
Neither has any idea what is going on behind the scenes; now
they are no longer forced to make desperate calls to their families.
Both Nigel's and Amanda's families eventually decide to ignore
their respective governments and hire a private security firm specialising in
kidnapping and ransom, and though there are deep conflicts and resentments, they
work together to get them out.
One of Nigel's siblings flies to Somalia, risking jail for
moving large sums of cash to terrorists, as well as her own life.
One night, Nigel overhears Amanda on the phone, begging her
mother to take the entire $500,000 that Nigel's family has largely raised and
using it to pay just for her.
He is devastated. "I don't think I have ever felt so lonely
and cheated in my life ... I'm furious at myself for trusting her."
The bank account for their ransom, it turns out, is held in
Australia, her mother unable to access it.
On Nov. 25, 2009, Amanda and Nigel are freed in an off-road
exchange.
Amanda Lindhout and Australian Nigel
Brennan, in Mogadishu, Somalia, after being freed. Source: AP
They are taken to Somalia's most secure hotel, from which two
French journalists had been kidnapped. The next day, they are driven right up to
the door of their plane, which takes off immediately.
In 2011, Nigel publishes his memoir, "Price of a Life," and
otherwise returns to life as a private citizen.
He and Amanda no longer speak.
While in captivity, Amanda gave birth to a boy named Osama;
she refuses to comment on that but has said she endured atrocities so
unspeakable, she'll never share them.
Her memoir, "A House in the Sky," is out this week.
She has since returned to Somalia on behalf of her
organisation, the Global Enrichment Foundation, which aims to improve the lives
of Kenyan and Somali women.
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