Colonel Gaddafi’s Hat. Alex Crawford
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realizes the seriousness of our situation more than most. He is on the Tunisian border trying to smuggle himself and his team into Libya with the rebels, via the Nefusa mountains.
‘We are working on a plan,’ he writes. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get you all out.’ It’s just what we want to hear, need to hear. It makes us all feel less isolated, and I, for one, have reason to feel cheered by what on the face of it appears to be wildly optimistic reassurance.
Stuart and I have worked together regularly on several joint ventures and investigations for Sky over many years, interviewing the Taliban in Afghanistan, exposing the militant insurgency in Pakistan, covering huge natural disasters such as the Burmese cyclone. He has got me out of some pretty tricky spots before, not least when cameraman Phil Hooper and I were illegally held and interrogated by Afghan intelligence agents in the country’s Laghman Province in May 2010.
We’d spent some days studying a militant insurgency group in the area, filming their training camp, living with them, observing their methods and finding out about their motives. We had finished our assignment and were travelling out of the militants’ territory when we were stopped by several car-loads of armed men. They bundled us into their vehicles at gunpoint and took us to the offices of the NDS, Afghan intelligence. Just before we were stripped of all our equipment and mobile phones, I managed to sneak out an emergency text to Stuart and Neville Lazarus, Sky’s Asia producer. The two of them were on their way to pick us up at a nearby safe house when they got my alert. At first they made their own preliminary enquiries, checking out the safe house, asking locals if they’d seen us. But both of them knew time was critical. The longer we were incommunicado, the longer we were away, the less chance there would be of finding us.
Stuart has done countless embeds with the British and American militaries and has pretty solid contacts with both, so, without hesitation, he and Neville walked onto the nearby US army base and raised the alarm. The Americans put out feelers, talking first to their local informants on the ground about whether they had seen any foreigners. The answer came back positive. Yes, two foreigners had been taken into the NDS offices and one was a woman. But when they contacted the NDS offices officially, they were told there were no foreigners there. No, the official insisted, no one had been arrested, no one had been taken in.
The Americans went further, asking their informants inside the NDS offices to locate and identify us after passing on descriptions of us from Stuart and Neville. Yes, came back the information from the NDS. There are two foreigners being interrogated right now. Then came the news that we were to be taken elsewhere. Not good. The Americans believed we were to be sold to the Taliban. We would fetch a hefty ransom for the corrupt officials and become a keen bargaining chip for the militants in any negotiations with the Karzai government in Afghanistan and maybe even the British government. They had to move quickly.
Just before we were due to be shifted, about four or five armoured personnel carriers full of armed US soldiers arrived at the NDS offices. Again they asked officially for the return of the two journalists they were convinced were there. Again, the officials denied everything: no foreigners and no journalists here, they said. The Americans refused to accept this, cocking their guns and eventually bursting into the room where Phil and I and our Afghan translator were being held. The first we knew of their arrival was when this huge, six-foot-plus soldier carrying a gun battered open the door. ‘Phil, Alex,’ he said, ‘you’re coming with us.’
I dread to think what might have happened had it not been for the quick reactions of Stuart and Neville. Their swift actions certainly saved at least the day for us.
Stuart and I work well together. We are good friends though fierce competitors, repeatedly trying to outwit and outthink each other on stories. Our rivalry is a standing joke in the newsroom. But there is no one who has more war experience or who has better journalistic nous and resourcefulness in extremely hostile environments than Ramsay. Knowing he is in the vicinity is some sort of comfort blanket.
Right now Stuart is on the Tunisian border with cameraman Richie Mockler and Martin Vowles, who is security for the team. I have worked with both in Pakistan. Martin is one of a very small number who have already slipped over the border under the eyes of the Libyan guards and back into Tunisia again. Richie and Martin are both former marines. Together with Stuart they are thinking through the options with military precision and planning. They are negotiating with their rebel contacts, appealing to them for help and discussing sending in a team of Opposition fighters who understand the area and know the back roads to try to smuggle us all out of Zawiya. They are also investigating a sea rescue – lining up a boat to enter Libyan waters and then transport us out of the country that way – again with the help of the rebels.
We don’t realize at this point we are relatively close to the sea. Stuart, Richie and Martin V have the benefit of maps and satellite photographs showing our location. The only trouble is we have to somehow get to the port and at present we can’t even get out of the hospital. In between the plotting and planning, Stuart still finds time to text us some schoolboy jokes: ‘Have you heard the one about the bloke who walks into the doctor’s with a steering wheel around his dick? The doctor says: “What on earth is that?” The guy says: “I don’t know, but it’s driving me nuts.”’ It is stupendously incongruous, but it breaks the tension. And the doctors in the hospital roar with laughter. Tim writes back: ‘That’s the first time I have laughed in days!’
Bill Neely from ITN is also texting from Tripoli. ‘I am in contact with a doctor in the Square,’ he tells us. ‘He says if you can get to him, he will help you, try to drive you out.’ Bill says the regime at the hotel is talking about taking the media based at the Rixos on a chaperoned trip to Zawiya to show how it is ‘liberated’ and under their control. That is extremely unlikely right now, I am thinking. There’s still fighting here and nothing has been either ‘liberated’ or captured.
Getting to Bill’s doctor contact should be easier for us, but even getting to the Square a few miles away is off limits right now and trawling around for an unknown medic just isn’t feasible when the sky is raining bullets. Besides – unknown to Bill – we are now out of the mosque and in a hospital full of people trying to help us.
Bill himself is desperately trying to get into Zawiya. He is a formidable rival too. A lot of the journalists realize this is a story which needs covering. But getting inside Zawiya, which is now firmly under siege, is at least as difficult as getting out.
Those in Tripoli, however, have the best chance of getting to the story as they are the closest to the area geographically. And Bill is generous with his information. He gets repeatedly arrested at the checkpoints trying to enter Zawiya and his equipment is repeatedly confiscated. At the same time, he continues to send snippets of vital information to us. ‘There is a string of tanks outside Zawiya on the east side,’ he texts, giving us locations and positions of the military vehicles he has seen. ‘They are from the Khamis Brigade.’ It helps us build a mental picture of what is going on outside the city in which we are trapped.
The BBC’s Arabic Service team is another crew trying to get around the government restrictions and get inside Zawiya to find out just what is going on. We hear that they too are arrested but, instead of letting the three-man team go, the Gaddafi soldiers take them to a military barracks in Tripoli, blindfold them, handcuff them and beat them. They are hit with fists, knees and rifles and then subjected to mock executions. They also witness the torture of others who are being held with them. Many of those detained, whom they see likewise handcuffed and blindfolded, are from Zawiya. The three of them: correspondent Fera Killani, cameraman Goktay Koraltan, and Chris Cobb-Smith – who is there as the security expert – are held for twenty-one hours in total. It is a frightening, horrific experience. Once out of Libya, they tell how their interrogators questioned them about us, the Sky News team. The army wants to know how we got into Zawiya, who helped us and is continuing to help us, and where we are now.
Tim tells me that John Ryley, my head of news at Sky, wants to talk. Tim has been on the telephone regularly with London, updating them on the situation and talking to them about options. I am reluctant to speak because I don’t really know how to reassure John and I know he must be very worried. We’re in peril on his watch. ‘Hi,