Colonel Gaddafi’s Hat. Alex Crawford

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СКАЧАТЬ bread and butter, some juice in cartons. It sounds bland, but to us it’s a feast. A stream of doctors come in to say hello, talk, give us their views on the regime and offer advice on how to get the pictures out. Martin is getting increasingly concerned about battery power and about filling up his memory cards. Once they are full of pictures he has recorded, he will have to decide whether to record over earlier material – so erasing it for ever. The alternative is not filming anything further. But that’s no choice at all really. We aren’t there yet, though. Still, he has to be very selective now about what he films. We can’t afford to waste either battery power or space on our cards.

      The ‘rebel’ we don’t trust is in the little room a lot too. He is doing much of the talking and handing out advice on what to do with our film cards. ‘Give the cards to me and I will try to smuggle them out,’ he tells us. ‘You are going to get stopped at the checkpoints because you are Westerners. I will find a way to get them out.’ My instant reaction is: ‘No way.’ I don’t want to hand over our cards – our gold dust – to anyone and certainly not to this young guy that we don’t know, who may or may not be a rebel. But I don’t say anything and neither does Martin. We just nod and listen to what he is saying.

      We are constantly discussing what route we can use to get out. We still have no transport but we’re just investigating how, where, when – all prefaced by a very big if. It’s best to accentuate the positive. We just need some sort of plan, and planning means we have less time to think about how we don’t have a vehicle or anyone to take us anywhere just yet. Right now we are well and truly stuck in Zawiya. Everyone here is. And there’s no paddle.

      I suggest trying to go out westwards through the Tunisian border – a long and difficult journey as the government still has control of the route. There have been constant battles between the Opposition fighters and the Gaddafi troops. The rebels are having sporadic success at best in securing control of the southern border post, only to lose it to the regime days – sometimes hours – later.

      Tim is vehement that this is not a goer. He has just returned from covering the mass exodus of refugees streaming out of Libya via Tunisia. ‘It’s too difficult a journey and once we get to the border – if we get to the border – there are thousands and thousands of people trying to cross. I’m telling you, it’s a bad idea.’

      The other way is to try to make our way out through the desert scrub towards the oil refinery just outside Zawiya. There’s been fighting there too but one of the doctors says he has a house nearby that we can stay in. No, no, I’m thinking, surely that area is going to be crawling with military, and even if we make it there, then what?

      What about heading east towards Tripoli? It’s the shortest route and there is an airport, but Plan C is also fraught with problems. For a start there’s the headquarters of the Khamis Brigade to negotiate, the most notorious wing of the Libyan military regime. The 32nd Brigade is colloquially named after Gaddafi’s favoured son and the Colonel has made sure it has been well funded over the years. Its barracks are just outside Zawiya on the road to Tripoli. The brigade is feared throughout Libya for its ferocity and interrogation methods.

      We’re also worried that the regime and its minders at the Rixos Hotel will be on the lookout for us. They know by now that there are three foreign journalists in Zawiya and they won’t like what we have to say about what’s being going on inside the city. They are already mounting a campaign of denial about my telephone reporting, saying it is lies and now out of date. But we have the first independent evidence that Gaddafi is attacking unarmed civilians. The regime knows it and will want to suppress it.

      I am getting lots of texts now. A number of people and several news teams are urgently trying to get us out, help us or at the very least offer some moral support. The experienced journalists inside and outside Sky News realize we are in a desperately difficult position. Sky’s chief correspondent, Stuart Ramsay, who is a veteran of many wars and has been on the receiving end of attacks from a multitude of vicious military regimes, probably 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. СКАЧАТЬ