British Journalist Richard Butler Tells How He Survived A Brutal Iraqi Kidnapping

BLINDFOLDED, his wrists tied and his body stuffed between the seats of a minibus, clad only in a T-shirt and underpants, an AK-47 assault rifle jammed into his side, Richard Butler thought he was going to die.

It was night. No dogs barked. No cars moved. Through his woollen hood he sensed that the vehicle was no longer travelling on tarmac. “This is probably the end,” he thought. “They’re taking me out into the desert to be shot.”

Lying next to him his interpreter, also a prisoner, clung to him like a frightened child. Butler’s instinct for survival was strong and he urged his Iraqi colleague and friend to stay calm.

The bus slowed. He heard metal gates being operated and he cheered up. There would be no bullet between his shoulders this time, he thought. He would stay alive a little longer.

In war the line between life and death is gossamer thin. And this was the first of several moments when Butler feared he was about to die. Another was when his captors threatened to slit his throat.

In Iraq, being kidnapped is a lottery. Most victims are Iraqis and the motive is almost always money. Some are freed after ransoms are paid, but many are murdered.

Kidnapping is a daily occurrence that receives international attention only when a foreigner is involved. Butler, a cameraman and field producer for CBS, the American television network, had worked in Iraq for months and knew the risks.

He was the 52nd journalist to be kidnapped since April 2004, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. Twelve have been murdered. Butler’s ordeal ended happily when Iraqi forces rescued him just over a fortnight ago after two months in captivity.

Last week he spoke about his kidnapping for the first time. As he celebrated his 48th birthday on Thursday three stone lighter, with suspected TB and his eyes suffering from the after-effects of two months in total darkness, he recognised his good fortune and paid tribute to the bravery of the rescuers who had saved him in a “brilliant operation”.

He was lucky. Good intelligence had identified the house where he was being held by Shi’ite militiamen linked to Hezbollah and their Iranian backers. However, five Britons kidnapped in Baghdad nearly 12 months ago – a computer expert and four security guards protecting him – are still prisoners.

The threat of kidnapping keeps journalists on edge. Some react as if they are under house arrest in well-protected buildings in the capital. Butler was not one of those. In December he made a gutsy film in Basra, even though the city was under the malign influence of the militias. He was convinced he would obtain an exclusive interview with Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shi’ite cleric.

Everything seemed safe when he arrived in Basra to negotiate the details. Al-Sadr was in the holy city of Najaf but Butler believed access to him was best secured through his contacts in the cleric’s Mahdi Army.

He was woken by hammering on the door of his hotel room. Masked men in police uniforms brandishing AK-47 assault rifles dragged him and his interpreter away. “Keep down. Keep down,” they said as they stuffed them into a police 4×4.

“I knew it wasn’t good,” Butler recalled. “I’ve a positive outlook by nature. So I knew I needed to stay calm, not get flustered and buy time. I knew I had somehow screwed up. But I couldn’t afford to waste any time stewing on it. I was going to spend my time looking in front, not behind.”

First he was taken to a police station. Then there was the frightening minibus journey, when he thought he was being taken to his death.

Instead he was imprisoned in a house with a grand staircase. Soon he and his interpreter were on the move again. This time the guards rolled up plastic carrier bags, wedged them in their mouths and taped them up. “I thought we were going to be whacked,” Butler said. It was another false alarm. In due course a clumsy videotape of him was made and his interpreter was released, or so he thought. He was told the translator was taking the tape to Baghdad to be distributed. It never was.

One day he was told he was going to be released and was allowed to have a shower. Then at about 6pm two men came in with scarves round their heads. They lifted his hood and one of them said, “Welcome to Iraq”, and ran his fingers across his throat.

“As I was being taken out the other chap said, ‘Sorry, Richard; sorry, Richard.’ They put me in the boot of the car and said, ‘Sleep, sleep.’ Again, I thought they were going to kill me, but they took me to another house – the one that I was eventually rescued from.”

At such times of isolation, one relies on one’s inner resources for consolation. Butler distracted himself by building up a mental picture of where he was, counting his steps to the lavatory or listening to the different ringtones on his captors’ phones.

“I made a decision that any time I started to think about my family, I would change the subject mentally. I knew if I was going to be a prisoner any time at all I was not strong enough to handle it,” he recalled.

Sometimes he was allowed to eat in the same room as his captors. He met their children and their wives. Once he heard one of his jailers beating his wife, wood splintering, a woman sobbing, a disturbing experience as he lay cuffed in total darkness.

The lowest point was the three nights his captors placed him, still chained, in a hidden chamber, only 3ft wide and just big enough to stand up and lie down in. They plastered it over so that he was sealed in, in darkness. They told him it was for his own safety. “Bad people may come,” they said. “No talk. No talk.”

He slept but feared that he might suffocate and be entombed if his captors were killed. It dawned on him that his guards were in a desperate position as he could hear the Iraqi army rolling into the neighbourhood.

He had dysentery. His health was deteriorating and in the final 12 days all he had to eat was four boiled eggs and a tangerine.

Butler will never forget the day of his rescue. “It went from silence to all hell breaking loose,” he said. “The gunfire and shouting rolled through the house like a tidal wave. I didn’t have time to be scared.

“Suddenly two soldiers burst in. One was very jumpy but the other, a tall one with an olive-green bandanna on his head, lifted me up off my feet with one arm and sprayed bullets up the staircase and down the corridor as he ran outside with me.”

It was over. Butler is determined to thank properly the soldier who rescued him. To his joy, he found that his interpreter was alive. He wants to return to Iraq and is keen to empha-sise the goodness of Iraqis such as those who rescued him.

Friends and colleagues have marvelled at the way he held his own in the most frightening of circumstances. He is just delighted to be alive. Gordon Brown was among the first to phone and congratulate him after his rescue as he recovered at the British military base outside Basra, but he shrugged off the flood of congratulations last week.

“It’s the price of the job I love,” he said. “It’s my family and colleagues and friends who suffered most, not knowing if I was alive or dead.”

– By Jon Swain

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