 really in a terrible place. It became sort of so so difficult and he had a little pocket crown and a short while later the guy comes back and takes that. That told me that he's not my love. Asad, you're originally from Pakistan or at least your family? Yes, I was born in Pakistan and we moved here in the 60s. Wow, do you obviously through your work you've spent a lot of time in the Middle East? Do you get to go to Pakistan often? Well, yes I did. I moved to Pakistan to be closer to my parents. So I was doing a lot of, would you believe I was getting more work there from the west than I do here in the center. I was there on the ground with the experience and you know, I think like panorama for example, you know, it's something that my father used to say, watch panorama, it's good for you. And who'd think that one guy would direct one? I'm one of the, you know, I guess one of the best ones. So those things kind of came to me because I made connections, had a lot of access. And so, you know, it was sort of handy in that sense that I could open doors for people through my connections in the army. It's just was amazing. Have you been in the army yourself? No, no, no, it's not something I would do. No, I don't blame you. I had the wonderful experience of driving through your country on the way to India. Really? And then driving back through on the way home. I drove a bus to India once from Norway. Oh, thank you. We were volunteer workers. We were just writing articles about people that live in different communities, I suppose, and we got more towards India in impoverished communities. But the hospitality we experienced in Pakistan was incredible. And the scenery, the landscape is just amazing. And it's also incredibly hot. Yes, it is. But if you got to go to the northern areas, Yes, am I right in thinking as sad? As far as rebel action goes, it gets more dangerous in the north, is it? No. When we talk about the north, we're talking about a different, it's like where the Hindu ghost, Karakorans and Himalayas meet. Whereas when we talk about, I think people get mistaken because there's south of Ziri star and north of Ziri star in the tribal areas. And people when we talk about northern areas, I think they tend to associate with north Ziri star. Whereas in fact, the northern areas are in like paradise. And it is said that the Pakistan is the second most beautiful in the world, beautiful country in the world after Switzerland, where I think having been everywhere in Pakistan, because I made a film, the tourism board, spectacular, because everything is on a grand scale, the mountains. Whereas in Switzerland, there are much, you know, like smaller, even the sister peaks in Pakistan don't have a name. Whereas we go for the day there for just to go off to Murray, which I'm sure you heard this is twice the height of Ben Nives. Just for the day you just go there. Yes, trekking is popular in that part of the world. Yes. And also, I think they grow a lot of this stuff, don't they up there? Not as much anymore, it's more in Afghanistan. And in fact, it's with the full blessing of the US and the CIA, you know. Are we talking about the opium now or the weed? Opium, the weed goes wild, nobody goes it. You can smell it around this time of year, you could go out and smell it. And of course, I am not used to it. Yes, it's so interesting that you say, that's a very honest statement. I mean, everybody, well, maybe they don't know, but the CIA control the drug trade the world over. Yes. I think people think the CIA is some sort of, you know, they protect people. But the more we're learning about the world, it seems all the people you're told are the good guys. They're actually the bad guys. And the people you're told are the bad guys are actually the better ones. Yes. Yes. So how did you start working for as a journalist? Well, I think I fell into it because really, my interest lies in the future of the drama. And of course, I got to spy on the system directly. And in fact, I directed some second year to work on some film because, you know, sometimes the budget is so low that we don't have second year. And we just say, oh, you will do. I was going to storyboard and I looked up and shot stuff. But it's sometimes some projects just fall into your lap. And you know, if you don't do it, somebody else will. And I met this guy who wanted to, you know, the martial arts specialist. And he wanted to make Bruce Lee kind of film. And I said, I'm not interested in those. It's all about fighting swords, you know. But there was another chap next to him who was silly next to him. And I said, well, so what do you do? He said, well, I tracked down girls who've gone away from home or boys for that matter, because they've been pressured into marrying somebody they don't want to. And I tracked them down because the police won't do it because they're a very keen. And I thought, wow, what a great idea. So I, as he was leaving, I was outside on the pavement quickly jotting down the notes for a documentary. And which I sent to a friend of mine and he managed to raise the money within the week. And so I followed him all over England. And when the film came out, it was titled The Bounty Hunter. And there was a lot of controversial, you know, like things, a lot of them had discussed it. There was a Southall Black Sisters. They were down from a demonstration. So it was all kind of things. But I fell into that because I, you know, like when they're directing, okay, I'll do even this small job just so that I can sort of tell the story myself. So it kind of came to me then me go after it as it were. And your, the story of your kidnapping is just, it's just beyond horrific. It must have been one of the most, well, the most frightening experience I think that a human being can be put through. Yes, I think, especially when for no reason you're lifted out of your environment that you used to put into something which is totally against your system. And to adjust to that is not easy. Or you have to kind of be very strong in mentally to have the standard to take everything that comes towards you. But if you don't, you're going to die. Yeah, we'll come on to that because I'm interested to learn what mental techniques you had to employ to keep sane. But you were, so you were in North Waziristan. Yes, yes. You're making a documentary. Yes. Is this the Diffusing Bombs documentary? Diffusing human bombs was much more controlled in the sense that I started working with human bombs. The idea of the story was to film it over a long period of time. It was about the rehabilitation of boys who had been trained to carry out suicide bombing. However, for some reason they didn't. I'm caught by the army and they thought these guys are too young to jail. So we should actually rehabilitate them into jobs that they might do like being an electrician or a plumber. You know, those kind of traits. So I was, and the idea was that, you know, you've got to see them actually progress. And I started filming sometime in December of 2009 and followed them around. And then in March, of course, I was taking hostage. So that film stopped there. And one of my biggest worries was, I hope they don't employ someone else to finish the film because I want to do it. And of course, that's me thinking that I'll be released any day once they find out who I really am. Because all the time I thought I was captured by eyesight, you see, the Pakistan Security Agency. Yes, that's Pakistan's security services. I think it's intelligence or something. Yes, they had a big part to play in the Afghanistan wars, haven't they? Yes, yes. They worked closely with the Americans against the Russians, the CIA supporting the Mujahideen against the Russians. Yes. Yeah, okay. And so you were up there on making a separate film? Yes, and what it was, it wasn't through the army. It was just totally separate. Therefore, I didn't have any army protection. I knew I was going out in dangerous territory. And it would have been a scoop had we got it. But it was the stories incredibly very complex in the Western world. Khalid Hwaja, who is like the go-to person, was the go-to person in Pakistan for anybody who wanted to submit. In fact, Daniel Pearl met him to get access to this guy called Bir Meisha Gilani in Lahore. And Khalid Hwaja said, go back, you're not going to have access. He doesn't give him to you. He persisted and somehow he was entrapped in a restaurant in Karachi. In fact, I worked on the film, The Journalist and the Jihadi, the story of Daniel Pearl, and we enacted all those scenes where he was picked up and then taken to the house, you know, outskirts of Karachi. And so, and Khalid Hwaja was a midi player. He was the first to know of Daniel Pearl, who was a rival in Pakistan, talked to him, and the first person to be told that he's now being killed. So, everybody used to go to him for access to places. But he was known to me, especially my brother, because they had dealings, because my brother's a lawyer up there. And so, I asked him, you know, I said, look, this is where we're going to go. Can you give us access? And he was all willing, yes, let's do it. But unbeknown to me, he had his own agenda. So, when we set off, I mean, it was horrible, because I used to get these premonitions all the time. Something's bad is going to happen. But I suppose, you know, you just think, oh, stupid thoughts, you know, blow them off. However, when I was leaving, I was married at the time. I said to my wife, if I don't come back, please forgive me. And my mother and father standing in the drive, they don't want me to go. And I didn't want to go. But so, we left and we en route. Certain things were happening, which I was most uncomfortable about. And then we got a text message. I said to Khalid, why don't you please leave your phones at home, because you might be trapped. So, he did. So, here we are, quite far away from home. And we get a text saying, don't go journalist life in danger. I showed him, you know, he came into my his son. It had gone to his phone. And his son at home read it to me. And I said, look, this is the case. And he said, okay, let's go back. And as we're heading back, it was like, Islamabad to the right. And the town called Kohat to the left. It was a fork in the road, just arriving there. He said, look, I can make some phone calls and pull some strings and then we can go back. I said, no, no, no, we've got to go home. I've told everybody we were about in the mission. And we have to go home. My mom was with us. You know, like, I hadn't asked him to come and he was with us. And he said, we've been exposed. We should go home. But Khalid, I wouldn't listen. I kind of capitulated because he was a good friend of my brothers. And I knew that if I made a song and dance about not going, he would complain to him. So I don't respect for my brother. I thought, well, just keep quiet. It's four days. And so the night we stayed at a politician's house that he knew, which we later believe that he had something to do with it. But I don't know, there's no proof. And so the next morning, we go back to this, the last town in Pakistan is called Bandu. And there, from there onwards, you'll do the tribal areas and not really under control of Pakistan. You see, yeah, the local farms don't work. You have, you're at the mercy of the locals really, if they like it, great, if they don't, they're not interested in any excuses, because they think everybody from outside is an enemy of the Americans. Is the enemy of Pakistan because they're on the side of Americans. In fact, my brother was telling me a story. He found a business card of an American guy in a local's position. He killed him for being an American spy. Yeah, life can be very cheap in these parts of the world. People will take 50 rupees to kill someone, because there's no law. They know that nobody's going to come after them. Yeah, we should point out life is just as cheap in Britain. It's just it's hidden under the carpet. But where we're talking about, it's open, which is probably in a way better, because at least you know who you're dealing with and where you are. So I'm just going to clarify for our friends at home. So you're with your driver, Rastam Khan? He actually, I don't know why he's been reported as my driver. He's my assistant, you know, like to lift heavy things. He's a strong guy. Okay, he could drive. We, we, I think we hired a car that took us to a spy's burn wall. And from there, we got into a standard minibus. And they dropped us off at another place. But you see, because the original guide wasn't answering at all. It didn't make sense that somebody who Khalid Hwadia knew would not answer the phone. Then it's all of a sudden this young guy appears out of nowhere for me, his name was Saddam. And he's our guide. And so we went to a place called, I think it was called Mir Ali. In the minibus. But on the journey in the minibus, he stopped somewhere, went into a house, maybe made a phone call, I don't know. Probably telling some people that we're on our way. So we got off and because the route for the minibus was in a different direction, and we were going like this way. And these guides said, okay, I'm going to hire a car to walk back down the hill to get a car. And we were standing, another car comes out of the bushes, windows black, everything black. And they went just a small area for the way we mirror for them to see blacks. And the guys looking at us and I noticed him. I don't think anybody in my team noticed. And I don't saw them. That's why they seem to be looking at us. Then they drove on the road and then back into the bushes again and vanished. And do we think this is Taliban or who do we think this could be? We believe it was a faction of two groups of Taliban. One was, I think, Lashkari, Jungui and there's another one. There were actually Taliban people who made this little group, which is called Asian Tigers. And I believe they were just there for this mission. Because we've not heard of them since. We didn't hear of them before. So this was an operation which I'll reveal later why I think it was an operation. So as they disappeared into the bushes and again, I thought this doesn't look good. And consequently, I mean, nobody else noticed. Again, it seemed that all these things were coming to me, these sort of premonitions or the signs of danger. Something not quite right. And when Saddam brought the car, they were very tightly packed in it. And I thought at this point, I should start an interview with Khalid Farga, while they're driving, so being sure that the country signed up around us and that we in the wilderness. And in fact, that place had been bombed for 100 years. It started off by the British and was continuing with the drones and everything else. So it was a long history of war. And so I thought this would be a good place for him to start telling me about this place and how it's going on. Because and I had, I'm sitting in the front seat looking back at him. So I had no idea what's going on behind me. And all of a sudden gunshots. And that then put his foot down, so that I just stopped the car. And they received these guys. Firstly, they were pretending to be broken down and fixing a car, but they all had hoods on. And they came to my car and said, get out. The door wouldn't work. I said, come get out. And I'm confused as to what is going on? Why is this happened? Is this some kind of a joke? And the original driver of the high car ran him. And he shot him. And so I left him there. And then they asked me, I got out of the car, left my equipment on the seat. Of course, I was worried about that because these are my tools of my trade and I need them. And I saw them with Khalid Hwaja, he's kneeling down and they kind of hit him. And then Colonel Imam said, look, I'm your friend, you know, because he was like the father of the Mujahidin, which later began Taliban as you were. And they hit him too. I thought, oh, this sounds bad. And in fact, a little bit earlier, Colonel Imam says, I should have brought my pistol. And Khalid Hwaja said, well, if we get somebody asks where on missionary work, and these guys are filming us. And I thought, my God, they talk about this now. Now that we're in no man's land. What on earth is going on? And from that moment on, I thought, this is going to be a roller coaster ride for me. And they put a, you know, because I was an outsider. So I felt more in danger as you were. And it's like they say, you know, American and Israeli passports are the most dangerous to have in the world. I was there and British passport everywhere. So I was, I felt worried that this is not going to be good. So they, what they did was they handcuffed us very tightly in the back like this, very, very tight. So I had a scar to sugar it at myself. And I had no idea that when you struggle with the handcuffs, they actually get tighter. I had no idea. And Rustam, who was much stronger than me, you know, he's to pull one of those wooden, very heavy wooden carts, laden with lots of stuff. And, you know, he was a strong man. He started to cry because the handcuffs were so tight. So they squeezed us in this car, me and Rustam together in the backseat, and then sat down on my left and there's another one of these captors to his right. So there was no way we could escape from the car. And then as soon as we got in the car around the radio to the other people, or what's going on, so they had good communication. And Saddam is kind of pretending to cry. Well, this isn't right. He's pretending. And you have to still make it to believe that he's a victim. I was suspect about that. Colonel Imam, he put into the back. So he, you know, I was very uncomfortable for him. And you know, these guys, the ones, the one or two that didn't have their mask on, or who should I say, very young. I mean, when I say young, I mean, like late teens or early 20s. And so we seemed a bit trying forever and ever. And they got a puncture somewhere and had to stop forever and get a spare tire. And all this time they're not luckily the car. We jack it up and we're still sitting in the car when it's getting hot. And then once we take off again, I heard, we heard certain things you heard when I heard a horse developing. And they talked to themselves and said, these are the horses that the Taliban use for training. And then later they said, this is the way to host SPALP, which is the border town in Afghanistan. And so I'm thinking they're taking me to Afghanistan. So I mean, there's obviously a lot of deduction I made based on the way they, they never told me who they were. So I made the assumption or it was kind of, how can I say encouraged, you know, because this, when we got to this place at night, like, I could feel that they, because I mean, they're blindfolded. I could feel that the streets are very tight. And so certain smells like somebody's cooking, got waft. So I thought we're kind of in an area where there's people living. And so they took us out into a house which was like a mud hut house. And the funny thing is that we were obviously still blindfolded, but you can smell it's a mud hut house. And they asked us to identify ourselves. And then somebody came close to me and copped his gun. And I thought, oh my God, that's my turn. And you know, like, then he just laughed, you know, and then they accused of being Indian spies. Working for that time, the Indian brandishing was what it seemed, you know, for the Indian anyway. And I said, no, no, we're not doing anything, we're just making sure. And that led to, well, then, you know, they emptied my pockets, everything. I thought, oh no, they took my watch, which was given to me by my wife at the time. Everything except I said, you know, and they started to look at my pockets. And they came across my lip balm. I said, no, please, can I keep that? You know, I need that. Don't take this. So they allowed me to have that. So then they said, we're going to take your blindfold off and do not make any sudden moves. I said, no problem. And we saw that I started a look out and they were in the room. It's as if, you know, it was decorated. And one part on the wall, they had a huge poster of Colgate's toothpaste, except it was, I think it was the car that would be cut into individual cartons for the toothpaste, but they have a huge print out of it. And that to them was a decoration, plus some other things. I think, so I guess maybe a wedding is taking place here, you see. And it just was a horrible place. And then they said, because we'd be thirsty, we were hungry, and they brought some food. And it was, I said, I don't eat meat. And then they brought some water in like chalice type of thing, you know, and it tasted or smelled of petron. And that's not good. So then they thought, okay, he discussed clearly not eating. So they brought me a carton of milk and some biscuits, which I shared with Khalid Khwaja. And I thought, this is just not going to be good for me. And then they took everybody out. Currently, my mom was handcuffed and shackled and let out a little, which, you know, really worried me. Because I felt that he, if they're doing that to him, what chance do I got? And then they let everybody out one by one. And Rustam was thrown into a hole in the ground. And he saw a snake. So started to shout and go on. Then I heard some gunfire, bang, bang. I thought, oh my God, I've killed Rustam. It was only in the morning I found out about the snake and the shot the snake. And Rustam was okay. But he said, he had a terrible night. I said, so did I. Because when I looked up in the ceiling, there was these geckos. I hate any creepycrawlers and anything like that. Very much OCD. And I thought, if they fell on me, I will panic big time. I don't know. I'm literally afraid of them. I don't mind admitting to that. You know, all these kinds of things I just don't go for. So a complete new guy came in and he said, my name is Krishan Mal. Which is an Indian name. And I work for the Indian Embassy. And any stragglers we find here, we return them to their embassies so they can be evaporated. So, okay, so there's some official them here. Which led me to believe that maybe I have been taken as a terrorist and I've been taken by eyesight. So I just have to prove to them who I am. That's it. So the next day I'm interrogated and accused of being a spy. And I said, no, I'm not a spy. I mean, then I started saying all the wrong things. Look, I'm a very good friend of the Pakistan Army. I know this person and that person. You can go and check me out from them. And all these are the things that they don't want to hear. Oh, and they don't tell me who they are. You see, all the time I'm thinking, okay, so a few days time they'll have checked me and I'll be able to go home. And so I waited, I mean, I still denied myself any of their food. I said the dirty people, I don't eat their food. So they'll give me a cup of milk and biscuits. And that's what I've lived over the first month, thinking that when I go home, I'll have my mom's cooking. You know, because I just can't eat this stuff that they make. They're not really clean. And all that's going on. And I could hear others being interrogated. I then I realized that we're all in the same compound. And I kind of visualized how it is. And I think it was like a L shape. You see, because the sound I could hear was from my right. So I thought maybe in the next they've got Khalid Qawaja and maybe coming home further down, but they separate you so that you can't have the same story. I think that's the three. So let me say first that all of these guys were trained to take hostages. They weren't just anybody. They knew exactly what to do because they were trained. And so, you know, like Krishna again, this is very much against Khalid Qawaja, you see. And also they hated Khalid Qawaja. And I just couldn't work out what the problem was. So Rustam actually got caught up in something where he was an innocent party. And he was, of course. He understood their language. He was from the kind of tribe that lived in the city. And so they left him alone in the sense that if a full person was beaten, then they beat his own and he'd be beaten too. But on the whole, they kind of were easier on him. And I said, well, you know, he's got nothing to do with it. Why don't we let him go? And they said, no, we don't do that. And so what I realized was that it's going to, for me, I think it was the most difficult for me because I haven't spent that much time in Pakistan. I didn't grow up there. So all the rudimentary things I had to put up with were very difficult for me. For example, mosquitos. I mean, they gave me a little, like a cot kind of thing on the floor with a net. And I find some creepy crawlers inside. I panic. I look at the pillow and it's almost black. And I thought, how can I live here? And it was just my biggest worry was my mom. She'll be worried. And I always call her wherever I am all the time. And if I don't call home, it's going to be, she's going to be worried. So the next morning I said to them, look, we need my mother to know that I'm with you. So she doesn't worry. And you know, they're talking about what is it? Don't we have mothers? I don't know. I see. And so I designed myself to the fact that for a while, certainly my family would assume that we don't have mobile phone contacts. Therefore, I can't contact them. And then they took me for an interrogation and asking me where you're from, what you've done. But I told them the truth. Absolute truth. I'm so materialized here to do this. How do you know how to do it, how do you know how to do it, mom? And I said, I've never met my mom before. This was the first time when I didn't know that he was coming with us. So when the interrogation was over, I mean, it wasn't like, you know, simple questions. And the first thing was accusing me of a surprise. And I said, no, I'm not a spy. What happened then was they're shifting me to another room, which was supposed to be my own. And they was kind of frightened with a mud hut again. But there was an outcourt on the side at the toilet. I said, I'm not using this. What would laugh when I said this? They said, we're in a situation which is beyond anybody's imagination. And you're still trying to make a choice. I don't want to do this. So I said, I'm not going to use this. I don't get what you say. And they said, okay. And then brought me, you know, all those gallons of engine oil cut between this. And when I used to say to them, can you now take this out? They would just teach me a lesson. They would take the time. So I had to live with what I would call loud L-A-N-T, stale pee. To go out for other things, you know, they just laid me out. I think in that place, I had watched myself once with so many people and frightened to go into this alcove debate because it was so... I'm very claustrophobic. And so to pass my time in this little room, I covered all the nails that had been knocked into the wall. Then it had a kind of attached roof and I used to count all the logs this way, that way, everything like that. And so then I would count all the little things on the floor to keep my mind busy. And then if I couldn't sleep, I used to think, okay, let me see how many U.S. states I can name the thing. And then I said, okay, how many countries in the world and start naming them until I kind of fell asleep. And the next day, I would do the same thing again. And also the other thing I used to do was, because like almost it was like my days have become nights, nights have become days. So I used to hold a trial every night in which there was Musharraf, Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and I was the judge. And every night I would try them, punish them and start again the following day. And nothing would count in states and countries and capitals and things like that to keep my mind busy. And then all the different kind of foods I could think of, flowers, I had to keep my mind busy. So it was important for me to do that for my own sanity I felt. Did you do Cheney and Rumsfeld while you were at it? Did you try in your court Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld? No, I didn't actually, because I thought they were small fish compared to you know, the guy who was given the orders and the guy in Pakistan would associate it with them to fight in the war in terror. And that face of Condoleezza Rice, she's so, oh I mean just kind of a strict headmistress type of woman. And I disliked it. And in fact I saw Bush and her when I was working for the government when they came to Pakistan and I looked at her and I thought you are an awful woman. And of course you know this thing about we rule the world. In fact I've often said to people, America's left to be the only superpower in the world because Pakistan and Afghanistan helped them. If it wasn't for those countries, they wouldn't win. Or in the earlier version of the same story we were in Kuwaita and from there we were smuggling to Afghanistan at night to interview a Taliban leader. And one of the questions I saw, what did you think of America as the only superpower in the world? He said, what superpower? Mexico is what a superpower? God is a superpower. Exactly. Yeah. So I mean this is a popular Taliban commander and very down to earth, he said look we don't want to kill anybody. We just want them to leave our land, leave us alone. Sad, can you continue your story? I shouldn't have interrupted you. It's just fascinating. So you're counting, you're passing the time by counting things. How did you deal with the fear? Oh well it was difficult. I mean with the fear was kind of because it was, you didn't know what's going to happen next. So I said look behind I can read and they brought me a book which was very interesting in fact it was all about some stories of religion and so I started reading this very cheap book and some great stories in it because there was one of the Prophet Muhammad before he had become a prophet and because he got a prophet at the age of 40. So here he is growing this colleague Abu Bakr and I think they come into Syria and he sat on the way, he sat down under a tree and his colleague went to a local house to get some water for him and his friar opens the door and says who's that man sitting under the tree and he said it's Muhammad and he said well that man would be a prophet one day because the last person to sit under this tree was Jesus you see. So there was such fascinating story in this book. So one night I'm reading a book and I hear you know like when you get punched in reality the sounds are very different what they show in the film because in the film they wear gloves boxing gloves and they get a carcass of you know cow or something and they put it on a table in the punch and they record those sounds as punches to people which of course is not the case so these are very dull outside my room and then two fire gunfire sticks and then Krishna rushes into my room like with eyes sort of almost to pop from his eye sockets and he looked at me and said do you want to see some real human blood and at that time the book I was reading the spell out of my hands you know I don't know I don't want to see any but it was just something that we can't relate to in everyday life you know these things these atrocities you just don't you read about them but you don't really think you're going to be close to them and you know it's very very difficult I said my goodness me life has just been taken right outside me like four or five feet away from me and how awful is that and of course that made me think well a time may come when they may do the same to me you see so you know like a few days later I knock on my door and all these people came and they suffer through my back and found my because by now I had to be it they found my razor and said sit on this chair I mean okay it's a silent chair but I have no idea what they're going to do and then they start to shave my beard and I felt awful because it's not something I would you know it's like always like being raped because they're doing this without my consent and I could have done it myself if I don't really need to do this so having done that what they did was to hang a dirty kind of sheet in the background to film me my first video so having done that they sit me down and this is terrible you know like these big guys coming one is you know like wearing like a clothes like a robe that's made out of hessian and then you go hoots on I can't see who they are and so one of the leader walks in and his name was Sabir Masood and he looks at all those empty milk cartons and I said he said I see you like milk and I said there's nothing much here for me to eat and then he said well our elders have given you the death sentence for being a spy and of course my mouth went dry and I said can I have a glass of water please and so they gave me one from their clay kind of container which was in a blue plastic glass if I can use the word and it was quite dirty but right now I needed that drink and it was so cold and nice and I said I need another so they gave me another one and they said look we will take either it's dead or 10 million dollars I thought no they are going to pay 10 million dollars for me and then you know I have to accept that and so having put up this sheet kind of was once a white sheet like more like gray and they said like that we want you to make a statement on video and cry if you can it's not place to cry right now for me so I they told me what to say more or less so I looked it down and then read it because I can't memorize this and that was the first my first video which was they used my tripod and put a little tiny camera like a palm cord on it because the plate that screws under the camera was still screwed to my camera and they didn't know that that they need that plate to actually fit the camera into the tripod so I did my best still thinking that I'm with the eyesight and they don't believe me so it's up to me to prove to them and I'm straightforward clean I haven't done anything wrong and I want to just clear my name and my team's name so I made this statement I'm still not sure who these people are so I started to write because Krishna used the word officer our officers so I thought okay he so there's be somebody from guys out there and if they find out about me then they let me know you see so I started to write to whoever this officer would be and I wrote in capitals because my writing is terrible and they wouldn't ever read it this is who I am this is where I'm from this is where I'm doing and I have nothing to do with terrorism at all and I don't know what they did with that but I kept a diary of every all the happenings and one day Krishna now found it tore it to pieces slapped me around and I thought that was just terrible because my diary was packed with information which I probably wouldn't be able to recall in every detail that I had put down so that was that I thought okay let's just face up to it from then on I kind of lost track of time because you jump down in my diary day time and all that kind of stuff so you know after a while you just don't know because no watch no radio nothing to tell you what's going on in the world and even then they did a video of me with a newspaper on my chest as a proof of life thing and I wasn't allowed to look down to see the newspaper so again I had no idea what day it is or what they're doing so I accepted that it's okay but what in the statement this they kind of said what I mean what it would have said was you know like I'm a British citizen but they said English citizen and I said it exactly the way they written it because so people outside know that's not me talking it's their words you see because you can't hide many kind of words into your statement because they'd know what I'm trying to do and I mean how I know more score that would be great to just blink and pass on a different kind of message but I had no idea and so when you know this I don't know where there was a message you were going and everything else and on another occasion these guys came into my room they walked them hoods and so I could see them and you know they're talking to me and pretty kind of down to us and then saying you'll see this as an adventure for yourself okay and they said well when the time comes you know somebody's going to take you from here like they were going to hinting you because I said my brother was like my next of kin and they said oh he'll come and take you and I said will you release me before the mango season because I love mangoes you know and I think that we just went to one area out of the other however later on when they were serving mangoes they said I can't have any you know they'd give then to the team loudly any flesh on them but said I can't have any and then the guy who said we're not eating them I said no you better because they'll beat you and they said why don't you have one well they smelled on me and then they'll beat me so I don't let's just do play the game the way they want us to so that you know I just felt it's going on and on and on and there seems to be no end to it and I was running out of things to think about it now it doesn't work you know like new things you know like even I counted all the relatives I had that were dead and gone that were alive today you know you do everything you know going to back to school and naming all my teachers you know anything I could think of that I could probably do to keep my mind busy because I couldn't always read because I couldn't concentrate you know like no whatever I was reading wasn't going into my head so it was very very difficult to just you know sit there all day and I had handcuffs with a chain going down to my ankles so I shackled the handcuffs so sleeping are very difficult and I only sat there and said to myself this is going to be a long haul when I use them in my book that I had better downgrade some of my phobias because I need to survive this one so having made that decision I started to take their food and because I said you know I can't allow myself to this go because I was already very weak and you know things that I enjoy very much like I like like this in the summer and I'm up to three four showers a day cold that's something that I wasn't able to do and I thought you know it's just so difficult and I never expected myself to be in a situation where I'd be like this however somehow word got I think it was like the resource telling me that he was still keeping in touch with the army and one guy said oh yeah yeah he's been well looked after I thought where on earth did they get back from and if I'm well looked after clearly they would know where I am why don't they try to get me out of there so there was all kind of news going around which wasn't true because when I got out and I learned a lot more and I thought not only was you know like the army not doing anything the police well they don't know the mistakes in that the media had been rather than you would think they would stick together with the other journalists to help protect them they were the opposite they were printing lots and lots of eyes and that gave a lot of people false hope you see and in that time they were in touch with well one day they came to me and said what's your email address and I thought oh this is going to be bad because I have information my communication with the army and that and I don't want to really know that so they took my email address and at the time my my password was numbers and because I'm all that stressed and everything I forgot my password but so he came back the next day really mad at me in your passport he said not password and it was Christian again you know he but sometimes he played the good guy or you know the good guy bad cop he would play that role with me and he so I mean this is why I say that they were trained so then my money is to remember the password and what they did was and I only discovered this once I was released because one of the first things I wanted to do was to secure my email and so I went into the sent mail and what they done is they forwarded emails of my to Hamid Mir the guy who works at Geo news and he was made aware of what our purpose was out there because then there's a long telephone call between Usman Punjabi one of the kidnappers and Hamid Mir that's how he recorded in which Hamid Mir tends to show a lot of animosity towards Khalid Hwaja and he has been accused of orchestrating his murder which he denies by saying this is synthesized voices somebody else it's not me which I don't believe because the proof is he was in touch with them he's got me my emails and these are before Khalid Hwaja's murder you see and thankfully the case has restarted in Pakistan recently so the story has come back to life and this time they think that Hamid Mir put the possibility and done for I hope he is because he's not a good journalist and he does play dirty and I was certain kind of by one of his colleagues that if I print anything in the newspaper or in my book he will sue me so but if solid proof like an email which shows that my email has been sent to him and which would have been in the book a picture of that would have been in the book that can't lie I mean that's a fact and whether he was guilty or not the email is there you see so I hope it helps to in the case because Khalid Hwaja's wife wouldn't testify in court said God will take God will avenge her and that's why the case didn't go any further but this time I'm told the eyesight involved in prosecuting him and taking care of him but his other brother has been also a journalist who has been arrested for order so his old cases were having uh he write what he want to offer him to write them so that was they were like I was still in the first place where I was in that mud hut and one night I heard so many what we call RPGs or people were like grenades, bullets, lines it was and I was looking up any minute now I thought my roof would cave in they were so much going on and the next day they moved so the next day they took me out of my room blindfolded and stood me in the middle of there but I kind of worked out would be forecourt and I'm standing there standing there I think maybe they don't understand what I mean like I can hear people moving around me but I don't know what's going on then all of a sudden you know those uh bookers that you see a lot of Afghani women yeah came and dropped one of those in my head and it seemed like it was a small one like it's for young girl like a smell cheat for perfume on that and so here I am stood in the middle nowhere with this garment on that which John Simpson said he wore and he felt invisible when he was in Afghanistan and so with that they after a while led me out to Veto and they all pecked in tightly and they start to drive and I hear some splashes so it had drained and then they stopped somewhere and said you know we need to do this sort of quickly because people are watching us and I thought okay so another clue fell into my head that if they were who they I thought they are they wouldn't have any reason to hide you pause you pause it yeah and hit my mom so while I'm in this mud hut one day kitchen girl comes in and says some people are going to come and see you and you better tell the truth so he blindfolded me and put me in a corner and you know and sit there the wall is cold this mud hut very thick and then in came these people and I could see some stuff being set up so I'm assuming it was a camera tripod or other stuff and I hear several voices which I hadn't heard before so they started to interview me and there's one voice that I felt was not from Pakistan possibly India you know it just didn't sound local and so they started asking me a question they wanted to know about the you know like and again I was sitting here checking me out where is the office of the ISI in Islamabad and I said I can't think of the address but I know I can picture it then they said do you really like to have a computer to see I said no then I remembered that it was and I said it's there and that then I said look I'm a filmmaker I have nothing to do with spying terrorism and I said like right now I'm a film on kids who are brainwashed to do you know suicide bombing and their rehabilitation and the idea is to make it positive so positively that the army is doing something for people and and they said well do you think these people would these kids could have a relapse you know and I said well they could but and you know like he's they were trying to guide me to like they said like the Pakistani army did in 1971 where they tried grenades to themselves and roll under tanks and that's where it hit me 1971 1971 was the war between you know the independence of east Pakistan to Bangladesh and I thought every Pakistani knows it was 1965 an Indian tank for entering the war where people roll under soldiers go under the tanks and bombs to blow up the bombs the tanks and this everybody knows and they don't and that is when I realized I'm in the wrong way and the wrong place with the wrong people and I'm in trouble and it's like I just got I can't see the fear because I'm blindfolded but I know now I mean big big big trouble because now I realize who I'm with you see they're not ISI because they would have known 1965 I think it's either 5th or 6th of September which now they celebrate as I think it's celebrated as defense day you see and and I'm scared I thought now I told them everything they need to know like as the mafia would say I sound like a canary and now they're gonna get me so when the interview was over Prishnan came up to me and said you have done well now we're going to take you to the American compound where you can have a good time and watch satellite TV and all that kind of stuff okay I don't know why can't I just go home and he said well no we want you to have a good time so when they drove me with that burka on driving me to this place which is brick melt and he's saying better there's wires wires and you better walk to you know step over them and that's what you know it's okay we tried it when we got in and in one room they put me to one room and get Hali Hwaja into with me and I hear a voice finger on the lips oh my god we're in a terrible place so I'm just sitting with blindfolded and all of a sudden I hear this kind of punch you know when you punch your back under the cover whole kind of sound and it was Hali Hwaja they punched and say I said what's that for he said a finger on the lips and again I thought I can't recognize this voice so we're in big trouble here and then when we find the blindfold to take it off I realized it was Krishna you see and all that time trying to frighten us and then he said look we have a seller downstairs where we have icebox it's a cold room a few mess around with us we go down there without clothes so now they told us something else and the windows I saw had like metal sheets on them so you couldn't look out but they were like another one you know because they they couldn't get any air coming in and out so it became sort of so so difficult because at night the room turned the lights off so you were sleeping in this you couldn't really sleep properly with the lights off and then they started to say you know like well Hali Hwaja said to me very quietly don't trust anyone and I was kind of mad at him thought you'd give me the impression you knew everything like your contacts and instead I'm being put through this and because they said that they were microphones in the room they did not talk so I said to be quiet but I wasn't happy with what had happened because you know he'd been too confident and this is where it brought us and I didn't even want to come in the end you see we decided that's it we're not going and so I was beginning to read that the text that was sent had obviously some truth in it and lots of other things so Hali Hwaja was living for two nights and we didn't say a word to one another for fear that there's these microphones in the room and they'll hear us and if we do then we'll be sent down to the cold room and also I was very angry that you know because he brought me this situation and the only thing I would do is shout and bullet him and then they'll punish me so I thought if I keep it cool just ride it through and two days later they'd let him out of the room took him away and that's the last isolation and I think it was on the end of April the last day of April the next two days and it seems as if they took him to the you know having a shower took him to for Friday prayers after the prayers took him by a little stream and shock him and accused him of being an American agent this is not true and these are can be in like when you listen to that phone call of Hamid Mir which is probably on YouTube and he talks about CIA so they took it as oh and he's an agent to kill him I had no idea they didn't tell us they didn't tell me anything about that and they just sort of you know it was now me and Rustam were in the same room Rustam was brought to my room and Kishin was opened a black case of what I would call torture for me like prayers and stuff and he actually got the pliers he put them on his nail I said no and it jumped on him and he stood back and laughed and I thought wow stupid to do that and and Rustam was blindfolded at this time and he didn't try to do this to him okay so I came back to reality and these people just playing mind games and there's another guy which I said earlier was sat next to Rustam in the car when they first picked us up his name was Nomad and he he was you know like I later learned that he'd been in gone time and he sort of came in the room and then he just came out you know his bullets everywhere and said pick and pick them up which we did and he said there's one missing I said have a look oh you may have hidden this you know you got one of my birds and I said you don't have it you see and so that was another deal then I looked started seeing on the floor somebody made a key art of paper clip for the handcuffs I thought clearly when are the first ones here these guys have a habit of catching people so just to stay on the right side of things when Krishna came in I said look I found this on the floor because if he found it he might accuse me of making it to escape or if I hid it and they found it same thing and be you know you get beaten up big time I mean it's really it's all about if you beat one person a bit more and they enjoyed that so it became tougher for me because I was getting very tired of this repetitive style where I'm not I don't have a don't have really access to daylight and we have to survive in this room now I got lost him but he was never went to school he's not a guy you can talk to about much you know he's he's just a strong guy that's it and you know like he was and this is why he worked in a timber yard because he could pick up a whole log on his back and move it he was a strong man but he and you know I think he had 11 children so I just try and remember his children's names as well so that I you know to keep my mind sharp rather than just let it go dormant and because you know before I all this all these quiz shows I used to watch in my family this you know you must go on this you must go on that I said no like this is for me and knowing this industry is very exploitative and when you're in a quiz show they ask you so what are you going to do with this money so they're actually trying to get you to explode your greed as you are I said I wouldn't do that you know so but then later on that stress of being a captive I don't remember sometimes I can't answer the question right away and I've always just said you've got to get the answer before the option comes up in all the options if you can't then you've got one in four chance or one in three chances it's good that the answer before and so I mean I used to be very good but not as much now so you know like I think my mind or brains kind of the stress PTSD probably slowed down little things and so you know most of them and I were there in that room and unbeknown to me and the other end of the complex they had cuddly mom they locked him up in the toilet and he was a tall man and the way that college is designed is that there's a little bit of a you know step so he couldn't really stretch his leg now and he had to live there for two weeks and so they were more cruel to him than me because he had been on television shows as an analyst as had Khalid Khwaja and so they but their their attitude towards them was very very bad and one day while we are you know they've let Khalid Khwaja out of the room and there's me and Rustam and we've been here in the next room somebody being flogged big time I mean seriously flogged and just because of the commotion I just happen to ask Krishna what's going on I said this man he's a very pious man but he deals in drugs etc and you know why do you do that and I thought well why does this make them a lot unto themselves who are they so it's a very everywhere you know we are everywhere in every department I don't know whether that was embossing or there was a pack of vise then sort of later no more sound from that bagging fraud so the next day I said well what happened to me he said oh he had a tooth in which there was some poison he gets bit on that and died which I don't believe of course I believe the killing he must have been somebody else who got bit up and didn't like or whatever and there was many stories like that oh we've come out to a Chinese woman and she was working spine on us and then they said there was a an American soldier who joined them and was a very nice guy he just had a Muslim and then he died in an attack again there's no proof so I don't know there's any proof in that now meanwhile all this is happening inside outside was a totally different story just enough obviously worried for me as I was worried for my parents but a guy read about me in the newspaper and approached my brother to say he could help and the same man sometime back I had come to my brother's office and said I need some money he didn't say give me a loan he said I need some money give me some money so he gave me some money and he went away and when he came back to offer help my brother said he prayed because by now he found out he wanted 11 million dollars so 10 million dollars so and he said no come with me I'm going to take you somewhere but you don't wear your suit you wear your local gear and go on a cheap car so if went to this friend and there was this guy his name is Fossil Khalil Rahman but we call him Mr. Z in the story because everybody has to be anonymous because we didn't know who to trust and so everybody you know would be coded and like I was known as the package you see in that conversation so this guy Mr. Z went to see and he just listened and then said forget about Khalid Hwaja and currently mom I can do nothing for come back tomorrow for the rest so that's this yeah the brother's alive and now Mr. Z lived in a huge compound where he had what we'd call a madrasa school of religion people of sort of study and he he was in the Afghan war against the Russians and he lived on Krawas for a long time killed his first man with his bare hands at the age of 18 a Russian soldier because he had to say bullets you see so he had a history he was a strong man he was and the CIA the eyesight knew about him you see and so he's telling my brother look you know like you have to separate me you have to separate me from the rest of the team first that that way it might be easier to get me off the hook but he said don't hold your hopes up too high because the chance of him being brought back alive is less than one percent you see so the company that I was working for which I'm not allowed to I don't want to mention but they went to see my brother and due to his lack of knowledge about this industry and how we operate they they tried to exploit him by saying right okay they want ten million dollars need to delay delay delay sell the properties sell any family go any money out in the bank if not get a loan to get him out and my brother obviously thought but they're putting it all everything on me I didn't join I didn't send him there but so he's thinking how to do this and when my brother came to England he said right after his my mom and dad was came to England because for security my brother said everybody here except for his daughter and my husband and they you know he used to come and see them regularly as well because you have to keep the hope alive for everybody or when he was in Pakistan he would call and at nine o'clock our time here and it would be one o'clock in the morning for him there so that he could tell mom some stories or if there was some progress tell her a little bit today a little bit tomorrow so I could stretch it so that she would go to sleep and have some assurance you know and they so when all these trips back and forth back and forth Mr. Zed live in a huge compound so the company I was working for they turned up in a state staying five-star hotel having a good time and my brother told them that there's this other guy that might need help and he said no no no don't trust anybody I'm gonna do it this way and now my brother was caught in two camps in between two camps that the company employees have a hostage negotiator and they've written out a script for him what to say what not to say and really buy more time and the other guy is talking in different language now if Mr. Zed found out about the man from England he would stop so now the decision was who to go with you see so the the way it was working out and then the television company was known as the A team and they were scared they said we don't want you to come and see us on the days you meet Mr. Zed because somebody might follow you and then they thought well you know they were worried about themselves and the problem were in and that's not all you know if they've come here then they've got to do something and the one in the team just happens so well you know a Pakistani life is not worth as much as an English life my brother wasn't you know he's a barrister and he handles big cases he said okay if you're not out of this country by tomorrow you will never leave and we show you what a British life is like because he was so disgusted by his statement the next day I had when you know that was this it was at the wrong time I mean he joke about this kind of things maybe I don't know but not a good time to be saying stuff like this so while he was in England he also learned because he met my producer who didn't go he backed out and you know like hero kind of reason but he was not well you know health wise so I he said his my brother said you know this is what they're saying where's the next amount of money and they said oh I'm protected by insurance I signed a form and they didn't tell that to my brother he had no idea so now he has armed with some information that they don't think he knows about and he's going to have to turn the table on them you see because they're just exploiting me and him now and to get out of this situation he's got free as it were which I think they played very dirty and when he went back to see them and said look you know this is what I'm telling you he has insurance and he's protected by that and if they want 10 million you've got to give them 10 million they said but we're not allowed to negotiate with terrorists because that money will go back to attack other people you know so we're in a tight situation so then he said well so you're telling me to raise money to pay them and that's okay then he's your employee under your insurance you know and also then he found out that sometimes journalists get some kind of a small GPS that he can be tracked and why wasn't I given one of those so during meeting with Mr. Z he said that he you know he sent word out all over the place and Al Qaeda were willing to do an operation to free us but they decided not to because they knew that they'd have split us all up and that we might be caught in crossfire which is actually what happened shortly after I was released to a network called Linda I think board growth there's an operation to rescue you and she got caught in the crossfire and died so they thought we won't do that because it's less you know even snow and so when my brother realized the Mr. Z could pull many many strings he decided to jettison between because their help was going to become reproductive because if realized because you see he kept telling me because he was bugged every day before he comes from the terrorists every day he said look my brother doesn't work for any company he's doing this on his own accord to sell the film all right but I'm telling them the truth so so the thing is so it was kind of oh of course I had no idea he's telling them the truth and you know not the truth he's not telling them the truth and I am and I am a stickler for that I always because he being a warrior he's trying to and he knows the situation like if the truth gets out then you will not let me go because he was on the point I stood up with a local guy up there having a business colleague in America and then they killed him so they think I'm associated with a company uh on the west and actually also I was married to an American American girl so I had everything going against me as far as they were concerned so to get out of that situation was going to be very very tough and uh what there was a what happened was then that uh Mr. Z said to him when they fall offered him this much money and see what happened and when my brother panicked and the idea was to start low and work up he just gave him the high figure that he could afford and they said that's peanuts that's they were peanuts and it was went on from there that they just learned from more and more and one reason was oh you hold a British passport so you're going to the birth more I began the cash cow was the other two main guys of Khalid Hwaja and currently mom for different in color mom they wanted uh 75 prisoners released which wasn't going to happen that was a death sentence already nobody would negotiate with them for that and uh with Khalid Hwaja they accused him of so many things that they didn't want anything from him even though they said he was offering us so much money for his release we didn't want him to do off so uh everybody's fate was sealed in a particular way but so and the funny thing is that everybody was doing this individually like currently my sons being in the army they were trying through their sources Osama uh been Khalid Khalid Hwaja's son was there to see Mr. Z before my brother got there and he was all he didn't you know like sharing information so he was there but uh you know he there was nothing he was going to do for him uh his father so that was um that and then uh my mother in England was very very when she found out that this is now where I am and I had kept a lot of pets birds and cats one of them died so one was left and my mom said to him to release the birds because they're captive and maybe I'm being punished for keeping them captive right so he opened the doors of the cage and they wouldn't fly away and he closed them again he said well they're not going anywhere so then somebody told him leave them open at night and then they go away and that's what it is and they left the gates open and the bird drove from the way and I had one cat left I had two Persian punch face cats one was ginger and one brownhead and one was white or and she the cat came up in conversations in uh I was talking to them about my cat and how people used to come to be photographed with it you know both of them and they were very good and I used to call her Miss Gray sometimes because she was writing and running around on the floor and that she'd become gray so every week it was time for me to give them a bath and every time I was in my shorts and this blue trough I had to fill water in they'd run away they knew it was time for a bath and so we'd give them a bath dry their head shampoo for cats try their you know and then add perfume for cats so they were looking good and uh so the cat you know came up in conversation and these guys oh you're a very wealthy man it was June time now and I suppose this a chance I could be released and they said oh no no you've got lots of money you got a cat and you get food for it from abroad so you must have a lot of money so the cat got in the way and negotiation stopped and uh it's funny so my cat's picture is also in the book he got in the way and uh you know and this man picked up on everything every little word if he said it from passing you know whatever and used it against you it was so difficult that uh and and you know like then one day the KMM moved us Hustam and I took uh another room blindfolded us and took it and when we got there we saw Colonel Imar and and he couldn't recognize us and said I'm the people I said yes I mean you know like just asking in such a way that people and a lot of time had passed since and he saw I said yes and we were given you know a place in that is what they called VIP beds like they were really rolled up like we were getting in a roll up bed like to uh sleep on and instead of the people don't get these you know we'll get them because of the IPs my guests and so we took our place in there and uh you know Colonel Imar asked me many many questions and I said but first I always had a quagga so I don't know and then I asked him where he's gone to negotiate your release so that's good and I could turn to it against him and he is more influential than any of us and he could put strings if they let me go I can't do anything so that kind of fitted my logic at the time and uh as time went on I said well where is he because if he's going to do anything we've been done by now or he's uh eating mangoes with his wife he said laughing then how can he be eating mangoes with his wife when he should be he goes into our release so it didn't make sense and then this time Imar the horrible terrorist guy came in the ladder and in our room and he decided to put up a fan and when I saw a fan being fitted there you know they are planning to keep us able much longer and I thought and that kind of told me that you know trying to make it easy on us but it's really going to be a long time and not only that the fan wasn't in the center of the room it was more filled in Colonel Imar and I was the furthest away from it which kind of made me feel you know I wasn't brazen in that kind of environment it was too hot for me mosquitoes they love me you know and then got bitten twice by some I think in America they called them dirt doggers these bees that make a kind of a home in the clay you know and they diving bit me twice and rustle got hold of it you know they they weren't shackled at the time one of those kind of pieces of metal he rubbed on it on my hand and the pain went away and that's the trick I learned if you get bitten they'll be revying on it on the on the bite so twice that happened to me and then they had put a scorpion in my bag so when I was getting something they saw a scorpion everybody looking at me they rushed them and said you know what and he got the scorpion off and I found it bitten they had no medical care for me me and it kind of felt so bad and then on another occasion there's a mouse in our room I thought oh my god what am I living you know this is not what I'm used to and never had a mouse in our house ever you know so why and and somehow Rooster managed to catch it and with some tissue he was holding it with his tail like so and we're about to eat and he threw it out well you know told them and they came and and I said why don't you wash your head we're about to eat and he said well I was touching it with a tissue so you have it still make me happy if you wash your hands I said no and he said I'll tell you something else when I use the toilet I don't wash my hand either I said you better not touch my ear again you know this changing here I am in the jaws of death telling this guy that he can't touch my filming equipment again when I don't even know if I'm going to touch a camera again you see so you know how inside it looks like I want to speak with him to say at that time but you know we can't just get rid of our phobias like that I can't anyway and because they heard me speaking up to him and they came in with a stick and a piece of wood with what they call a v-belt nailed to it which is a truck's fan belt you know and and they stopped kevlaring it you know and he gave and it was like the entire back it was on fire and he said you think it was special don't you I said no I don't think no special I just want to be clean and be around clean people nothing wrong with that and they had it in for me the very minute you know like because I spoke different because I spoke some Urdu with an accent from here they didn't like me they said their words were you're doing drama you know that I live I'm acting you know like this I said no I'm not I'm not aware of it so they had it in for me from day one then secretly one came to me and said teach me English but don't tell anyone I said okay I like some sentences for you just copy them and then another one Naman came to me he says teach me English but don't tell you for the fire okay so I should write these lines for them that's when I learned that he'd been to Guantanamo Bay and I thought well if he's been to Guantanamo because one of the sentences of them I've been to these countries and he put USA I said I said no where did you and myself said Guantanamo Bay I said well that is not in the USA you see so I was thinking if he'd been there now he's come here and he's doing this kind of work doesn't make sense you think he'd learned his lesson there and he goes straight so again that kind of got me thinking news another some other things that came to my mind I thought well it doesn't make sense because one day Krishna came to us and said you know how to use a gun I said no uh Rustam said yes and so he said if I gave you a gun you have to door open you want to go and I said no because when we and I'm still thinking where in Afghanistan that I don't think we'd make it because they don't have papers to be here cleaning up in Afghanistan and B I don't think we'd walk long time because we didn't have any flu or stuff like that but above all we were too weak you know we all lost and I said no we'll take our chances here because I felt I have I was responsible for Rustam I had hired him and that I didn't want to be responsible and take a chance when he's about 10-10 kids and all that that he I see his life and meanwhile my brother was sending like a van full of food to say you know Russian to his family and he his wife said we're happy with where he is as long as he forms once a year so I never quite happy with his arrangement but she's getting more from his absence from my brother then if he's going out to work plus the hassle of him you know whenever he got mad or something would get a bottle of coaxing and smash it in his head because you know he was just such a highly strong guy and so on one of Farukh my brother's trips to England he was sent a text from his colleague in Pakistan where they said three headless corpses have been found and clearly because he knew Khalid Khwaja has been killed and the three must be Rustam myself and Karnal Imam and he was thinking oh my god how do I break the news to the parents and because it was then everything was revolving around then we must hurt them you know this was a major thing and so he rushed back to Pakistan to see what was going on and then it was found out that it wasn't us so he thought okay fine but obviously he was concerned and whoever has lost the family is very sad but the brutality by those guys is just unbelievable and so that was a close one for him of course I had no idea then while in captivity they kept wanting Karnal Imam to make statements on video and they kept saying to me now you got to come and set the camera up for us they wanted to use my camera now so I said fine I have to do that I saw it from the point that okay we'll keep me busy for a while so my mind is one of the things and so I would set the camera up and I'd be glad out of the room while he would give his statement and back home my nephew is saying to his dad is the quality of these tips you know video seems to be getting better maybe uncle is shooting so because on their palm cord is now going to my big camera and one of the problems was that they don't want people to be seen to be reading from a piece of paper they want it spontaneous that it comes out from you as you were so they wrote lots and lots of stuff for Karnal Imam to say and to memorize and he was you know they gave him a few books that he was reading and they kept asking have you learned your lines and he said not yet not yet the one day they came and started to flogging big time and I just intervene I said no no no please I'll help him I'll help him to learn his lines and they also slapped him his glasses broke so I said I have a pair I can lend you a spare and he put them on and his face later oh I can see properly now even his glasses were pretty old and I said please learn this for me because I don't want them to hurt you because when I first saw him he had these chevron not chevron these kind of lines at the back and that was all the flogging he'd been it could have been you know see that old guy they were telling us about who was into drugs and was being flogged it could have been Karnal Imam you see because he had his lines of blood on his clothes and that particular shirt he said his his daughter had made for him so he was very sad in the sense that you know he would get it most of the time and I just tried to protect him as much as possible and he said to me that I would make a good Lieutenant Colonel in the army because that's they say the most enjoyable role you play and because I said dream we haven't even thought of a survival plan and he said no we're not going to escape from here I said no but us getting going well together and surviving this because sometimes we don't hit it off we're in this room and I'm saying why is it like this why is it like that and so but it wasn't I mean like I wasn't getting through and I even said that one point I said can you have some decorum here because he would take more chappatis in his hands and then now those are his little stuff you know because I suppose that's the question survival you know as father of the fittest or in this case um so I'm you know like uh a senior but Rustam who never went to school used to say oh he's eating like this like he he dips into the curry and then any oil he's doing this so we used to copy that just to you know escape as it was you know you look at the smallest thing they say how can I escape from this place and uh because you know the world out there I'm missing out on and at night I could hear airplanes and I used to there's somebody going from A to B I wish I was there but of course they were not better friends they were drones you see and um and one night I heard one bomb somewhere and the next day they were really mad all the kids in that well you know if they behaved I thought maybe they wouldn't do it I don't know but all my thoughts were gathering towards one final decision as to who I was with and I was still kind of thinking where will they stand and uh their leader Sabir Masood used to come sometimes into our room before he came a chair would be broken if he was somebody and uh then a gunman would come big a big gun and he stood there like a statue and this gun is very heavy and it's just still and then he'd come and say and talk to us and he said if I wanted to I couldn't have had you killed there and then but I wanted you alive okay so then but this whole story started way back when we'd finished filming in Kuwait and I went home and Khalid Khwaja went to Raziri started to ask for permission to film us the reality of the matter is he uh they would have kept him there but when he mentioned to them oh I have this filmmaker from England he wants to come and interview you guys they let him go so that he could take me in too but they'll move on their part so um and and I don't I don't think obviously he didn't read the situation because uh you know he was already a marked man before we even got I even got there and uh and currently mom said to me you know he had no plans to come his wife so he had a bypass and he had guests like Khalid Khwaja phoned him and he just said to the guest look I'm gonna order food from outside and I have to leave so he just left us for the moment not knowing that death is calling you see because in my book I say the purpose of death is to save you from dying until your time is up and death will take you to the place where you are to die and there's nothing you can do you can't turn back because it's time and it happens Khalid Khwaja was supposed to die there as was going to be your mom and there was no way Khalid Khwaja was going to hear anyone say let's go back because is that's how it is to your end that's where they die you see so that's what happened and we were uh you know I was given a tough time because when my favorite fruit being in mango when they just occasionally bring some mangoes in and they kept them down so might that most of the flesh they had kept so as Rustam will say they're giving us the bones and uh but you can't eat them they say so I said okay and Rustam said well we're not eating any fruit I said I want to beat you and uh all right we do have a little bit so they smell it on me so both ways you know they're gonna beat us and I don't want to be beaten anymore I said I'm very enough so I just kind of talked me into it I said let's keep the peace because that's better for us than to start fighting amongst ourselves and then they learn and they only want to hear our voice outside and they'll go crazy so it went on like that and then one day I was summoned to meet the leader in the next room and what they do is they're so so the blindfold me and take me outside the door and then turn me around 360 as if I've been now just orientated and they're taking me into the next room because I could be a room a few steps and I said you know they're looking all these guys looking at me lots of them they're holding on and just I can see that I sort of gone with the guys and I'm kind of scared that I'm gonna get a real beating now and they said you know the money's there and your brother's sitting in front of it like a snake you want the money and the guy pulled out his gun he had a fancy watch and a ring and he pulled out a gun with quite a long barrel and then pulled the hammer back and put it to my head and I'm scared I'm struggling you know look you know I've been giving me giving a chance to talk to anybody to help so how can I ask anybody to give me money and then they said I want to show you something so I want to show you what we need to call it I said no no it's okay I don't he said you're gonna see this one whatever you like it or not and they got like this newspaper with how you're dead on the ground bludge and I thought oh my god you know it's not that's the first time I heard about it and it was kind of difficult for me to take and then they sent me back into my room and I had was starting to eat and I just lost my appetite because and we were fast from dawn to dusk as well and meanwhile Mr. Z decide to send an envoy to negotiate my release and they got this guy interrogating him beating him up big time he said how dare Mr. Z had achieved to send somebody to us and they locked him up actually did through acid on him too and about 20 days later you know no one comes into our room and says somebody is going to go into the bathroom you better not hate you because he's coming here and beat the hell out of you so you fight Mr. Z quite so I hear the shower flowing and then somebody saying to him a you finished he said yes so that's it and then that's the lot you know I thought okay this where this person is clearly didn't break in to us and I don't believe what they're saying and that was Mr. Z's man so he had come got beaten up and sent back as if to embarrass Mr. Z not only that Mr. Z and sent him to go back again to talk to this guy and said don't play hardball we need to talk and while he's doing this this guy calls one point now he's calling my brother harassing him saying I need money I need money he said I'm not allowed to deal with you we have a code and I have to deal with this and he said well no they're out of the game now I'm in charge unbeknown to this guy his phone call has been recorded you see but he's threatening that I am in charge Salih Masood is no not in charge anymore and Salih Masood was used a couple of names to call my brother as well and so when this call has been recorded he sent while somebody to these guys here you go listen to this and obviously it enraged Salih Masood that this guy called Punjabi is trying to tell a different story so the group was actually breaking up so one night I mean they had come to us and said like get up they're leaving there's a threat of a drone strike here and so I'm starting to gather my stuff and they said no no we'll come back how can they know there's this drone strike in advance it's not possible so they had given me another diary in a book to writing so I was carrying on with my diary again they said I'll leave it I said okay so we'll come back soon so then they took us to another mud hut which was just atrocious and it had a small and it had a little raised area which was supposed to be where you had to go and pee and actually had no privacy and otherwise we were told you could only go to the toilet at midnight so and then little things fell from the roof in sense which I really hate it that's not me and a scorpion came towards me it's like lit at night and thankfully Rustam stopped on it they all seem to be lying for me you know and while we're in this new third location now they invite Usman Punjabi over and say look come and have breakfast with us because it was still in fasting month so he said Farim goes there and they tell him you you decided to be in charge how come and Usman was who shot him killed him and a number of other people and then he turned the gun one of his own assistants and shot him too because if the elders ask what happened oh they shot my golly first well killed him so that was an excuse he made now all the blood was on our stuff so we never got any of our stuff back you know was that all your camera gear as well no they stored that elsewhere but didn't like my clothes my diary and and currently moms had some books that you know so all that kind of stuff just stayed like because it was now covered in blood and I wouldn't want it anymore and but the new place was I mean to stay there for me was very difficult it was because it took me inside it's falling on my head and who was following our food and so one day they came in with a cup of tea that somebody's drank from and said drink from this I'm emotionally as well and I saw on the cup they were there like Mark would be greasy on the handle and I'm thinking what should I do now I don't do that no so I turned the cup around and opposite the handle part which was clean and I drank from there but kind of trying to turn my taste buds off mentally for me and they brought some lentils in a clay that they eaten from and you could see the marks from where they used the chipati to clean up the plate and the chipati was not fresh it was from like a day or two ago so it was getting worse and I was just finding it very tough that environment was getting worse and worse and then one day my mom comes up and said like we're going to take you to make a phone call to your brother and I said okay so and on the other end my brother was also informed that that phone called me when we you know like so he sat in a different house with all you know some friends they all put their phones down on the it was a glass coffee table and unbeknownd and they didn't have a signal or certainly my brother's phone didn't have a signal so when I phoned him it was like a public call office and in the front they were selling counter gas and I could write low in the car and be given there and so I dialed the number and that's when I found out I'm in Pakistan because I didn't have to dial a code for Pakistan because Pakistan code is 92 okay so I've been in Pakistan all this time and when I phoned him don't know answer and I thought phone with parents house no answer that phone had been cut off and I said well the only way for me to find out thing is call my sister in Bradford so God I call my sister my niece answered the phone I said this is us up here uh she says who and she didn't quite get who I was and then I said uh she gave her mother and then she said is it really you are so I said yes is it really I said yes I have a white cat and I just burst into tears and they slammed the phone down and said next time you can you know and they drove me away and now my family's thinking okay he's gone any minute any minute and of course I didn't and about a week ten days later they took me out again and threatened me if you mess it up this time will be trouble and of course when they take me for the phone called the coordinated with my brother somehow that phone call will come and so I said to him can you get me out here by tomorrow and he said I'll try but of course it was a Monday and I came out tomorrow and now that I'd made contact with him it I just wanted to be out there right now and it didn't happen till Thursday you see and so what happened was coming survived this ordeal on a Thursday evening or I think it was a Friday Wednesday evening uh they saw me soon then he's assistant man not late at night in outdoor and came in and they said they're going home tomorrow so I was relieved oh my god they're going home and my mom said say a little prayer and being released so we're all happy excited couldn't sleep and a short while later one of them comes into the room and said took him out you need to come and do your statement I said we don't need to do any statements we're going home tomorrow and he said if you are getting more you're not going tomorrow either so they asked him in a moment to leave he had a little smile on his face because he felt he knew that he's going home and so they take him out of the room and he had a little pocket crown and a short while later the guy comes back and takes that he's going home that told me that he's not going home so now I was worried sick about him not going and the fact that our enjoyment or happiness of going was not a hundred percent anymore because he's going to stay behind and it was very very difficult for me to leave that place and well in the morning they brought something for me but the main thing is it kept and that to wipe them clean of anything that they have theirs and they kept the best stuff for themselves which I talked about he's in my workshop sharing and when they're leaving well I tried backtrack they took me for another phone call and they tried me this and they said if you behave we will give you buy you a bottle of Mountain Dew and a bottle of I think it was Haunter I said how great that we just called wonderful and so I managed to speak to my brother and he said he'll see what he can do and they bought me these bottles and when we went back I got out of the car and this time I wasn't going for it and I looked up at the sky and the moon and the fresh air I thought what wonderful things you know of course I was bringing back in and I shared the drinks with you and in the morning at night the Saddam Hussein gave us 5000 rupees each and he was 5000 and you know like on midday and nothing had happened until well you know you want to just get out of that place as soon as possible and as then finally he started to go they said hand over that money because on route they saw a sheep or a goat tried to we were planning for them but they saw the goat they only did buy for themselves to eat so they took our money and you know they went to see the guy and said pay for it and pick it up on our way back and so and then they said to me the people that we are going to hand over to are boys in a man's game and tell them that you've come from you've brought you from Kohat which is not true because Kohati the where we stayed the night of this politician and why are they saying this to me so when we at some point they used a radio and this used the word bypass and we got to this place this was actually a dry river bed and the car stopped and I I feel my door open and this guy said are you Asif Kaurashi and I said yes and so he dares off my man for instance smiling guy weird kind of thing his name was Asif and so it takes me out of the car pushed him from the other end and they're all like it's a kind of a standoff all these gunmen on this side and all these guns he's going and hiding in the car and all this and so I know I sort of just stared down with Noam I wanted to tell him something which then would have been very bad so I thought um okay um thank you very much goodbye and even then I offered to shake his hand okay and because I stared at him for quite a while and he was getting nervous that these men might kill him and he was handed a package this is his holding his package clearly it was money and he was you know wanted to get out of there and the money wherever it came from I had no idea was dividing into four pieces you know four lumps for four individuals to count so nobody knew how much it was except for my brother right they would count even their total their total and he only knew how it was done and uh so from there I jumped in this four wheel drive and they take me to this home somewhere and say we lay down some food for you to eat you go home today they said no and then they said look we want to show you some of our jewelry and so they brought up all these guns you know show us some serious stuff and I asked them so who are you he said Ben Al Qaeda and um how about this one day I'm in the hand of Taliban and the next day I'm in the hand of Al Qaeda how many people can say that you see and so they laid on this wonderful food for you to drink everything and uh then they took me out into town to make another phone call to my brother and he said look I can put you in the plane doing them tomorrow I said I don't think I'm gonna get there in time so let me get there and then we'll decide so at night they all slept indoors because the mosque eaters but I wanted to be out in the veranda or the forecourt and then there was a calendar on the wall I kept counting from the day I was taking and what good numbers I kept counting I kept counting and it would technically be 166 days but because I was taken late in the afternoon I said I should be back in say 165 days and so that's the time I was there and the excitement I couldn't sleep and I'm looking at the stars and the sky and all this of course being bitten by the mosquitos which then at that point was second week and uh you know just waiting for the morning and morning came we got ready and uh this guy was going to come with us his name was Fremont he was going to accompany us to the army a check post for safety you know that nobody else could pick us up and take us hostage again because that's what happened often a hostage can be sold from one person to another and then the cost keeps going up because some people just you know because it cost money to guard and feed somebody so they say look we'll settle for this and move and so we came to this check post and he left and but before we came to check post we got a message on this radio that there's been a drone attack and two people were being killed and that happened 15 minutes after we had left that place and I wonder sort of maybe we were the targets I don't know and I never know so uh the next morning uh two guys came to collect us putting like our you know one of them spoke I said I recognize your voice we would have heard it and he said well I came for you but they beat me up and sent me back he said okay who you fed chicken on the last and rice on the last day you left he said yes I was and you do have a shower before you left he said yes I did so why a brave man I saw you know he's come but I mean obviously the brave came later when I realized he'd been out there three times now you see and there was another chat when he was a doctor my specialist and he said look it was about you know like a few days from Eid you know I was sort of Christmas after the fasting month and he said I didn't even put any rushing in the house and I left it up to my wife she was a real man when I get home so we're making jokes like that and you know Rustam said he wants to go home first my brother said you all have to come to Mr Z's compound because we've got to keep away from the press and he didn't want anybody being hounded especially you know Rustam might say things that we don't need to say but he insisted that he go home first I said no so what he did was he got out of the car ran so because we should have had a proper debriefing you see and so I thought well if that's what he wants to do but he's got 10 plus children so he wants to build it and so we went directly to Mr Z's compound and you know that comes all around and something interesting as soon as I met my brother and he's happy to see me he said you know these guys they all see the year out so then September 2010 I mean what he said is they all see 2011 well to our surprise two weeks later those guys are dead and this give I can give you the example when James Dean went to see Alec Guinness and said look I've got this new car come out for a ride with me Alec Guinness said look today's Thursday and this time next Thursday you'll be dead don't drive that car and in an interview you know Alec Guinness was asked how come you said they said he just came out he said I had no idea I just I just said it so similarly maybe my brother just said they won't see the year out in two weeks later what happened was Sabir Masood and Nomal who was his drudin mark who was married to Sabir Masood's sister they were caught by Hakim Namasood the new leader of the Taliban and they were taking revenge for Khalid Khwaja obviously why didn't they get to share the money that they broke their legs with the blood of their rifles both of them then they shot them in the face so many times that they were beyond recognition okay and then soon after that Hakim Namasood was killed also so now this brings me to say that I think I believe there's two connections here research and analysis wing raw of India and the CIA because Khalid Khwaja would have been a man the CIA would take out and the reason for that was that he was too powerful at the time he didn't know how to wear and yeah coming mom because he was like the father of the Hulak being he was a threat to India because he could have had an army standing on Pakistan's eastern border he could create one like that so he had to be eliminated I just couldn't be in the wrong ways the wrong time the wrong people you see and that's why maybe some people knew they won't make it out and that's why Mr. Z said he can't help them because you know he and then if you look at the plan Khalid Khwaja's guide never turns up and you know they make unreasonable demands for him they didn't make any demands he's accused him and he's drugged and makes confession that he is a CIA agent when he was not with the Navy and so you know as in any intelligence you know so organization whatever operation they do once it's done everybody normally is more or less neutralized so there's no one left to talk in this case I'm the only one left to talk about it because just him he's not educated so he I'm left with the tell the story incredible my god so you think it might have been a setup all along to the two ISI ISI gave somebody 100 million rupees or something to to find Colonel Imam that they just run off with the money because I mean I don't know ISI was involved because you know this this group was created for this operation and Khalid Khwaja had been asking very very uncomfortable questions from everybody and he actually predicted 9 level in the sense that somebody said how can we how can somebody come and attack America several people just run their airplane into your buildings but that doesn't mean to say he I mean he just said it off the cuff he didn't plan it I mean he and but he knew Osama bin Laden Osama bin Laden gave lots of money to Khalid Khwaja to give to Nawaz Sharif the former prime minister and maybe that money was used by these apartments you know partly also this theory about the Americans going into kill bin Laden no it's not really possible because you can't fly that far into a country and not be detectives and then there's a film of him watching TV with mobile that's a setup you know that's been filmed just like they did with Jessica whatever private Jessica whatever her name was in the in Iraq Jessica Lynch wasn't it that she's been rescued and they made a film to boost the morale of the army and she denied it she said this did not happen to her yeah so I'm a sad I'm very conscious of going into the wrong area here and what I mean by that is that there's certain things we're not allowed to talk about but I just want to say for anybody listening you know when you're watching the mainstream media you're watching the mouthpiece of the psychopaths and if you believe it's true then it's not that's just not helpful it's not helpful you know certain things I think the vast majority of people these days know what I'm alluding to certain things just don't fall down for no reason whatsoever or certainly not some Mickey Mouse reason that the mainstream gives you until we start seeing this and calling it out for what it is then we're just putting all of our nonsense on the next generation of children they've got to grow it up in under this slavery it's all fiction yes things happen but it's not by the people that you're told you're told as a sad and I said at the beginning that the people you're told the good guys or the bad guys and the people you're told the bad guys either have nothing to do with it or or or or they're actually no no problem at all but getting back to your story as sad so what was it like to see your brother was that that must have been incredibly emotional it was it was because you know I was out back in civilization and he was the first family member I saw and I felt good so Mr Zed's organization and me and I piled my plate and I'm not going to be at all people always wonder you're you're like a bird you just pick it see that's it and my brother's friends don't eat too much here you know they go to my house after I don't have any space and so when then you went to their house and his mother wanted to meet me and say you know just to see me and so we did that in my hair and I had to get it but later my beard and I said so my brother took me to this bar and he said you know hair is so kind of matted and what's the matter I said oh I was playing a part of a caveman in a play and I wanted to be really in character and he believed me good you're my essential humor is still there because even the whole idea for me to make a joke is to make it sound so real that people accept this is a true story because you know what else I couldn't tell you know I mean held hostage in this place forever and these you know it's not something that he would probably believe or anything like that and then the next day I took over a friend of mine to see what I needed to do a few things can come over and I was sitting in the back of the car and lying down so no one could see me because the press were everywhere they didn't even come to my room office instead of a camera and I was like what are you doing here get out and you know for that on another occasion they said I was released and then they made up the news that I was being I was at this location that location that and then the next day so they will they make money out of telling the lies and I shot news and I don't anymore because the editorial from the company is something else they wanted to say something else and I said I'm helping you turn a lie and I won't do that you see yes let's not mention anything in particular but you've only got to look out the window folks at the moment to see the lies you know come on wake up geez this is your future this is your children and you're giving them to the psychopaths and the psychopaths own everything they own all the media stations as as sad as you know will vouch for me um sorry don't mean to go into a rant folks or a lecture but so many of you beautiful people out there are starting to see this this hidden hand that's controlling everything and even if you don't want to go big picture go small picture and see the corporations that are making billions billions of your misery at the moment and pretending that they have uh you know the way out for you and it's just it's just um smoke and mirrors folks it's smoke and mirrors and it's a beautiful planet when you wake up to it and you free yourself of this fear it's all it is it's it's it's fear but again back to you asad what was your the reception like for you when you arrived uh back in back in england and what was it what was it like the company that you work for it's my father said to me i've done all my crime because he became silent because he realized where i was mom was emotional and um so the funny thing is the next day after shower and i had my after shower that i use and everybody hates it in the family i'd love it and i've used it for years and my mother's now you're home and i'm a meat eater and she'd had chicken roast and all that and she said please do it for me i said i'm missing it i'm okay i had a little piece of meat but i'm not a meat eater at all but it was fun to see my nieces and because my niece got married and i couldn't i just couldn't see being here for that it's funny see that's another girl and she's you know like closest to me but i just couldn't see it which is another like a sign that something's about to happen and uh you know i just wasn't strong enough to read the anything into it and maybe we don't read anything to this because something's about to be there's nothing we can do to change that how did you cope with the trauma that you've been through was there i'm guessing um because of your religion that you're not a drinker did did you have other avenues you found yourself going down well the company i worked for said i should see somebody in hollywood i couldn't say why would i do that oh well you know actually they didn't want to be sued for anything later they were just protecting their interests so in view of what they said i went but i didn't see doing me any good because you know you have to be strong from within and sort out these issues maybe some people are not and they do see them and i have no problem but i just felt for my liking i should just you know pray hard and you know like we believe in our faith that god doesn't put any hardship on that you can't cope with you see so that in itself is strength and if i was meant to die there fine i mean and these things cross my mind all the time because first a million ten million dollars nobody's going to pay that for me so i said to rosa me know tell my family if you get out that i'm i was okay and then sabi musul came to visit us i said look i don't think i'm gonna get out of here but be kind to me and my family when it's time to kill me don't behead me because my mom won't be able to talk shoot me and i'm sure they'll accept that but it would be very difficult for her to go and say fine okay we'll do that and i know it's content in my heart that i i i that's okay on one occasion i thought well okay they're looking for ten million dollars they want to or they'll kill me why don't i hang myself and i was working on this film where i learned how to make a hangman's knot so i thought i could do this and you know i've escaped they haven't got their money they don't have me and then i had this kind of thought that many years ago i was making a documentary of an expedition on Mount Everest and i wasn't properly climatized and i just sort of fell asleep in a rock and these kind of in my dream these um crevasses are inviting me to come over and look and obviously you fall in and it's goodbye and in my dream my mother comes and wakes me up wake up wake up i wake up and then from that moment on it was the question of survival and what they call self-rescue and that was a very sort of an important thing for me that mums say of my life by coming to my dream and once my sister said to me that i was the strongest man she knew not with muscles but my stamina or my i don't like to accept defeat and so i thought okay so she says that and i'm not going to give up for for them i'm going to prove to them that i am a strong person and i will stay however in my absence as a captive sherry who was my american wife couldn't take the not knowing so my brother decided to send her back to the u.s and she was thinking that either i come home or they kill me so that she can get on with her life you know uh she told me that once i was out and i said well what do you do because i thought that was you know a bit below the belt and she was telling somebody at the airport in cuba about this that uh they're not knowing he's worse than noise one way or the other and but i thought to say that and get so that she ended up with her life was a bit nasty but i thought fine if you know that's how she felt that's how she felt but we're friends today you know and um i don't hold it against her and what was it like a sad when you when you found out that kernel imam had been executed in fact i was going back to pakistan either that day or the day before or the day after in those three days because what happened was that uh the company i was waiting for phoned my producer to tell him what had happened and he told them oh yeah i should have just gone out there again because i wanted to finish diffusing him in bombs and so when i went back to them these kids had really grown up they were taller and so it actually showed that this film had been made over over uh you know time and uh what i learned about these kids was a lot of them were up to no good and didn't really want to say things that i was asking and even the army was saying don't do too much and you know because they're still malleable as it were and we don't want them to run away and have a relax because they thought they saw the glamour with the Taliban the guns the knives and the four wheel driving all that kind of stuff because i keep like you know in that part of the world that's anything they want you know they'd like hero worship certain people and but they had the crudeness like how my captors used to say when they kill a soldier they got to take out all his stuff from his stomach and like necklaces with his intestine and this and that and they enjoyed it they enjoyed this we enjoyed and because at some point Christian also i have to leave this place the time when he was offering us a gun shortly after he said i have to leave otherwise he'll kill me but what made me suspicious was that here's a guy from india living and being in charge of us in pakistan and he's got a name like krishnav but krishnav is a hindu name but he tells me he's a muslim and it doesn't fit why are these guys allowing him to be in charge you see and then one day he decides look they might kill me i have to go and before going he touched karmima's feet out of respect incident sorry i hurt you okay good to go so there's certain pointers that they say after migra is that karmima was actually they say so i don't know was taken to india for interrogation brought back to Pakistan and then executed and filled i mean this is like this film because the powers that be behind all this one proof right i mean just another thing mr z said to me and he is no he knows things that you know i've had the way he found out about me within 24 hours uh he said to me did not have been dead a long time to get kidney problems and you know if when the americans killed him right in the shoulder body they did with the saddam's sons they shaved their beads and said here they are dead well let's just say um i'm not going to say a gentleman's name but a certain bad guy when events happened in that major city 20 years ago the the bad guy was actually in the american hospital in dubai receiving treatment for his kidney problems so he was being looked looked after by the cia at exactly the same time that this uh if we call it an atrocity that he was alleged to have been behind so that story doesn't uh you know that's uh that story doesn't make any sense but i don't want to go too much there as sad because many of us know the truth behind that event and it's it's all it's it's all out there for anyone who's interested there's been some incredible documentaries made about it and some real real truth warriors of have just exposed everything from the beginning to the end the the computer systems involved the the insider trading um the the architects of the event let's just say how cleverly they use different passports to pass off their uh you know um and how cleverly they they hide behind um certain personas can we say so that they can't be criticized in public um it's all out there and it's it's not a travesty although it's tempting to think it is because you can't live in paradise if you conduct yourself in this way you can never be um you can never be free and uh i just suggest to anybody just come into the light it's a much better it's just a much you know love your universe or your god or whatever you want to call it and and and find the way but to the you know on the on the day in question thousands of people innocent people were massacred massacred and um like how could you do that you know how could you how could you do that and then look into a tv camera knowing what you've just done and blame it on someone else it it's ah yes we need warriors folks truth warriors yes a sad let's let's let's uh end it there except to say you were going to tell me the moment when you found out colonel imam had been killed that must have been awful yes i i was devastated because i found him to be a very nice learned man told me lots of interesting stories and i said that if i was to be uh you know like we're all on a desert island i would want him to be there for his stories because you know like he was in the army told some interesting stories which helped pass the time but one of the things he had was every day he wanted another time like in the morning he asked money captains what time is it and i was like don't tell him don't tell him because if he said 10 o'clock in the morning i got 12 hours at least before i can get to sleep if not more and that's such a long time to wait i mean occasionally then there's they should give me the odd newspaper and i read it all year long they improved and classified ads then they started giving me newspapers that probably were in a a Turkish or something but they thought it was English and so time you know and people said time is money time is life i tell you that a lot of people don't think like that but it is yes a sad on that note i'm just going to say i'm so glad that you're still with us it's been amazing that you've been on the podcast and shared your your story it's just utterly fascinating and and horrific at the same time but of course there was light at the end of the tunnel for you and um very pleased about that i wish you the best of luck with your book thank you very much did i also understand there's there's a film being made well i have adopted or we have adopted the book to a screenplay and we're in talks with some investors good well then i hope to see you back on our podcast and we can um we can talk about when the film film comes out inshallah as we say yes show can i finish by saying salam aleppo alaykum salam thank you thank you and to everybody at home uh i hope you've got as much out of this as i had if you can like and subscribe that will be wonderful and we'll see you next time thank you