Q: Why did you want to go to Iraq?

A: I had been working as a VSO volunteer and got a locally paid job in Guyana, but had student loans outstanding and wasn’t going to clear them on my current salary so I started looking for other work, ideally in the Caribbean as that is a nice place. I was hoping to get a job in the Caribbean. I saw that Bearing Point needed IT people … I didn’t read the advert very well. I thought it said islands – I thought the Caribbean Islands. I sent an email saying that I was interested and they sent me a response saying that it is a job based in Baghdad.

I thought about it. The job was pretty easy. It was basically training IT staff in the Ministry of Finance to develop reports. I thought that is a good job, it’s not military, it’s helping the Iraqi people, it’s kind of what I do in Guyana, working with local people so I thought that would be really cool. Three months and then I could come back to Guyana, job done.

Q: When did you get there?

A: I think I arrived in Baghdad on April 2, 2007.

Q: What were your first impressions?

A: I remember getting off the plane and seeing plumes of smoke just on the edge of the runway and thought: Ahhh geez welcome to Iraq.

Q: When did you start work?

A: I needed to get a badge and that took about a month so I only started going to the red zone in early May 2007. I did a lot of computer work in the green zone but it was all looking at test data bases, things like that.

Q: What was your job?

A: My reason to go to Iraq was to develop reports to get information from the financial management information system but when I got to the Ministry of Finance and met the director I was made aware of a programming team that was there that basically didn’t do anything so I figured it would be better to train the programming team to do the reports.

Q: How was your first experience of going into the “red zone”?

A: I rather enjoyed it. I found it quite relaxing, rather than being in the green zone. I was not in the main Finance Ministry building I was in the data centre. I quite enjoyed it and the Iraqis that I worked with were all computer people so we spent most of our time talking about computers, which was good.

Q: Was getting to the compound hair-raising?

A: We used armoured cars, just two. We were just driving in the traffic low profile, which is how I used to travel in Guyana when I used a motorcycle.

Q: Were you worried you were using the same route every day?

A: We didn’t go every day and we used different routes

Q: How often in the week would you go?

A: When I was doing the training course I went a few times every week. Before that I was only probably going once or twice a week.

Q: How long would you stay?

A: Between two and four hours. It depends.

Q: Before the kidnapping, were there any incidents?

A: You used to hear gunfire and stuff like that going off quite regularly but that was about it. I never heard any major explosions.

Q: In the data centre, were you in a classroom?

A: There were a number of different rooms. There was a training room, a main data entry room, a programmers room. There were a couple of other admin rooms. I used to use the training room and the programmers room. There were only two programmers, a systems analyst and a teacher trainer. There was also a guy called Peter Donkin from Newcastle.

Q: What was he like?

A: I got on with him really well. He wasn’t an IT guy. He was doing procurement. I worked with him because he wanted a database doing that followed procurement systems that he had written up. He was next door.

Q: So May 29, did it start normally?

A: Yeah it was a pretty non-descript morning. The only significant thing I remember is that we were driving along and they lost radio contact. I remember thinking, great the radios have packed in we are going to have to turn around. But they didn’t it was just a blackout the other car was out of sight so they pulled over and waited for it to catch up and the radio was OK.

Q: You get to the compound and what happens?

A: We go in as normal. They take us in but once inside they (the guards) do their own thing. They don’t sit in the room with us. Alan was down the corridor. Jason Swindlehurst was at the entrance, Jason Creswell was in the car and Alec was in the guard hut on a rest period.

I was teaching the programming team. Peter Donkin was in the room next door. He was teaching an Iraqi guy to do procurement stuff.

Q: What happened?

A: The first thing I knew was I heard some guy should get down and everyone in the room stood up so I stood up because I did what everyone else did. Unfortunately when I stood up that put me right next to the door. The door opened and there was a Ministry of Interior police officer there. He had a machine gun strapped over his arm and a Gloch pistol in his hand. His machine gun was pointing straight at my groin. I remember thinking if this goes off this is really going to hurt. I just put my hands up. He said come on. I said Okay.

I thought I was under arrest for a document infringement or something like that.

There were loads of police vehicles there … There must have been about 100 police officers I reckon. I could see probably about four police vehicles one way and a whole stack going the other way, going around the bend in the road. Obviously Jason and the others had gone so some vehicles had already left. I went in the seat behind the driver and the officer who arrested me gets in the door next to me. The guy in the suit gets in as well. At this point I still thought we were under arrest. We drove off with the sirens wailing.

Then they started taking off my clothes and throwing them out of the window. Then I thought, no, no this is an abduction. It was quite calm. I was speaking to one of the guys about David Beckham and Manchester United.

We ended being transferred into another vehicle in the market place at Sadr City. We stood outside in our underpants. I get in the back of this hatch back range rover vehicle first and then Jason Swindlehurst sits on my leg and the other three are bundled in.

Jason Creswell has got blood coming out of his head, all the others are handcuffed with that plastic kind of tape,” he said. “For some reason, the police officers smashed the glass between the driver’s compartment and our back compartment, so glass goes down my leg and all down the back of Jason Creswell. That’s where I got my only injury.

We drive for ten minutes and end up in this house. They pick up Jason Swindlehurst and walk him off. They fire a bullet. Alan and Alec have a conversation about whether he has been shot. They conclude no because apparently you would have heard a gurgling sound. They then pick me up and walk me out. That was scary. I thought: I am going to get killed. They walk me down some stairs and halfway down I hear a gunshot. They then put me in a vehicle and drive me off.

They started pouring water on us. I asked Alan why, is it a torture thing or to keep us cool? They did it to me again some time later, pouring water down my back as punishment. I remember at the time shouting ‘Oooh, ahhh’ even though it was actually really nice because the weather was so hot.”

We were kept in a basement for may be an hour. Then they laid me down on a stretcher, covered me over, wheeled me out to a truck and throw me over the back of the truck. I break a rib when I land because it had quite a high back. They put me in a false compartment of the truck, then Alec and Jason Creswell were put in. It was very narrow, maybe less than a metre wide.

The vehicle drives around for the rest of the day. It stops at night time. I lifted up my blindfold and I could see the stars, there were guards lying around, sleeping. The first thing we said was that we could hear a train and that is how I know we were not on the Iran border where the Guardian says we were. We were not there. We could hear a train and there were loads of mortars going off around us, loads of explosions. It definitely wasn’t Iran. I fell asleep.

They then put the cover back on and we spent the whole day driving around rough road again, going forward, back. I accept that maybe on that day technically we may have crossed into Iran. You know all those back tracks down to Basra, the border being a bit fluid. Arguably we may have crossed into Iran. That would have been the only time.

Q: When you stopped you were put in a room?

A: I was in a room with Alan and Jason. They unbound our hands. We spoke. Jason gave me advice, he said stick to your story, don’t lie, don’t change your story. I had lied but I stuck to my lie. I started off saying that I was married, that was the first thing I said and then it went downhill from there. I always say I am married when I work in these countries because they are quite family orientated and it stops a lot of hassle as well. Obviously over two years, seven months and one day I had to develop my marriage to the point that when I was debriefed in London I was still talking about my marriage and my wife. The officer said to me look we know you’re not married, and I was like, oh yeah you’re right, I’m not. I had forgotten that I wasn’t. I had sort of convinced myself.

My wife’s name was Emma Desouza. I said that she was a Malaria doctor, educated in New York, her parents live in San Paulo.

Q: How did you manage to hold that lie together?

A: What was annoying was that they believed all the lies but they didn’t believe the truth of what I was doing. They said they had evidence I was a military intelligence officer and that just said to me that they had nothing about me because that is just so wrong. It’s ridiculous. The more they told me about the information they had on me the more I know they actually had nothing about me whatsoever.

Q: What were they accusing you of?

A: They said they had information I was a military intelligence officer and they knew that I knew military operations and that sort of thing. I know nothing about military operations. I got to the point that I couldn’t lie about it because I don’t know what a military intelligence officer does. I stuck to my story that I was training the programmers at the Ministry of Finance.

Q: Was it a gentle interrogation?

A: That was. They said we are not al-Qaeda we are not going to kill you. They said we have taken you for an exchange. We are going to do a prisoner exchange. They said their leaders had been captured by the Americans and they wanted to exchange us and I remember thinking oh dear that’s not going to happen. I thought this is going to be a long haul. They are never going to exchange us for them.

Q: Were you depressed?

A: I come from Guyana where there is no air conditioning, constant blackouts, really rough roads, very limited food supplies, you can’t drink the water out of the tap. Suddenly now I was in quite a decent house, we had AC and yeah the electricity was pretty crappy in Iraq but I was ok with it. I had been in Guyana for nearly four years. It wasn’t a problem to me. It was a typical situation of what they wanted, what they got and what they need all were completely different. I just knew we were in it for the long haul.

Q: How did the first hostage video you did feel?

A: That felt a bit strange. That was a bit odd. It was to Tony Blair at the time. To Tony Blair and his government. I’m okY, we are doing well. We need to do an exchange or something like that. All five of us did it.

Q: What happens next? You are still in Basra.

A: I was at that house for a month. We get mock executions, we get battered around a bit. We get handcuffed. This was a bit rough and I am blindfolded. They kept putting guns to our head and clicking the trigger.

On July 8, one day after my birthday, I moved back with Alan and Jason Swindlehurst, but almost immediately Jason is moved out and that is the last I see of everyone. I am with Alan. The next day myself and Alan are moved out I think to a place called Hilla.

Q: How are you transported?

A: In an estate car, in the back with a sheet over our heads, lying next to each other blindfolded. We moved to Hilla.

Q: How did you know it was Hilla?

A: We don’t but Alan said he thought it was Hilla, midway between Baghdad and Basra ... It definitely wasn’t Iran, The kids spoke Arabic in the street. We had Arabic TV.

Q: Held in this room what happened there?

A: We had this bizzare moment with a mock execution. They walked in one day, handcuffed me behind my back, led me out of the building, knelt me down and put a gun to my head and pulled the trigger and fired a round off at the same time. I did think I was dead. I remember thinking: I’m dead. It’s not that bad. It’s not that painful. And then, reality check, hold on, I’m handcuffed and still blindfolded I can hear people laughing. I had this idea in my mind that if I was going to be executed that meant potentially I was going to have to spend an eternity doing something in heaven. I had this idea that what I wanted to do for an eternity was walk the dog so I thought if I feel like I am going to be executed or die I am going to have that thought in my mind so I can do that for eternity. In reality I completely forgot to think about that. I was like s*** I am going to die. It was only afterwards that I thought damn I didn’t think about that.

The guards did two weeks on and two weeks off. Those two guys, the sergeant and his sidekick were OK, but the two guys who came in when they weren’t there were a bit more rough. At one point, they handcuffed me behind my back, stood me on a chair next to a door, put my hands over the top of the door, pulled down on the handcuffs and kicked the chair away. That was quite painful. They put the handcuffs on really tight.

Q: Did you scream in pain?

A: Yes but they told me to shut up.

Q: Were they asking question as they did this?

A: No they didn’t speak very good English.

Q: They were just having fun.

A: Basically yes.

Q: How often were you hung over the door?

A: They did it a number of times. They would kick the chair away and put it back after a few minutes and then leave it for a few minutes and pull the chair away again.

Q: What is the worst thing that happened?

A: Being hung over a door that was quite painful.

Q: What goes through your head?

A: Ouch. There is nothing you can do about it.

I got really sick when in Hilla. I lost a lot of weight. I was in a really bad way, kept feinting. I didn’t drink that much because we could only go to the toilet three times a day but I had diarrhoea and was vomiting …I thought if I’m sick maybe they’ll release me but they didn’t they got a doctor.

A: On December 6, 2007 I get moved to a new location. That is the last time I see Alan.

Q: How keep yourself entertained?

A: I used to work out formulas. There was a pattern on a curtain in triangles, six dots in a triangle.

Q: How did you get through that mentally?

A: I would pretend that I wasn’t there. I pretended I was in a bike shop negotiating which motorbike to buy. There were also dots in the paint on the wall. I would pretend it was an underground system and the dots were stations. I had to link them up using the least amount of track and the least number of trains.”

In March 2009 we moved to another house in Baghdad. I know because there is a huge sandstorm for two days in Baghdad that was in the news.

Q: Have you heard anything about the other guys?

A: The first time I became suspicious that I was the only one alive was March 2009 when I saw on Al Qathar TV they had my picture with the beard and it was only me and that was when I suspected the others were dead.

Q: What drove the kidnappers? Were they nationalistic?

A: They were Iraqi resistance. They are purely there against the foreign military occupation of Iraq. It was consistent all the way through that we were going to be exchanged for leaders.

Q: Did the Iraqi Government turn a blind eye?

A: They have representation in the Government.

Q: Leading up to release what happened?

A: They woke me up at 5am. They tell me to get up because I am being released. I’m just like go away and put the blanket over my head, turn over and go back to sleep. They say no, no you’ve got to get up.

[Describes being driven in three different vehicles]. We turn into driveway. I am told to get out of the car. There is a camera on a tripod, there are cameras all over the place and 10 or 15 people in normal clothes, I have never met any of them. There are about 10 in (camouflage) gear, scarves across their face, big machine guns. I thought s*** this is it I am going to die.

At the end there is a sofa and a guy sat in the seat. The guy stands up, he says Peter Moore, I said yes, he said my name is Sami I am from the Iraqi Government and you are a free man.

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Scotland News