The Story of Mohamed Amin

by Brian Tetley

  Down in the lobby, Hart studied the layout. The Inter-Continental (now the Pearl Continental) had two entrances on either side of the hotel, both guarded by Special Branch men. There was no way the cameraman could walk out with all his equipment.

  ‘Alan was upset. It was going to be a key interview, which would add tremendous weight to the programme. Anyway, he told me, “Keep ready and we’ll see what we can do.” The magazines were all loaded. All we had to do was find a way out without being seen.

  ‘Sure enough, just before seven 0’clock, Alan knocks on the door along with two or three guys who looked like kitchen staff and said, “Let’s go and do this interview.”

  ‘He’d made a deal with the kitchen staff to get us in and out for a sum of money that probably ran into several hundred dollars. We went out through the kitchen door and drove straight round to Bhutto’s house.

  ‘Ronnie had gone to see Alan Brown, the British Consul in Karachi, to find out what he could do on my behalf.

  ‘This fantastic interview with Bhutto used up all my four film magazines—something like forty-eight minutes in all. We were very excited about the interview. One of Bhutto’s men took some pictures of us. I thought it was for the family album.

  ‘After we packed up the equipment, we drove to Alan Brown’s house to meet Ronnie. I was impressed with Brown. Usually, when you’re in trouble—and I’d been in trouble before—the British High Commission’s answer is, “Do as the government tells you and don’t bother us.” But here was a man who was prepared to go out of his way to help.

  ‘He said that if the authorities decided to arrest me, there was not much the High Commission could do. Not only that, under martial law—which prevailed at that time—they could put me in for seven years and there was nothing that anybody could do about it.

  ‘After Zanzibar, the thought of going in for seven years scared the hell out of me. So I said, “How can you help?”

  ‘He asked me for two passport pictures—I always carry a dozen or so on any trip—and he said he would make me a new passport. In the meantime, if the Special Branch insisted on taking my other passport, I should give it to them because once they had it, they would relax.

  ‘He said they would almost certainly let me stay in the hotel and that he would try to get me out through one of the land border routes, using the new passport. I thought that was impressive for a British High Commission official.

  ‘On the way back to the hotel, the thought of spending seven years in a Pakistani jail kept going through my mind. It was more than depressing. Our contacts in the kitchen were waiting and we went up the service lifts back to our rooms. I took my clothes off and dived straight into bed, hoping for a good night’s sleep. I hadn’t had any for about fifty hours.

  ‘At around four a.m., there was a tremendous banging on the door. I had kept the security chain latched but outside, there were five very angry men indeed shouting that I should open the door.

  ‘I said, “Hold on” and I immediately rang Ronnie and asked him to tell Alan, and then threw some clothes on because they were still banging and shouting. If I hadn’t opened it, they would have smashed it down. These five stormed in. They stuck a newspaper in my face and said, “You are a spy. How did you get out of here last night?”

  ‘Before I could answer they opened the newspaper and showed me a picture of myself together with Alan and Bhutto. In fact, I had assumed it was Bhutto’s private photographer and that was that. But this guy had been from the newspaper, so there was no point at this stage in giving the Special Branch any spiel, so I said, “Well, what’s the problem? I went down to the lobby to look for your men but there was nobody around, and I assumed you realised you had made a mistake in the first place by putting me under arrest since there was nothing I had done to deserve being treated like this.”

  ‘They didn’t believe me. They called me a liar because they said their men were at the doors all the time.’

  Robson vividly remembers that phone call. ‘Mo just had time to say, “The heavies have come for me.” Then the phone went dead. ‘In the past, he and I had shared some “in” jokes about what was apt to happen to bandits, dacoits, or other miscreants captured in the old-time Punjab. They were crude jokes, which featured greased canes and hot chillis.

  ‘More seriously, we’d had time to discuss certain implications of his being uncovered as the cameraman who had illegally taken the massacre film in East Pakistan.

  ‘Pakistan, then, was effectively under military dictators. Those in charge were frustrated and exasperated with the East Bengalis, with the Mukti Bahini, with India and its role in the problems, and certainly with the international news media from whom, they felt, they’d received unsympathetic treatment.

  ‘Now they had their hands on a representative of this breed—and a prime one, of Pakistani stock and connections, which meant there were undertones of “treason,” although he didn’t hold a Pakistani passport. But surely, the old Raj wouldn’t worry or hurry too much over a subject from East Africa who was not “British-born”.

  ‘No doubt Hart had been recognised anyway, and resented, but it would have been a different matter entirely coming down on him. Mo was easier meat.’

  Robson says he, too, developed a high regard for the British diplomatic presence in Karachi. ‘They appreciated the situation instantly. It was a matter of urgency to make consular representations at once, and I pressed particularly that there should be insistence that a fully-fledged diplomat, not merely an official, should be allowed to be present at the place where Amin was to be interrogated.

  ‘In some countries, for example, if an enthusiastic interrogation has led to visible injury, even if the authorities can be brought round to accepting that in a particular case it would be prudent to allow release, there’s already something to hide—and the victim may simply vanish. There are various ways of persuasion, or of applying pressure, of “leverage,” of “calling in favours”—even of bluff.’

  Amin remembers, ‘In the meantime, as the argument went on, Ronnie came along and the Special Branch told me they were going to take me away. They allowed me to finish dressing and Ronnie insisted that he would come with me.

  ‘He said, “If you go on your own, these people are going to treat you like one of their own and beat the hell out of you, but if I’m there, they might feel a little concerned.”

  ‘Just as we were leaving, Alan also came down and said, “I want to come with you, but I’ll stay here and make all the right noises and see what I can do.”

  ‘I was interrogated for several hours. Most of the things I was asked were totally irrelevant. At the end of it all, I had no idea what they were talking about. They were asking me where I went to school, where I was born, what I studied and nonsense like that; and why was I actually working for the BBC.

  ‘The Pakistanis were not happy with the BBC. This went back to the 1966 war with India, when the BBC—wrongly—ran a story that Lahore had been taken. Pakistan never forgave the BBC for that and because I was working for the BBC and able to speak all the languages in Pakistan, they were very concerned that I had been brought there by the BBC to dig out information that they could not dig out themselves.

  ‘I told them that I was only a “technician” who did what he was told, but they didn’t believe any of this.

  ‘Sometime in the afternoon—I think it was around four o’clock—somebody high up called them and told them to put me on the plane. It was the best thing that could have happened. The thought of spending seven years in a Pakistan jail had been firmly fixed in my mind right through the interrogation.

  ‘I went to the airport with the Ministry of Information officer, who had put up the bond for the equipment. And it was the same customs officers who had been there when I arrived.

  ‘Quite obviously, they had complained that Alan had been very rude to them. But since they did not know his name, they had used mine. I knew that they were going to take the film off me but I was determined
to do everything to hang on to it.

  ‘In fact, after the interview, I had actually marked four new cans of unexposed film as “Exposed Films” marked “Bhutto Interview One to Four”. I was hoping they would take that and not the reels in the magazines which were the actual film I used.

  ‘They went through every item on the list. I decided to create a distraction. I told the customs officer what a bastard he was and how very wrong it was to report me when I had said absolutely nothing to them to complain about. They were obviously scared, I said, of reporting an Englishman and had put it all on me.

  ‘He was startled. He tried to make excuses and I said, “I don’t give a damn. Do what you like.” At this point, they were just counting the films. Four rolls were missing from those on the import list. I said they were in the magazines. The Customs officer said, “What makes us think they are not the exposed rolls?”

  ‘So I manufactured another outburst and said, “I don’t give a shit because you’re not going to believe me. After what you did yesterday you’re capable of doing anything. You want to confiscate the cameras. You want to confiscate the films. You want to confiscate the magazines—well help yourself. You’re obviously a bunch of rogues anyway.”

  ‘At this stage, I felt that they were rather ashamed of what they had done and that it was very clear to them that I was not at fault on this.

  ‘They sort of apologised again and told me to cool down and ordered a Coke for me and they were very pleasant, obviously trying to make up for what they had done.

  ‘In the meantime, the officer said to me, “Do you mind opening the gate of your camera?” I was not sure what he was trying to get at but I opened the gate and the last foot of film was still threaded in. You couldn’t tell whether it was at the beginning of the reel or the end—but it satisfied him.

  ‘He said, “That’s fine,” and then he explained that he had been taken for a ride by another cameraman before and obviously if there was nothing in the gate, it had been run through and was exposed. He didn’t worry about the other magazines. He believed me.

  ‘Instead, they took the four new rolls which I had marked. I was promised that those would be sent to the Pakistan Ambassador in London, who would have them processed and view them. If there was nothing against the government, nothing offensive, then the film would be handed back to the BBC. But if there was anything offensive, it would be edited before being handed over to the BBC.

  ‘I made a strong protest, saying it was against the freedom of the press. But obviously, I wasn’t going to win on that.

  ‘I then joined Alan in the departure lounge and with a thumbs-up indicated that we still had the film. He said, “Please buy yourself a present from the duty free shop—it’s on the BBC.“

  ‘I decided to buy a Zenith radio, which I had always wanted. It was priced at a thousand dollars. I assume the BBC paid for it since Alan picked up the tab. I think that was my bonus for the grief which Alan’s behaviour had caused.

  ‘We were put on a flight to Nairobi, and Alan took the plane from there to London with the film and immediately began to put together the fifty-five-minute Panorama special on East Pakistan.’

  Later, the four confiscated rolls arrived at the Pakistan High Commission’s London office, where they spent £250 having them processed. The entire staff sat around a screen with a hired projector ready to censor the film. But, of course, there was nothing on it and the following day, Panorama was broadcast.

  In Nairobi, the Pakistan High Commissioner rang the cameraman demanding a meeting. He was refused. Finally, he said, ‘Can we meet on neutral ground?’ They lunched at Marino’s, an Italian restaurant in International House in the city centre.

  ‘He accused me of taking the side of the Bengalis, while I told him that I was not in the business of taking anybody’s side. I was in business to do a job as a reporter and to report what I saw and what was the truth.

  ‘I was shocked that as a high commissioner, he was not in the picture about what was really going on in his country. He then asked me not to publish a series of reports in the Nation on the situation in East Pakistan.

  ‘Apparently, my Pakistani darkroom operator was the source of this information. He had described the pictures and the kind of story I was writing.

  ‘I told the high commissioner it was none of his business to tell me what I should be doing. We parted on very unfriendly terms with each of us paying our share of the bill for the lunch.’

  A little later, the envoy rang his office with an unsubtle reminder, ‘Your parents live in Pakistan, don’t they?’

  At once, Amin rang Kenya’s foreign minister, Dr Njoroge Mungai, and told him of the implied threat and assured him, ‘None of this has anything to do with my parents.’

  He received another call from the high commissioner, more conciliatory this time. ‘Mr Amin, you don’t have to tell the foreign minister of everything we talk about.’ His parents went unmolested.

  Months later, one of the BBC storekeepers rang Hart.

  ‘Do you remember when you were in East Pakistan, Mr Hart?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s about this fire engine you bought. It’s on our inventory. Do you think we could have it please?’

  At home in Kenya, Mohamed Amin watched the unfolding years of his young son’s life and absorbed himself in his passion for wildlife with his close friend, Masud Quraishy. Sometimes, they drove more than two hundred miles before dawn, and then followed one animal for hours. ‘Never hurry’ is his advice about filming animals. ‘Patience and dedication are needed at all times.’

  It was about this time that his first book, Tom Mboya: a Photo-tribute, was published. Albeit unknown to him, a new direction in his life was taking shape.

  Then, in January 1972, he was assigned to cover Britain’s Pearce Commission that was touring Rhodesia to assess the acceptability of a proposed Anglo-Rhodesia settlement.

  He took Paul Toulmin-Rothe with him as soundman and scored his own little victory over Rhodesian racism. His first clash was at the customs. Paul knew nothing about the sound gear as, typically, he had been given just two hours instruction before leaving and was technically ignorant about the equipment.

  ‘The white customs officer refused to talk to me. He was only interested in talking to Paul and asked him all sorts of technical questions about the equipment which Paul couldn’t answer.

  ‘Paul looked at me and explained to the customs man that he was only a soundman and that I was in charge of the team. Obviously, racism was deeper than I thought. Not only would they not to talk to me, but they wouldn’t even look at me. So I answered the questions while the customs officer continued to look at Paul.

  ‘Then we got a taxi and drove off to Meikles Hotel. I told Paul to go and check in while I sorted out the equipment and paid off the taxi.

  ‘When I arrived at the check-in desk, they were horrified to see my colour. Although apartheid was never spelt out in Rhodesia, it existed, and quite deeply at that time. Paul got a call every day asking him to tell me to move to another wing. Paul kept explaining that there was no way that I was going to move. In fact, that I was in charge of the operation, but it made no difference. They didn’t stop asking.

  ‘I noticed at breakfast and dinner in the dining room that there were no other non-whites there. Everybody looked at me. I thoroughly enjoyed that and I went in to that restaurant a lot more than I normally would have done—just for the hell of it.’

  There was little else to ‘enjoy’ during this assignment. For three days, with Paul, he filmed riots in the shattered streets of Gwelo and other African townships—the worst Rhodesia had experienced. Then 8,000 Africans marched towards the centre of the European area of the city—to be met by a wall of armed, steel-helmeted police, backed up by troops with light machine guns and automatic rifles. As the crowds pressed in, he stood with the government forces shooting film of the angry masses. Tear-gas exploded all around and rioters were arrested.

&nb
sp; Martin Bell, who travelled out with his own BBC crew, abandoned them to stay close to the Visnews ace. Like many before, he quickly discovered that Mohamed Amin could get into places nobody else could and grab the story that meant the most. He was prepared to visit the black townships, where the European crews refused to risk their lives. Bell was out of the same mould. He wanted the truth—and to be first.

  In his autobiography, A Sort of Life, Graham Greene notes that all writers need a little ice in their hearts. The same applies, more so perhaps, to today’s television news cameramen. Without it, their life—ever on the brink of madness—would be unbearable.

  Later, they were caught amid flying stones and gunfire in Salisbury’s African ghetto, Harare. Senior Visnews film editor Al Wells cut two minutes of typical, centre-of-the-fray Mohamed Amin footage: fire engines racing to a burning vehicle, stones raining down, bystanders bleeding onto their sheets, victims being lifted into ambulances, and shops and banks being looted.

  The empathy between film editors and cameramen is remarkable. Though they rarely meet, each is dependent on the other. Few television news film editors can boast Al Wells’ experience. He has been cutting stories for more than thirty years; some of the most dramatic and explosive stories of the last three decades and during this time has often been first to see Mohamed Amin’s coverage. After screening hundreds of hours of his film and video footage, Wells is in no doubt.

  ‘It’s a joy to work on his material. If we had 800 feet of film, which is twenty minutes worth of material, coming in from Mo, it would be very difficult to edit down to three minutes. Every scene would be a vital part of the story.’

  9. Uganda’s Asian Exodus

  AS WELL AS HIS COMMERCIAL acumen, John Platter also remembers Mohamed Amin’s warmth and generosity. ‘On a personal level, he was always terribly generous. He introduced me to the delights of Tandoori chicken and other fiery eastern delicacies, both at his home and at the many restaurants he frequented. He always liked a good meal and was always eager to be host. He rarely remembered a debt, which was among the most endearing of his many natural and social graces. And he had humour. He played many a practical joke. He enjoyed watching the fear play across an adversary’s face as he was informed of some fictitious scoop. But he would right matters instantly. It was this easy manner, too, which made him as acceptable—for purely professional purposes—to murderous villains like his Uganda namesake as to the high and mighty.