In the Hands of the Taliban

  I then made a drawing of the prison, outlining entrances and exits. I listed the shift patterns of the staff, the strength of the walls, the hollows in the wall. I even mentioned two wasps’ nests. I gave the measurements of the courtyard I had paced out so many times before.

  David Donahue, the American Consul General, listened intently and then thanked me. When I finished the briefing, he gave me the telephone number of Nancy Cassell, Dayna’s mother, who evidently wanted to talk to me.

  I don’t know what happened to the information but I hoped that maybe a Special Forces team would zoom in and pull the aid workers out. The main snag was that Georg, the Shelter Now director in Afghanistan, and Peter were in a separate part of the prison and met up with the women only once a week. The men would almost certainly be killed by the Taliban if the women escaped and they were left behind – although Georg did appear to command the respect of the Taliban. It was one of those awful dilemmas, and, after President Jimmy Carter’s disastrous attempt to release American hostages from Iran in April 1980, it would take a very strong, gutsy president to authorise such a dramatic rescue mission.

  Anyway, I felt I’d done my best and all I could do now was pray for them. I went back to my bedroom, which had been set aside for Tony Blair’s last visit to Islamabad. I saw Annie and told her that I had developed a really bad itch and I hoped I hadn’t brought any fleas or lice into her home.

  That woman was totally unflappable. Some women would have put you outside and dropped you in sheep dip, but not Annie. She didn’t even raise an eyebrow and said casually that she’d get a nurse to pop around. She also revealed that she was a qualified counsellor and, if I needed to get anything off my mind, she would be more than happy to help.

  Paul Ashford and Salayha arrived and there were loads of hugs and kisses. Salayha was wearing a shalwar khameez and she looked stunning. We went upstairs and chatted while I put on some make-up and then the nurse knocked at the door. She came in armed to the teeth with all sorts of creams, lotions and potions. I showed her my irritated skin, and she said it just looked like a heat rash. She then asked me if I’d been sexually abused. I replied in the negative – and with that she was gone.

  I did seek Annie out later that day because I wanted to ring Dayna’s mum, but at the same time I felt extremely guilty and cowardly and couldn’t pick up the phone. I had entered Afghanistan illegally, been arrested, was abusive to my captors and got kicked out after ten days. Dayna, on the other hand, had sacrificed her life to live and work among the poor in Afghanistan and was locked up on trumped-up charges. ‘Where’s the justice in that?’ I asked. ‘If I was her mother I would hate me. I really can’t make that call.’

  However, I then reasoned, ‘Yet if I don’t make that call I am being a coward. How can I live with myself then, because her daughter is so brave?’

  We talked it through and eventually I made that call – and Nancy Cassell was wonderful. I told her she had a beautiful daughter in looks and spirit and that Dayna still wore make-up and took pride in her appearance, even though there was nothing to do and no one to see and prison life was routine.

  Dayna was special, I said, and oozed goodness and kindness. She made my day when I saw her using eyelash curlers and asked if I could borrow them. Eyelash curlers in prison – how cool is that?

  Of course I wasn’t telling Nancy Cassell anything she didn’t know already, but she seemed to take comfort from my words, and I felt better as well. I told Annie later and thanked her for her wise words.

  Gary Trotter, the photographer, turned up and took pictures of me in my England football shirt. It was all I had to wear at the time. I’d bought it on the night we had beaten Albania when England played at St James’s Park. He came back later in the day to say ‘London’ – in other words, the Daily Express – wanted me to wear something floral.

  ‘I haven’t got anything floral,’ I protested. ‘I don’t do floral and I’m not wearing floral blouses for anyone.’ Then I pointed out that I had no choice of clothes, anyway, and if he really wanted to take a new picture he should take off his T-shirt and I would wear that instead. He did, and I did, and I’m not sure if the pictures ever appeared.

  I was standing in front of this old statue of Queen Victoria, which some previous ambassador had rescued from a village in Pakistan years ago. It seems perfect in every way until you look down. Poor old Vic has no hands. A passing embassy official said, ‘Yes, it was a very well-kept secret that she was a bit of a shoplifter. One of the Taliban’s first victims, I believe.’

  The embassy staff told me they could arrange flights back to London via Dubai, so we decided to go. It was pointless my hanging around because I couldn’t go anywhere: I was too well known and was therefore a target for any nutter on the block.

  When we boarded the Emirates flight, Paul, Salayha and I were so exhausted that I think we all fell asleep before take-off. I was physically shattered and those two were mentally and physically exhausted.

  Any plans Salayha and I had to hit the shops in Dubai Airport were knocked on the head because the plane was really late and our connecting flight was held until we arrived. We were more rejuvenated on this flight and Paul explained what he and Salayha had done to try to get me out.

  They had collected enough evidence in the way of news-story cuttings, pay slips, and letters from previous employers to prove that I had worked as a journalist for 25 years. They then had all of this evidence translated into Pushtu and Paul arranged a meeting with the Taliban’s deputy ambassador in Islamabad.

  They had several meetings and I know they must have been impressed because the Taliban had mentioned it to me during an interrogation. Paul added that the Taliban had said that, if I didn’t calm down and behave myself, I would never get out of prison.

  ‘We were so close to getting you out but you were behaving very badly. I wanted to drive up to Kabul and tell you to shut up myself,’ he said. But he admitted that the worst moment by far was the first night of the bombing when he thought the agreement to release me would be broken.

  He asked me what I really thought of the Taliban and I said, ‘It’s very difficult because we know they’re brutal and yet they treated me with kindness and respect. People won’t like it but I have to tell the truth.’

  He agreed, adding, ‘No, people won’t like it, but I have to say they were honourable. They gave an undertaking that you would be released and they stuck to their word. They came across as having their own kind of integrity. Richard [Desmond] gave me an open cheque to get you out but I knew right from the start that offering them money could cause great offence.’

  He then revealed that Paris Match had contacted the office to speak to him because one of their reporters, Michel Peyrard, had been arrested in the Jalalabad area wearing a burka. He faced spying charges and his people wanted to know what Paul had done to get me out and whether he would do the same for them.

  ‘Ah, well,’ Paul sighed. ‘Back to the office and the mundane business of shuffling papers. Life’s not going to be the same again.’

  As we touched down at Heathrow I felt very nervous. Home at last! I was wearing my leather jacket and had my old baseball cap planted firmly on my head because my hair was such a mess. The dye I had used had turned it into straw and it would all have to be cut off, I thought. I put my sunglasses on because I wasn’t wearing any eye make-up and I looked shocking.

  We didn’t think there would be many media people to greet us but a pack had turned up, so I just continued walking and ignoring most of the questions thrown at me. I heard a familiar voice shout, ‘Yvonne Ridley’, and from the corner of my eye I could see Jane Dreaper, who had been a very tenacious trainee reporter in Newcastle. Now here she was working for TV. She looked fantastic and I wanted to give her a hug but I had to keep on walking until I got into a waiting Space Cruiser.

  There inside was my sister Viv and we hugged and kissed. Then, as we pulled away she hit me over the head, and said, ‘That’s for putting us
all through hell – and there’s a queue of people waiting to do that.’ Then I turned and saw Jim Murray, my news editor. He looked absolutely knackered and I felt really bad because I realised he must have been through his own hell.

  As we drove Jim told me how on the Friday I was captured, he’d been sitting in the news conference and had commented, ‘I haven’t heard from Yvonne yet but she said she would contact me around noon. I’ll just go and check and see what’s happening.’ He recalled that it had been a slow week and they were still deliberating over what to put on the first seven pages.

  As he had walked down the newsroom, one of the daily people had called him over and pointed to a foreign agency report that said the Taliban had arrested a British journalist and there were unconfirmed reports it was me. He returned straight back to the conference and relayed the news.

  The night editor, Dick Dismore, apparently said, ‘Well, that’s the splash and a spread sorted out, then.’ He says he can’t recall the moment but apparently others in the conference looked at him in a startled way. He is such a pro that I could actually imagine Dick saying it without emotion but without wishing to offend anyone, either.

  Paul Ashford had been brought into the urgent deliberations and apparently had said, ‘I wonder if she could get away with claiming political asylum.’ He freely admits to saying that and I laughed. There’s a gallows humour in this industry and sometimes real life is so bad that you have to resort to it as a foil.

  As our driver headed towards the Lake District, where Daisy’s school is, Jim continued filling in all the blanks from the past ten days.

  ‘Yvonne, I know more about your private life than I ever wanted to know. In fact, you no longer have a private life. We had no idea you’d been married so many times. Then this Palestinian came out of the woodwork closely followed by an Israeli.’

  He also said he’d heard from a variety of my contacts, including a man called Malcolm X.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘He’s one of the former Hereford boys. I have a few mates who used to serve with the SAS.’

  ‘Yes, I know. Well, they all contacted me. Malcolm X wanted to put a team together because he said he knew where you were being held. Several other people made similar offers,’ Jim added.

  I felt really pleased and, while I was grateful for the services of the Tall Man with the Beard, as Paul Ashford is known, it would have been great to be rescued by a bunch of crazy ex-SAS mavericks. There were even some underworld types who wanted to go in. That would have been funny. A set of thickset heavies who look like the Blues Brothers charging in to take on the Taliban.

  There was a lot of laughter and newspaper gossip in the car but I later found out that my arrest had really taken its toll. Jim had taken a phone call at his home on the first Sunday I had spent in Jalalabad as a Taliban prisoner. It was from a friend who told him, ‘This is not good news, mate. We’ve just heard she’s going to be beheaded, executed in the local square on Tuesday morning.’

  The person on the other end of the line is normally well informed and he made the call out of the best of intentions, but I don’t know how I would have reacted if I had taken that message. Another friend contacted Jim to say that the interrogation squad sent from Kabul to question me were, in fact, a torture squad. ‘Very few of their prisoners live to tell the tale,’ he warned in an email.

  For the duration of my captivity Jim came off the desk and was running a ‘crisis centre’, where he was trying to coordinate information about me, both coming in and going out. They were very concerned that any details of my army record would leak or that the fact that I had been married to an Israeli would be reported.

  I gather Rebekah Wade, like me a founder member of Women in Journalism, had to contact several editors and ask them to be responsible in their reports until I was safely released. Barbara Gunnell and Tracey McVeigh of the Observer and Helen Carter of the Guardian set about organising a candlelit vigil outside Downing Street for me, which was later backed by Women in Journalism.

  Julia Hartley Brewer – GBH – hassled her political friends and contacts at the Labour Party conference, and I gather my uncle, Joe Mills, former regional head of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, also pulled in some favours on my behalf. A variety of MPs wrote letters urging the Taliban to be merciful and release me, while both the National Union of Journalists and the British Association of Journalists did their bit too. When Jim told me about all this, I felt quite overwhelmed and moist-eyed. It was incredibly moving that so many friends and colleagues had been pulling for me and I felt humble and grateful beyond words.

  On the international scene I understand the Palestinian terrorist leader Ahmed Jibril intervened and President Nursultan Nazarbayev of the Republican of Kazakhstan also applied pressure. The latter came about via a friend of mine, John Mappin, who married a Kazakhstan-born ballet dancer called Irina. Another mate, Ian Lynch, whom I worked with on Carlton TV, set up a website and email petition calling on ‘British Prime Minister Tony Blair to put Yvonne’s plight higher up his agenda and to take more effective action to bring about her release’. The wording on the petition continued, ‘Yvonne was only doing her job as a journalist and reporting on the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan when she was arrested.’

  He had many other ploys up his sleeve but was contacted directly by the Foreign Office, who told him that creating all this publicity could backfire since the Taliban might think I was a very important person who could therefore be used as a bargaining chip – quite a plausible suggestion.

  Jim Murray had me spellbound with the tales of my mother’s daily briefings to the world’s media from the garden gate of her home in West Pelton, County Durham. Any attempts by the Foreign Office to gag her fell on deaf ears and, as a result, she hijacked the headlines for ten days – slap bang in the middle of the Labour Party conference. Alistair Campbell, Tony Blair’s official media spokesman, must have been seething at the thought of some County Durham pensioner stealing Blair’s ‘presidential’ thunder.

  While Blair had Campbell, Joyce Ridley had two spin doctors, Ted Hynds and James Hunt, who were working tirelessly on my behalf. They planned and executed an international media campaign via newspapers, magazines, television and radio to convince the Taliban I posed no threat and genuinely was a journalist. They set themselves a mission to keep my name and face in front of the world media spotlight while winning the hearts and minds of my captors. I don’t know how much of an impact it had with the Taliban but it did no harm.

  Ted Hynds is a wily old Fleet Street investigator and former Cook Report researcher who exudes the ‘can do’ attitude of a man who knows his job well. James Hunt is a formidable political media consultant whose friendly and easy manner has helped him serve a number of senior politicians and businessmen as a personal aide de camp. They are both old friends of mine and my heroes.

  Within hours of my arrest they had presented my mother with a communication strategy to help free me. My mother tells me that it was a single telephone conversation, lasting no longer than ten minutes, that changed her opinion regarding the true level of political will the government were prepared to spend to try and gain my release. It was a very hypothetical discussion that she had with James, however, one she understood and acted upon immediately. James identified the problem as one of determinism versus political will. James and Ted’s guidance was critical for her, as they had instantly recognised that the Taliban needed to be wooed.

  My mother’s words had to reflect respect for their religion and their humanity, if it existed. Ted stressed there could be no sabre rattling, none of the triumphalism of the Falklands and Gulf wars and no mention of the bombing campaign build-up. Ted and James opened up communication channels far and wide so that these words would be heard. And Joyce rose to the occasion. She may be 74, but my mother, a retired business-studies lecturer, was a human dynamo. My sister Jill provided her with all the moral support she needed throughout the 10-day ordeal. James said my mother c
aptured the heart of the nation with her honest, simple briefings. And Sir David Frost, who invited me on to his Breakfast with Frost TV programme shortly after I was released, told me that I should be extremely proud of Mum, because she had become a great British institution.

  My mother presented me as a devoted mother and loving daughter. ‘Yvonne is a professional journalist, albeit with an adventurous streak, just trying to do her job by telling the world of the plight of ordinary Afghans.’ It sounds trite. But it was a simple concept and basic ideas are often the most effective.

  I have to say I was irritated when the Taliban told me that Daisy was in the newspapers demanding that they release her mummy. I knew my mother wouldn’t have used her so cynically but James later explained she had to be ‘utilised’.

  Their first move was to capitalise on the fact that it was Daisy’s ninth birthday during the week following my capture. Daisy proved to be trump card in the media campaign, as it was her personal plea for me to come home that touched the international nerve. Her appealing face appeared in more than 280 publications worldwide under variations of the ‘I want my mummy back’ storyline.

  To keep the momentum going on the political front, a number of private presentations were made and James arranged for Daisy to write a personal letter to Tony Blair asking for his help. This plan was given legs when they discovered she had in fact written to him on two previous occasions. The first was when she was aged seven. She had written to ask him to stop the bombing in Kosovo, and she was delighted to receive a reply from Downing Street. Three days later the bombing stopped and her self-belief was amazing. Then, last year, after visiting the Dome, she wrote again to the PM when she heard it was to close. Her private letter mysteriously appeared on the global media stage for one and all to comment upon.

  As I said before, my mother was the other key player in their plans. James and Ted coached her in the use of placatory sound bites intended solely for the Taliban. They arranged for a series of international television and radio interviews in which my mother treated the Taliban with respect and courtesy and avoided the pitfall of demonising them.