American Soldiers save British hostage, Phil Sands, no one knew was missing
A British man, Phil Sands, a freelance journalist, was kidnapped in Iraq and held for five days by armed terrorists who threatened to behead him. Phil Sands was rescued last week by American special forces. An amazing part of the story was that no one knew Phil Sands was missing.
A British man kidnapped in Iraq and held for five days by armed men who threatened to behead him was rescued last week by American special forces and astonished to discover that no one had noticed he was missing.
Phil Sands, 28, a freelance journalist, was held by gunmen who ambushed his car in Baghdad. He said the worst aspect of his ordeal was imagining the anguish of his family. But his parents were holidaying in Morocco and knew nothing of his sufferings until he called them after he was released during a chance raid by US forces on a farm outside Baghdad.
With the situation at hand Phil Sands had pretty much given up all hope and expected his demise to be a mere formality. Luckily US Special Forces made that formality a non-reality for Phil Sands.
For Sands, the escape came after he had surrendered all hope. ‘I thought with absolute certainty, “I’m dead – it’s now just a matter of the technical details,”‘ he told The Observer. ‘I was strangely calm – there was no point in panicking.’
One of Sands’ captors told him, in Arabic, that if he was a soldier, or helping the occupation, he would be beheaded. He was made to record a video urging the British people to remove Tony Blair from office. The same thing had happened to Ken Bigley, the hostage from Liverpool executed in Iraq in 2004.
But the US army, on a routine mission, came to the rescue. He recalled: ‘I was in bed and heard helicopters, which I assumed would move on. But then there were footsteps and a banging at the door. It burst open and two young American soldiers came in with flashlights. They woke up my guard and shone a torch in my face. One of them said, “What the f#@k?” I said: “I’m a Brit, dammit.”‘
The hostage no one knew was missing
A BRITISH reporter kidnapped in Iraq described yesterday how his captors threatened to behead him before he was freed by chance when US soldiers raided the farmhouse where he was being held
(London Times)
[...] A British man, Phil Sands, a freelance journalist, was kidnapped in Iraq and held for five days by armed terrorists who threatened to behead him. Phil Sands was rescued last week by American special forces. An amazing part of the story was that no one knew Phil Sands was missing. (Full story at Missing & Exploited) [...]
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