Held Captive by Qaddafi’s Troops in Libya: A Photographer’s Story | Nat Geo Live

In 2011, I wanted to cover the uprising in Libya. So, like so many journalists, we snuck in through Egypt. We knew that one of the great risks for us journalists was getting caught by Qaddafi's forces. So, on March 15th, 2011, I was working with Tyler Hicks, Anthony Shadid, and Steve Farrell, and we were covering the frontline in Ajdabiya. We knew that the city was going to fall; all the signs were there; civilians were fleeing. The mortar-rounds were walking towards our position. That's a sign that they are zooming in on a position. We wanted to stay as long as we possibly could to get the freshest reporting.

Our driver started getting calls saying Qaddafi's troops were in the city and that we had to leave, and we ignored him. That's the first mistake; you never ignore your driver. We stayed; we kept photographing and working on the frontline, and by the time we decided to flee, we drove directly into one of Qaddafi's checkpoints. This is the exact position that we were taken hostage. If you look at Bryan Denton's name, he's a photographer for the New York Times, that's where our car was stopped.

You have to make a decision when you approach a hostile checkpoint. "Do you stop and announce yourself as journalists and hope that they don't kill you, or do you try and drive through the checkpoint and hope that they don't open fire?" We are all yelling something different: "Drive, go, stop." Our driver panicked; he stopped the car and jumped out. He said, "We're journalists." At that point, Qaddafi's troops ripped us out of the car. The rebels that we were with started opening fire on that checkpoint, and we were caught in a wall of bullets. There were bullets everywhere.

I did not get out of the car at that point. All the men had jumped out and had been pulled out. I was still sitting behind where the driver had been, sitting on the left-hand side. I put my head in my lap and started sort of prayed that it would all go away. And it did not. And so, I felt the bullets everywhere, and I said, "Okay, I have to get out of the car," because a car is not armored; it does not protect you.

I crawled across the backseat, jumped out, and one of Qaddafi's troops was immediately on me pulling my cameras; of course, I'm pulling back instinctively, which is not very smart, and so he's pulling back, and we're in the middle of the road, and I feel bullets everywhere. So, I suddenly thought, "Okay, I have to make a run for it." So, each one of us tried to get behind this cement building. When we got behind the building, we were told to lie face down in the dirt. Each one of us had a gun put to our heads. They were about to execute us, and the commander came over and said, "You can't kill them; they're American."

And we don't know why he said that, but Anthony later translated that for us. In that moment, they took my shoes off my feet, tied me up with my shoelaces, my wrists and my ankles together, and carried me away. They put me and Steve in one vehicle on the frontline and Tyler and Anthony in another, and they kept us there for hours while sniper-fire, bullets, and bombs rained around us. We were tied up; we couldn't go anywhere.

At that point, as the fighting got closer, they decided they wanted us to live. The entire time, we were punched in the face. The men were smashed in the back of the head with gun-butts, and I was groped. That went on for the first three days. We were eventually put in prison. We spent a night in prison, which actually was the first time we were allowed to speak to each other openly because before we were blindfolded, so we were scared to speak to one another.

Then we were flown to Tripoli, and we were held there for three days, and eventually, we were released. This is our release as we were brought to the Turkish embassy. The Turkish government was acting as a proxy for the American government because the Americans had pulled out of Tripoli. And this is our car. Two weeks later, Bryan Denton went back to see if they can find our driver. Our driver was never seen again. We don't know if he was killed in that moment when he jumped out of the car, or if he was executed, or if he was put in prison.

But the New York Times sent a team back to try and look for him, and they found our car on the side of the road, and they found my shoe.