Captive (2016) s01e05 Episode Script
British Aid Workers, Chechnya
1 [static hisses.]
I'm Jon James and as you can see, I'm still alive and still wanting to come home pretty soon.
I'm Camilla Carr and [sighs.]
Yes, I hope to be freed very soon.
[static hisses.]
[rock music playing.]
[speaks Russian.]
[gun clicks.]
[music continuing.]
[music stops.]
[brake clicks.]
[door opens.]
[men speaking Russian.]
[Camilla Carr whimpers.]
- [engine revs.]
- [tires screech.]
[men chattering.]
[Carr groans.]
[Carr.]
If they walked through the door now If they walked into this room Actually, what I'd say to them, I would just say, "Do you realize what effect you had on another human being?" I would really want them to understand.
Anyway, it was all sort of this mad game.
- [Carr sobbing.]
- [man.]
I said quiet! [Jon James.]
There's several layers of trauma that build in over time.
"Why are you doing this to a fellow human being? You know, I just came here to work with your kids.
" [man speaking Russian.]
I remember being totally crystal clear in that moment and thinking, "Okay, so we're kidnapped.
" - [man speaking Russian.]
- [James groans.]
The only way to react is, like, stay calm.
Yeah.
Just stay calm.
[man speaking Russian.]
[Carr grunting.]
[whimpers.]
[speaking English.]
Keep quiet.
[breath shuddering.]
A few seconds later, the trapdoor came down, and we were sat in complete darkness.
- Are you okay? - I'm okay.
[Carr.]
I just remember my mind started going, you know "Now, how long are we going to be here? They're bound to want money.
What will our parents do?" Our minds were looping.
[sobbing.]
No.
[James.]
I had no idea what was going to happen.
You have to sit and wait.
[explosions.]
[speaks Russian.]
Help me! [boy.]
That's my granddad.
[cries.]
[man on TV.]
I'm standing in the center of Grozny in the aftermath of the heaviest air raid on this city since the conflict began.
At least five times, Russian war planes swooped down on the city and dropped bombs.
Where I'm standing, at least two people have been killed, innocent bystanders, and many more people have been wounded.
The bombing of Grozny was, you know, absolutely staggering.
[women sobbing.]
[sobbing.]
[Robert Parsons.]
.
The people were totally demoralized.
They had nowhere to live.
There was no food.
The economy was smashed.
There was no way of making a living except through criminality.
I really have never felt so scared in my life as when I went down there.
And very few foreigners were going to Chechnya at that time because it had already established itself as being the kidnap capital of the world.
[man speaking Russian.]
The kidnappings became a problem by the end of the first war 1996.
Before that event, there was not a single foreigner kidnapped in Chechnya.
After that period, this business became an industry, and there were gangs whose sole focus was kidnapping.
My name's Jon, and I've worked with children with lots of trauma, and when I heard about the situation in Grozny, it just felt really good to come here and help our friends here.
I understood that there had been a war in the area for the past two years.
Our main aim was to help set up this rehabilitation center for the war-traumatized children.
Very, very little was being done to help these children partly because a lot of the aid organizations had pulled out.
But we had a strong urge to go there.
[hammering on door.]
[whispers.]
[hammering continues in distance.]
[Carr.]
Suddenly, I was coming to terms with the fact that we were naïve going into Chechnya.
None of us knew the real dangers that we were gonna face.
[trapdoor opens.]
[man speaks Russian.]
[Carr whimpers.]
Please.
[breath shuddering.]
Please, help me.
Help us.
[man shouts.]
[Carr panting.]
I meant nothing to him, nothing at all.
I wasn't human to him.
That seared into my brain, looking up at those eyes.
[James.]
"I do not sleep.
My mind is a whirl of questions, none of which I can answer, running like a tape loop around and around.
How long before the news will be out? How long before we will be out? What is our fate? All the time listening to the sounds upstairs, clues to any movement in our direction.
Lying awake, staring into the black.
" [chuckles.]
Well, I know exactly what I'm thinking, but I suppose I'm not meant to say it on television, or whatever, on films.
But basically, "Oh, shit.
Really, this is just too awful.
" I'd never been in a situation which was specific to this nature, though I'm aware of other situations, but to feel it for yourself is a different thing.
They're not my children, but they could have been.
Of course, it is personal.
[Mairbek Vatchagaev speaking Russian.]
When the government heard aid workers had been kidnapped, we felt insulted.
Chechnya was being plunged further and further into chaos.
[sobbing.]
Months before, six Red Cross nurses were shot whilst sleeping in Atagi.
Now Jon and Camilla were unlucky enough to find themselves in the middle of this chaos.
[Andrew Wood.]
First of all, when someone is caught, you don't know where they are.
You have to guess at the motives of the kidnappers.
You have to tell their loved ones at home.
Having done all that, you have to wait.
[woman.]
I heard that they'd been taken captive because a lovely police woman came 'round.
She sat me down.
[chuckles.]
We got a cup of tea, and she said, "We have reason to believe, um, that your daughter and Jon James have been abducted in Chechnya.
" I remember my knees went absolutely jelly-like.
It's seared into my memory.
My dad got a phone call.
Told me.
Initially very shaken.
I remember going out into the garden to have a cry.
Then we went back in, and then, yeah, switched on the news, and then it's, yeah, breaking headline news.
Jon James and Camilla Carr were snatched at gunpoint by masked men from their home in the capital Grozny.
[man on TV.]
The scene of the kidnapping was a small house in Grozny, where the two British aid workers were staying.
They were apparently working with sick children.
This is the latest of a string of kidnappings in Chechnya, where the separatist government has failed to restore law and order after the war with Russia.
In the present lawless atmosphere in Chechnya, getting the two aid workers released could prove a difficult business.
[man speaking Russian.]
[Carr gasps.]
No.
[James grunting.]
[men speaking Russian.]
[man shouting.]
[speaking English.]
You listen! [grunting.]
You take it! - [James panting.]
- [man 2 speaking English.]
Listen to me.
[man 2 speaking Russian.]
[door slams.]
[breathing heavily.]
[James panting.]
- [trigger clicks.]
- [gasps.]
I really don't know how I'd have reacted if they actually had killed him.
- [sobs.]
- Oh, Jon.
I would have fought actually, I think.
I don't know, but then I would have also been caring for Jon.
Or if they'd just shot him, you know, and not killed him, but I'm really glad we didn't have to face that.
[banging on door.]
[shouting.]
[James.]
"I break down and cry out.
'Why do they treat us like animals?' Left alone, I think about digging a tunnel to freedom.
The floor of this prison is just packed earth, and I'm sure our captors would not notice the disappearance of a spoon.
" [James shouting.]
"Beyond the thick wall, we would have a problem of not knowing where we were, and only a little Russian.
Is a dream.
" [children shouting.]
[Wood.]
It was a very bad situation, and getting worse.
Both Russia and Chechnya, but especially in Chechnya, you were dealing, effectively, in a situation of chaos.
[men chanting.]
[Parsons.]
You were caught in this vortex of total confusion which you just simply did not know who you could trust.
And in the end, you had to go, effectively, through the Russian authorities.
And what was the role of the Russian authorities then as well? [crowd chanting.]
[Wood.]
They didn't actually have much control over what was happening in Chechnya either.
You couldn't even tell whether the agents of the Russian government in Chechnya were themselves taking profit from hostage-taking.
- [camera shutters clicking.]
- [Parsons.]
The suspicion I had was that the Russians promoted instability in Chechnya, and that the Russian military intelligence was actively connected to the hostage-taking.
[speaking Russian.]
Moscow always managed to negotiate directly with these kidnappers.
Chechnya was made to look like it was in the dark.
Any trust in us has been undermined and people are afraid to come here, and there's a purely material aspect of this, too.
The humanitarian aid which we need so much is decreasing.
[man speaking Russian on TV.]
[Wood.]
You can often feel more helpless than you would like.
You can imagine what's happening to these people, and your imagination can take you almost anywhere.
[choking.]
[Carr groans.]
There is no one strong card you can play.
[choking.]
[gasping.]
So, you have to go 'round to the authorities, to other people who might have some useful connections.
[man speaking Russian on TV.]
You can keep pestering people, essentially, and you can use the media of that country.
[speaking Russian.]
Many TV programs about kidnapping were broadcast, showing how they treated hostages.
How they were physically abused, humiliated and starved.
The media regularly raised these issues.
Unfortunately, it didn't yield results.
[inaudible.]
[alarm blaring in distance.]
[Carr.]
We knew we were in Grozny.
We could hear the 2:30 plane going to Moscow, and we knew that was that time.
[James.]
We could still hear call to prayer.
We'd have street noise, occasional bit of traffic, people walking by.
They would play backgammon.
You could hear the roll of the dice and the clack, clack, clack of the counters on the board.
They would play for hours and hours.
[speaking Russian.]
[Carr.]
We were aware now that there were four men looking after us, and we started to get to know their characters, so we gave them nicknames.
I think it's a way of maintaining some sense of control within that situation, where, in fact, you're pretty much out of control.
[men speaking Russian.]
So we had HC.
HC being short for Handcuffs [speaking Russian.]
'cause he seemed to like to put the handcuffs on.
[Carr.]
He was very dapper, was HC.
He polished his shoes up, had combed hair.
There was the one called Puppydog.
He was the youngest of the group.
I'd say maybe in his 30s.
[speaking Russian.]
Paunch, he was named for his belly.
Paunch was the more grumpy one, you know, didn't want to communicate with us that much.
[Carr.]
GA was the one that definitely spoke to us first, with the little, um, phrase book.
Guardian Angel, 'cause he was open to communication.
[music playing indistinctly.]
I felt that it was very important for them to see us as human beings, as opposed to just a commodity.
[woman.]
Mom and I went up on the train and went to the Foreign Office and then we met the anti-terrorist unit.
I always remember the first thing that made me really scared, actually, was they said, "Has she got any birthmarks?" And at that point I remember thinking, "Oh, my God, this could be a life or death situation.
" I have faith that they'll come back.
I always had faith that they'd come back.
Put faith in one hand, but the possibility they might not in the other.
I could hold them like that.
[Alla Little.]
It would catch you unawares.
Suddenly, I'd be on my own, just quietly, and it would hit me.
[owl hoots.]
The first dream I had was very, very vivid.
[breathing heavily.]
I was in bed, and sort of asleep, I suppose, but then I remember sitting up, and the door opened and in came Camilla.
And she was only half-dressed.
She was in underclothes.
The fact that she was in underclothes somehow gave me the impression the firm impression, that she'd been raped.
I said, "Camilla, I know.
I know what's happened.
You don't need to tell me.
" And I can remember that quite clearly.
[man speaking Russian on TV.]
[Carr.]
That night, Puppydog opened the trapdoor and he just shouted down, um "Princess Diana kaput.
Kaput!" And his eyes were huge and wide open.
[reporter continues speaking Russian.]
I think what amazed me was how much it affected them, and how much shock they were in about Princess Diana dying, you know.
[helicopter blades whirring.]
[Carr.]
"As Jon relaxes into unconsciousness I wake up watching the square of daylight growing brighter on the crooked cement walls.
I muse on our strange paradoxical relationship we have with our captors.
" [man speaking Russian.]
"They hold us in this place, prevent our freedom, and yet want to be friends and make life as pleasant as possible within the hostage limitations they set.
" [Paunch speaks English.]
No, this direction.
Four, four, four.
[speaking Russian.]
[Paunch.]
My turn.
[Carr.]
Aw, she's beautiful.
Who is she? - [speaking Russian.]
- Your wife? [both speak Russian.]
[Carr.]
HC was really, really good with the dictionary, and so they were beginning to teach us some of their histories, particularly what had gone on in the war.
GA was brilliant at mime, and I can sort of see him, you know, going up through these buildings, you know, half-bombed buildings and chucking grenades out, and then finding huge jars of pickled peppers and dills, and, you know, just gulping them down in one go.
They had very little food, and sometimes they just drank the water from the radiators.
And when they were in the mountains, they were just eating leaves and things.
[men speaking Russian.]
We were getting to know them as people, not just these masked guys with guns who could shoot us at any minute.
- [speaking Russian.]
- Yeah.
[chuckles.]
Then it started going wrong.
[trapdoor opens.]
[Carr breathing heavily.]
[softly.]
What happened? [Carr.]
I was in the kitchen with GA one day.
We'd just had a cup of tea.
Everything seemed quite normal.
Then he suddenly grabbed the bread knife, and he grabbed me, and he had the bread knife at my back.
And he was trying to kiss me, and I was saying, "Nyet, nyet, Jon's moy muzh.
Jon's my husband," and I was staring him out, but also trying to back off.
But he did back off, but he was very angry, and he got me to scrub the floor on my hands and knees, grabbed a gun, trained it on me.
And I could feel him beginning to fidget, you know, when you move your feet around the floor a bit.
And, you know, that made me much more worried, 'cause I thought he could easily pull that trigger when he's in that kind of fidgety mood.
So I just turned to him and I said, "Chai tea, da?" "Yes," he said.
So I made some tea.
That was when I thought, "Oh, my God.
We have to be so careful with these guys.
They can just flip like that.
" Nice, nasty.
Nice, nasty.
[Carr.]
No, no - [groans.]
- [glass shatters.]
[coughing.]
[HC.]
Cheese.
[chuckles.]
After five or six weeks, we did get proof of life.
[speaking Russian.]
[Little.]
They didn't look very well.
They looked very gaunt and thin, and it was kind of bittersweet, you know.
It was sweet 'cause, thank God, they were alive, but bitter in the fact that they looked not well at all.
[HC.]
Okay.
[HC.]
Good job, my friend! Good job! It's okay.
[Little.]
They were in a dark cellar.
There was a ransom a million dollar ransom.
So it was mixed emotions, really.
[speaking Russian.]
Knowing they were alive meant we were on the first piece of string, which could lead to stronger information.
[speaking Russian.]
[Wood.]
And secondly, that the kidnappers were wanting to be rid of their hostages, for a profit, clearly, but wanting to be rid of them is already something.
[man on TV.]
The British ambassador here told me he was confident the couple would be freed.
We can't pay, won't pay, and therefore, there is no sense in holding Jon and Camilla any longer.
We go to the Foreign Office and they say, "The government never pay ransoms.
" We totally respect that.
If you start paying ransoms, then it's just going to happen more and more and more.
[man speaking Russian.]
[Wood.]
You don't just say, "We're not going to pay.
" You want to encourage some sort of dialogue with them in the hope of learning more.
You just need more evidence.
You need more clues.
You need more luck.
It's a horrible guessing game.
Of course, I have to be confident.
It is such a terrible situation, I couldn't bear it if we were not confident.
[James.]
I couldn't quite work out where they were coming from at all, you know.
Ordinary guys, doing ordinary jobs, got caught up in a war.
Their country's destroyed, and then they decide, "Ah, we're going to put our talents in a different direction.
" [music playing on TV.]
As time went on, they were getting a bit hacked off that nothing was happening.
[man speaking Russian on TV.]
[James.]
They were having to do 24 hours on, 24 hours off.
They were tied to us.
In the same way, they were being held as well.
They had to stay.
I don't think they realized, because there was only four of them, how much pressure that would actually How much time and effort that would be.
I think part of the scenario was there was no distraction.
[dog barking.]
[fly buzzing.]
It was 50 degrees outside by now, so it was very hot.
They were getting bored, so they started playing these games.
GA used to come to the top of the trapdoor and he would shout down, "Johnny, Johnny!" like from the film The Shining.
Then he was swinging these handcuffs, and he handcuffed Jon's hands to the top of the ladder.
He started saying, "Oh, your story, working with the children, it's a cover.
" [James.]
"What's your target? What was your mission? Who do you work for? If you don't tell me the truth, I'm going to cut one of your fingers off.
" Dibbing between my fingers with this very sharp knife.
[Carr.]
And this went on and on and on.
And I was sort of a little bit getting to the point of thinking, "Well, you can just cut my finger off if you want," you know.
But, also, I was thinking, "I have to reach this guy.
" I was trying to ask him questions in my mind.
"Why you doing this? You're a human being.
You don't have to do this.
" And just then, I saw his eyes flicker and I thought, "Oh, maybe something's landed there.
" Then a few seconds later, one of the other guys walked into the room behind him with some tea and biscuits, and the whole situation just evaporated.
That really sort of is quite a bizarre scenario to get your head around.
[music playing on TV.]
[Carr.]
All these situations were mental torture.
A bit like having I don't know, like a needle being put into your skin and gently turned and turned and going deeper and deeper, trying to just erode you away.
What are they eroding? Your sense of a free human being, I suppose.
[phone ringing.]
[Helen Carr.]
Around Christmastime, I remember the phone rang late at night, and she said, "Mom, Mom, it's Ca-mil-la.
It's Camilla.
" That's what it sounded to me like.
She sounded not quite right, you know.
"Ca-mil-la.
" And I said, "Oh, this must be a hoax.
" I said, "Mom, it's me.
" And I had to say, "Look, you've got to ring this number, and if you don't send the money, it's good-bye.
" And I tried to make out "good-bye" like it was just a good-bye, but I knew that she would understand what the message was saying.
And I just burst into tears.
And they were saying, "Pachi moo? Why?" And I said, "Well, she didn't believe it was me.
" [Helen.]
There's no way we could get the money.
[Little.]
There's no way we can get a million dollar ransom.
The government would never pay.
What happens next? Nobody knew.
That was one of the hardest things, that Christmas.
And I think particularly after the phone call, that was a real low.
- Be good.
- Please don't make it too much longer.
I don't know how long I'm gonna stay sane.
But we will.
And we have a shortwave radio now.
So, we listen to the World Service.
[chuckles.]
Keeps us sane.
As time passed, I began to think they would never get out.
The situation was was really so bad in 1998 that I thought that they would disappear.
To think that we had failed to take every possible opportunity to get them out of it is hard to live with.
- [gunfire.]
- [shouting.]
[siren wailing.]
And there were other people in Russia at that time that I had dealings with who were most definitely not honest, but that was the nature of the Russian system at the time.
Boris Berezovsky was notable for me, along with other senior people.
He was very close to the Kremlin, and because he's one of the senior business figures at that time.
He also had ties with Chechnya.
So he was the natural person to talk to about this particular case.
Boris Berezovsky became one of the main negotiators.
And it's not clear by any means what Berezovsky's role at this time was.
We participate in releasing of hostages from different countries, and including British people, including French people, and I participated directly in negotiations with Chechens.
[man speaking French.]
After three months, four French hostages are reunited with friends and family.
[chattering.]
[man.]
Berezovsky, once again the unavoidable middleman.
What annoyed us was that there were French taken in Chechnya and they all paid ransoms.
We got rather angry with our government for not.
[chuckles.]
The French journalists had been released and that obviously was because the French paid a ransom anyway.
And we knew we couldn't do that through the government.
So, we thought, "There's got to be something we can do.
" The families of two British aid workers held hostage for five months in Russia's breakaway republic of Chechnya have launched a campaign to try to get them released.
[Little.]
From the word go, we were strongly advised not to go to the media.
In a ransom situation, all it will do is put the price on their head up.
So it's very dangerous for Camilla and Jon.
But five months had gone by and five months seemed like a lifetime then.
We were getting itchy feet.
We just had to do something.
The friends and the families of two Britons being held hostage in the breakaway Russian republic of Chechnya are presenting a letter to Downing Street this afternoon.
We are deeply concerned about them, have been all the time that they've been in captivity.
We will continue to do everything we possibly can.
You believe, do you, that they will eventually be let out? Oh, yes.
Yes.
I really do hold that firm belief.
[sobbing.]
[Carr.]
One day, Paunch and Puppydog were on duty.
[urinating.]
And Paunch was really angry for no reason at all.
[speaking Russian.]
He sent Puppydog out to the bazaar.
[door closes.]
And then he came into our room and he had a knife, and then he was miming cutting off Jon's ear.
[sniffling.]
[James.]
And then he sort of got me to put the handcuffs on, and then, "Chain yourself to the radiator," and, you know, we're talking old school radiators.
[kettle whistling.]
And then he took Camilla into another room.
[Carr.]
And forced me to lie down.
He just slapped me across the face and I thought, "Okay, I'll just have to go through with this.
" [whistling intensifies.]
[whistling stops.]
Going within someone else's body, I mean uninvited, you know, [stammers.]
it's just huge.
And I survived 'cause I took my mind away.
I thought, "You can never, ever harm my essence, my spirit.
My body is only part of me.
It's not the whole of me.
And you can't touch me there.
" Afterwards, he allowed me to go and make some tea.
And I remember sitting in this kitchen, telling my mother what had happened in my mind.
And I could cry And I cried.
[belt buckle jingling.]
What I didn't know was that Paunch in the other room was just forcing Jon to play a game of backgammon.
[James.]
And then now I sat there opposite this guy who just abused my partner.
My mind was a total whirl of thoughts and emotions.
I couldn't really You know, it was like a big whirlpool of mess.
Went to the loo.
I was thinking, "Well, there's a lot of heavy heavy cooking implements in the kitchen.
I could actually knock this guy out.
" [Carr.]
I knew he could knock him out, but, you know, what then? What would happen? We could walk out the door.
They could be surrounding the building.
And I knew for certain that it would be much, much worse if we were caught again.
And so I went back in from the bathroom and sat down and lost the game of backgammon.
[Carr.]
I was hoping that was only going to be a one-off but it wasn't.
"The minutes lengthened to hours and the hours into days.
And it's hard not to let the mind weave its dance in dangled spirals through gray pitted potholes of despairing thought.
If we feel life becoming too intolerable, we know there are ways we could end it.
There are plenty of sharp shards of glass lying on the ground.
" I sort of contemplated, um, committing suicide.
I think I just got into a really low place.
And I just thought, "I'll rob our captors of their prize.
And I'll escape.
" I'm Jon James, and, uh as you can see, I'm still alive and still wanting to come home pretty soon.
I'm Camilla Carr and [sighs.]
Yes, I hope to be freed very soon.
[laughing and men speaking indistinctly.]
[Ashok Carr.]
I've never been angry at them for going, because I understood, and I still understand to this day why they wanted to go and help those children.
These children were traumatized from shelling, permanent noise, loss of their siblings, their parents.
[Carr.]
I'd always wanted to do something like that.
At this particular point in my life, Ashok was being brought up by his dad, and I'd met Jon by then as well.
It felt the right time.
It just came from inside and it really was, you know, like being thumped [thumps chest.]
in your heart, you know, you've got to do this.
This is something you've got to do.
And I remember turning to Jon and Jon was nodding.
[laughs.]
He didn't know what he was letting himself in for.
Now, please make this the last video we have to do.
[Parsons.]
Seven months after they disappeared, the search for Jon and Camilla goes on, though with little evident sign of progress.
The investigation is held up by a conspiracy of silence.
In a society as tight-knit as Chechnya's, few dare speak out against the kidnap gangs.
[Parsons.]
The Chechen government obviously wanted to have them released because of the embarrassment of having them kidnapped on their turf, but they seemed powerless to achieve their release.
They didn't think that the British government was going to pay, so, I wasn't optimistic.
The only possibility was that someone would come up with the money, but it wasn't clear where the money was going to come from.
I personally thought that Berezovsky was the one most likely to be able to bring it off.
[Parsons.]
He had links with everybody, with the Chechen leadership, with Russian military intelligence.
[crowd applauding.]
Many people suspect that he was working hand in glove with Russian intelligence, effectively, to fund the kidnapping, by paying ransoms to different kidnapping groups within Chechnya.
[indistinct chatter.]
[speaking Russian.]
I do not think Berezovsky himself ordered kidnappings, but he'd been linked to kidnappers operating in the region.
Maybe the British knew Berezovsky was somehow linked with this case.
- [chattering.]
- [camera shutters clicking.]
[Wood.]
I do not think that he was a villain.
I understand that he exploited every opportunity he could have, but you could say the same thing of most of the people I had to deal with.
[speaking Russian.]
Berezovsky never did anything for free.
Everywhere he went, there was always blood.
[static hissing on TV.]
[Carr.]
As the time went on, HC changed and his hair was getting very greasy.
And I remember being let out of our room one morning, and HC was just sitting there and he had made this little kind of sculpture with his toothbrush and the toothpaste.
And he was just watching it.
[sighs.]
You know, and I thought, "Oh, my God, he's losing it.
" He was smoking a lot of grass, trying to suppress trauma from his fighting times the death that he saw, and the loss of his family.
[Carr.]
You could feel it cracking and the sadness that he did not want to face sort of half seeping out.
[rock music playing.]
We had gone out there to help the children, and then when we were kidnapped, it slowly became very aware to us that these guys were equally traumatized In fact, more traumatized.
[music continues playing.]
- [grunts.]
- [glass shatters.]
[Carr.]
We were both determined to survive and to survive as sane as possible as well.
[James.]
Whatever happens, I'm going to come out of here being me.
I'm still going to be Jon to the best of my ability.
And the only place to place your security is inside yourself.
Then it doesn't matter what else is happening around you.
"Twice when I was a builder, I had suffered from a slipped disc.
The second time I was so afraid of not having enough money, I carried on working until the pain forced me to stop.
It was then I discovered tai chi.
The essential teachings that I learned I can use now.
How softness overcomes hardness, as flowing water will eventually wear away a solid rock.
Good lessons to remember in our captive state.
" I could think in three dimensions, so I would build shapes, visualize them in my head.
So, that was my escape, was to build rooms in my head.
[Carr.]
I used to go to the sea, walk along the beach.
I had the imaginary little cottage that I used to go into.
[laughing.]
You know, where everything smelled of that wonderful sea, seaweed smell and you'd go in, and it was suffused in the walls of the cottage and the curtains, and always bright sunlight.
We would take it in turns to take each other on, like, a visualization [James.]
our first step onto the soft, giving grass.
- It's lovely.
- [both chuckle.]
So, I would take Camilla on walks through the bluebell woods, under the beech trees and things like that.
[Carr.]
They did used to threaten to separate us, and we really thought it was going to happen one night.
And we lit the candle, and then Jon then proposed to me.
[chuckles.]
I mean, why he did I don't really know.
In a way, it was just like In a way, I felt it was like to give us strength, added strength, if we were gonna be separated.
So, he sort of said, you know, "Will you marry me?" and of course I said "yes.
" [church bells tolling.]
[cheering and whistling.]
[Carr.]
He's one of the most honest people I know.
And he's very giving.
He has hidden depths that he doesn't really show people.
Thank you.
[Wood.]
Over time, there were a couple of calls saying Berezovsky hoped to call me before too long and that I would be pleased to have the call.
There'd been too many disappointed hopes, if you like, for me to immediately start dancing on the table.
But it was exciting to know that something might be happening.
[Parsons.]
One has to assume that although the outside picture is one of total confusion, that there were certain channels which were operating effectively.
That Berezovsky knew who he was talking to among the Chechens and that he was getting proper reassurances from the key people on the Chechen side.
I suppose if I was a real prune, I could have said, "Tell me in advance what you're going to do," but that would've been the action of an idiot.
Berezovsky and I knew each other well enough for him not to say, "Look, this is the price and I'm going to pay it.
" [Carr.]
As the time went on, there were these extraordinary moments and very touching moments, I found.
One day, there was HC with his, well, sort of his nose to the ground, you know, to the floor, and I was thinking what on earth he's doing.
And then I realized that he was watching this hedgehog walking across [laughs.]
the floor.
[inaudible.]
[HC whispering in Russian.]
[Carr.]
And we were all just, you know, standing there and sitting there and watching this hedgehog lapping up the milk.
[HC shushing.]
We'd even forgotten we were captives.
We were just watching.
I remember looking up at their faces and seeing the awe of little children.
And it was like, this is in them, too.
This is the other side of them.
- [Carr.]
Ooh! - [all laughing.]
[dog barking in distance.]
[Carr.]
Every month they would say [speaking Russian.]
[speaks English.]
"Freedom soon.
" So you'd just have that little sense of hope, "Well, maybe, you know maybe something's happened.
" In the middle of the night, they came down.
And we were taken out into a car, heads on knees.
And then we were taken to another car.
And this guy actually turned round to me and said, "Jon, domoi," and really sincerely saying, "Jon, home.
" [Carr.]
And he actually said to us, "I work for Berezovsky.
" So that was the first time we heard of Boris Berezovsky.
And we got to the border and this voice said, "You'll be pleased to know you are now leaving Chechen territory.
" Good evening.
The two British aid workers held hostage in Chechnya for more than a year have been freed, and they're expected back in Britain later this evening.
Eventually, there was a wonderful telephone call saying, "I've got them.
Come to the airport and get 'em.
" [James.]
Landing on the tarmac, it was like, "Wow! We're finally home.
" It's like, [softly.]
"Wow! What a journey.
" [chuckles.]
[crowd cheering.]
[Carr.]
I was aware of the photographers, but what I was really aware of, I think, was just our families were over there.
They still don't know if we're okay.
We need to show it, and it was like we were going, "Yes! We are here.
" We just absolutely fell into each other's arms.
I just remember hugging her completely, and we kissed each other and hugged.
[chattering.]
[Little.]
I think we were all in our own worlds then.
Yeah, it was amazing.
[Ashok.]
Ran into her arms Long, long, deep, deep hug.
Yeah, it was lovely.
It was beautiful.
I'm very happy.
Very, very happy.
I said, "How did you cope, Ashok?" And he said "Of course I cried, Mom, and then I got on with my life.
" [laughs.]
It's beyond words really, isn't it? I mean when you've been captive for that amount of time and you come out and you see the dawn and and see all our family again.
[sighs deeply.]
They both sounded very well and, of course, very happy.
[Wood.]
In many important ways, you've been lucky.
You cannot say to yourself, "I did this, I'm a great guy.
" What you can say is, "We have tried our best and thank God something's worked.
" [man on TV.]
But attention has now turned to the role played by the Russian politician and businessman Boris Berezovsky.
It was his private plane they arrived in last night and though the Foreign Office won't comment, the speculation is that the man paid a ransom to free Jon and Camilla.
[Wood.]
When he delivered them, I didn't ask him, "Did you have to pay?" I mean, it's perfectly ridiculous to suppose that if he said, "Yes, and it cost $2 million," or something, I would then say, "Well, I can't do that, so please take them back.
" I mean, that's just impossible.
[chattering.]
[Vatchagaev speaking Russian.]
I think the British authorities maybe didn't pay the ransom directly, but gave Berezovsky carte blanche to do business in Britain.
In other words, they turned a blind eye to his methods.
[laughing.]
Maybe it is worth dealing with an animal like Berezovsky if it saves somebody's life.
[Carr.]
I used to think about what happened to all of them.
And I know there was another war, so it's quite likely that they fought again, probably, and probably were killed.
After we had been out a few months, we heard the same music that was playing on the tape when Paunch raped me.
And, so immediately, I was on the alert, and then I suddenly thought, "Right, I'm going to change this.
" Because it would affect me for the rest of my life otherwise.
And I jumped onto the table, and I just danced and danced and danced.
In a sense, I have forgiven them.
But what does that actually mean? It doesn't mean that I might not be angry with them again.
You see, it's not like that.
But I also have a sense of compassion for them and understanding of where they came from.
There's one quote that kind of encapsulates my feeling about this and how we are as human beings.
And it's Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
"If only there were evil people somewhere, insidiously committing evil deeds and it was necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them.
But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.
And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" [somber music playing.]
I'm Jon James and as you can see, I'm still alive and still wanting to come home pretty soon.
I'm Camilla Carr and [sighs.]
Yes, I hope to be freed very soon.
[static hisses.]
[rock music playing.]
[speaks Russian.]
[gun clicks.]
[music continuing.]
[music stops.]
[brake clicks.]
[door opens.]
[men speaking Russian.]
[Camilla Carr whimpers.]
- [engine revs.]
- [tires screech.]
[men chattering.]
[Carr groans.]
[Carr.]
If they walked through the door now If they walked into this room Actually, what I'd say to them, I would just say, "Do you realize what effect you had on another human being?" I would really want them to understand.
Anyway, it was all sort of this mad game.
- [Carr sobbing.]
- [man.]
I said quiet! [Jon James.]
There's several layers of trauma that build in over time.
"Why are you doing this to a fellow human being? You know, I just came here to work with your kids.
" [man speaking Russian.]
I remember being totally crystal clear in that moment and thinking, "Okay, so we're kidnapped.
" - [man speaking Russian.]
- [James groans.]
The only way to react is, like, stay calm.
Yeah.
Just stay calm.
[man speaking Russian.]
[Carr grunting.]
[whimpers.]
[speaking English.]
Keep quiet.
[breath shuddering.]
A few seconds later, the trapdoor came down, and we were sat in complete darkness.
- Are you okay? - I'm okay.
[Carr.]
I just remember my mind started going, you know "Now, how long are we going to be here? They're bound to want money.
What will our parents do?" Our minds were looping.
[sobbing.]
No.
[James.]
I had no idea what was going to happen.
You have to sit and wait.
[explosions.]
[speaks Russian.]
Help me! [boy.]
That's my granddad.
[cries.]
[man on TV.]
I'm standing in the center of Grozny in the aftermath of the heaviest air raid on this city since the conflict began.
At least five times, Russian war planes swooped down on the city and dropped bombs.
Where I'm standing, at least two people have been killed, innocent bystanders, and many more people have been wounded.
The bombing of Grozny was, you know, absolutely staggering.
[women sobbing.]
[sobbing.]
[Robert Parsons.]
.
The people were totally demoralized.
They had nowhere to live.
There was no food.
The economy was smashed.
There was no way of making a living except through criminality.
I really have never felt so scared in my life as when I went down there.
And very few foreigners were going to Chechnya at that time because it had already established itself as being the kidnap capital of the world.
[man speaking Russian.]
The kidnappings became a problem by the end of the first war 1996.
Before that event, there was not a single foreigner kidnapped in Chechnya.
After that period, this business became an industry, and there were gangs whose sole focus was kidnapping.
My name's Jon, and I've worked with children with lots of trauma, and when I heard about the situation in Grozny, it just felt really good to come here and help our friends here.
I understood that there had been a war in the area for the past two years.
Our main aim was to help set up this rehabilitation center for the war-traumatized children.
Very, very little was being done to help these children partly because a lot of the aid organizations had pulled out.
But we had a strong urge to go there.
[hammering on door.]
[whispers.]
[hammering continues in distance.]
[Carr.]
Suddenly, I was coming to terms with the fact that we were naïve going into Chechnya.
None of us knew the real dangers that we were gonna face.
[trapdoor opens.]
[man speaks Russian.]
[Carr whimpers.]
Please.
[breath shuddering.]
Please, help me.
Help us.
[man shouts.]
[Carr panting.]
I meant nothing to him, nothing at all.
I wasn't human to him.
That seared into my brain, looking up at those eyes.
[James.]
"I do not sleep.
My mind is a whirl of questions, none of which I can answer, running like a tape loop around and around.
How long before the news will be out? How long before we will be out? What is our fate? All the time listening to the sounds upstairs, clues to any movement in our direction.
Lying awake, staring into the black.
" [chuckles.]
Well, I know exactly what I'm thinking, but I suppose I'm not meant to say it on television, or whatever, on films.
But basically, "Oh, shit.
Really, this is just too awful.
" I'd never been in a situation which was specific to this nature, though I'm aware of other situations, but to feel it for yourself is a different thing.
They're not my children, but they could have been.
Of course, it is personal.
[Mairbek Vatchagaev speaking Russian.]
When the government heard aid workers had been kidnapped, we felt insulted.
Chechnya was being plunged further and further into chaos.
[sobbing.]
Months before, six Red Cross nurses were shot whilst sleeping in Atagi.
Now Jon and Camilla were unlucky enough to find themselves in the middle of this chaos.
[Andrew Wood.]
First of all, when someone is caught, you don't know where they are.
You have to guess at the motives of the kidnappers.
You have to tell their loved ones at home.
Having done all that, you have to wait.
[woman.]
I heard that they'd been taken captive because a lovely police woman came 'round.
She sat me down.
[chuckles.]
We got a cup of tea, and she said, "We have reason to believe, um, that your daughter and Jon James have been abducted in Chechnya.
" I remember my knees went absolutely jelly-like.
It's seared into my memory.
My dad got a phone call.
Told me.
Initially very shaken.
I remember going out into the garden to have a cry.
Then we went back in, and then, yeah, switched on the news, and then it's, yeah, breaking headline news.
Jon James and Camilla Carr were snatched at gunpoint by masked men from their home in the capital Grozny.
[man on TV.]
The scene of the kidnapping was a small house in Grozny, where the two British aid workers were staying.
They were apparently working with sick children.
This is the latest of a string of kidnappings in Chechnya, where the separatist government has failed to restore law and order after the war with Russia.
In the present lawless atmosphere in Chechnya, getting the two aid workers released could prove a difficult business.
[man speaking Russian.]
[Carr gasps.]
No.
[James grunting.]
[men speaking Russian.]
[man shouting.]
[speaking English.]
You listen! [grunting.]
You take it! - [James panting.]
- [man 2 speaking English.]
Listen to me.
[man 2 speaking Russian.]
[door slams.]
[breathing heavily.]
[James panting.]
- [trigger clicks.]
- [gasps.]
I really don't know how I'd have reacted if they actually had killed him.
- [sobs.]
- Oh, Jon.
I would have fought actually, I think.
I don't know, but then I would have also been caring for Jon.
Or if they'd just shot him, you know, and not killed him, but I'm really glad we didn't have to face that.
[banging on door.]
[shouting.]
[James.]
"I break down and cry out.
'Why do they treat us like animals?' Left alone, I think about digging a tunnel to freedom.
The floor of this prison is just packed earth, and I'm sure our captors would not notice the disappearance of a spoon.
" [James shouting.]
"Beyond the thick wall, we would have a problem of not knowing where we were, and only a little Russian.
Is a dream.
" [children shouting.]
[Wood.]
It was a very bad situation, and getting worse.
Both Russia and Chechnya, but especially in Chechnya, you were dealing, effectively, in a situation of chaos.
[men chanting.]
[Parsons.]
You were caught in this vortex of total confusion which you just simply did not know who you could trust.
And in the end, you had to go, effectively, through the Russian authorities.
And what was the role of the Russian authorities then as well? [crowd chanting.]
[Wood.]
They didn't actually have much control over what was happening in Chechnya either.
You couldn't even tell whether the agents of the Russian government in Chechnya were themselves taking profit from hostage-taking.
- [camera shutters clicking.]
- [Parsons.]
The suspicion I had was that the Russians promoted instability in Chechnya, and that the Russian military intelligence was actively connected to the hostage-taking.
[speaking Russian.]
Moscow always managed to negotiate directly with these kidnappers.
Chechnya was made to look like it was in the dark.
Any trust in us has been undermined and people are afraid to come here, and there's a purely material aspect of this, too.
The humanitarian aid which we need so much is decreasing.
[man speaking Russian on TV.]
[Wood.]
You can often feel more helpless than you would like.
You can imagine what's happening to these people, and your imagination can take you almost anywhere.
[choking.]
[Carr groans.]
There is no one strong card you can play.
[choking.]
[gasping.]
So, you have to go 'round to the authorities, to other people who might have some useful connections.
[man speaking Russian on TV.]
You can keep pestering people, essentially, and you can use the media of that country.
[speaking Russian.]
Many TV programs about kidnapping were broadcast, showing how they treated hostages.
How they were physically abused, humiliated and starved.
The media regularly raised these issues.
Unfortunately, it didn't yield results.
[inaudible.]
[alarm blaring in distance.]
[Carr.]
We knew we were in Grozny.
We could hear the 2:30 plane going to Moscow, and we knew that was that time.
[James.]
We could still hear call to prayer.
We'd have street noise, occasional bit of traffic, people walking by.
They would play backgammon.
You could hear the roll of the dice and the clack, clack, clack of the counters on the board.
They would play for hours and hours.
[speaking Russian.]
[Carr.]
We were aware now that there were four men looking after us, and we started to get to know their characters, so we gave them nicknames.
I think it's a way of maintaining some sense of control within that situation, where, in fact, you're pretty much out of control.
[men speaking Russian.]
So we had HC.
HC being short for Handcuffs [speaking Russian.]
'cause he seemed to like to put the handcuffs on.
[Carr.]
He was very dapper, was HC.
He polished his shoes up, had combed hair.
There was the one called Puppydog.
He was the youngest of the group.
I'd say maybe in his 30s.
[speaking Russian.]
Paunch, he was named for his belly.
Paunch was the more grumpy one, you know, didn't want to communicate with us that much.
[Carr.]
GA was the one that definitely spoke to us first, with the little, um, phrase book.
Guardian Angel, 'cause he was open to communication.
[music playing indistinctly.]
I felt that it was very important for them to see us as human beings, as opposed to just a commodity.
[woman.]
Mom and I went up on the train and went to the Foreign Office and then we met the anti-terrorist unit.
I always remember the first thing that made me really scared, actually, was they said, "Has she got any birthmarks?" And at that point I remember thinking, "Oh, my God, this could be a life or death situation.
" I have faith that they'll come back.
I always had faith that they'd come back.
Put faith in one hand, but the possibility they might not in the other.
I could hold them like that.
[Alla Little.]
It would catch you unawares.
Suddenly, I'd be on my own, just quietly, and it would hit me.
[owl hoots.]
The first dream I had was very, very vivid.
[breathing heavily.]
I was in bed, and sort of asleep, I suppose, but then I remember sitting up, and the door opened and in came Camilla.
And she was only half-dressed.
She was in underclothes.
The fact that she was in underclothes somehow gave me the impression the firm impression, that she'd been raped.
I said, "Camilla, I know.
I know what's happened.
You don't need to tell me.
" And I can remember that quite clearly.
[man speaking Russian on TV.]
[Carr.]
That night, Puppydog opened the trapdoor and he just shouted down, um "Princess Diana kaput.
Kaput!" And his eyes were huge and wide open.
[reporter continues speaking Russian.]
I think what amazed me was how much it affected them, and how much shock they were in about Princess Diana dying, you know.
[helicopter blades whirring.]
[Carr.]
"As Jon relaxes into unconsciousness I wake up watching the square of daylight growing brighter on the crooked cement walls.
I muse on our strange paradoxical relationship we have with our captors.
" [man speaking Russian.]
"They hold us in this place, prevent our freedom, and yet want to be friends and make life as pleasant as possible within the hostage limitations they set.
" [Paunch speaks English.]
No, this direction.
Four, four, four.
[speaking Russian.]
[Paunch.]
My turn.
[Carr.]
Aw, she's beautiful.
Who is she? - [speaking Russian.]
- Your wife? [both speak Russian.]
[Carr.]
HC was really, really good with the dictionary, and so they were beginning to teach us some of their histories, particularly what had gone on in the war.
GA was brilliant at mime, and I can sort of see him, you know, going up through these buildings, you know, half-bombed buildings and chucking grenades out, and then finding huge jars of pickled peppers and dills, and, you know, just gulping them down in one go.
They had very little food, and sometimes they just drank the water from the radiators.
And when they were in the mountains, they were just eating leaves and things.
[men speaking Russian.]
We were getting to know them as people, not just these masked guys with guns who could shoot us at any minute.
- [speaking Russian.]
- Yeah.
[chuckles.]
Then it started going wrong.
[trapdoor opens.]
[Carr breathing heavily.]
[softly.]
What happened? [Carr.]
I was in the kitchen with GA one day.
We'd just had a cup of tea.
Everything seemed quite normal.
Then he suddenly grabbed the bread knife, and he grabbed me, and he had the bread knife at my back.
And he was trying to kiss me, and I was saying, "Nyet, nyet, Jon's moy muzh.
Jon's my husband," and I was staring him out, but also trying to back off.
But he did back off, but he was very angry, and he got me to scrub the floor on my hands and knees, grabbed a gun, trained it on me.
And I could feel him beginning to fidget, you know, when you move your feet around the floor a bit.
And, you know, that made me much more worried, 'cause I thought he could easily pull that trigger when he's in that kind of fidgety mood.
So I just turned to him and I said, "Chai tea, da?" "Yes," he said.
So I made some tea.
That was when I thought, "Oh, my God.
We have to be so careful with these guys.
They can just flip like that.
" Nice, nasty.
Nice, nasty.
[Carr.]
No, no - [groans.]
- [glass shatters.]
[coughing.]
[HC.]
Cheese.
[chuckles.]
After five or six weeks, we did get proof of life.
[speaking Russian.]
[Little.]
They didn't look very well.
They looked very gaunt and thin, and it was kind of bittersweet, you know.
It was sweet 'cause, thank God, they were alive, but bitter in the fact that they looked not well at all.
[HC.]
Okay.
[HC.]
Good job, my friend! Good job! It's okay.
[Little.]
They were in a dark cellar.
There was a ransom a million dollar ransom.
So it was mixed emotions, really.
[speaking Russian.]
Knowing they were alive meant we were on the first piece of string, which could lead to stronger information.
[speaking Russian.]
[Wood.]
And secondly, that the kidnappers were wanting to be rid of their hostages, for a profit, clearly, but wanting to be rid of them is already something.
[man on TV.]
The British ambassador here told me he was confident the couple would be freed.
We can't pay, won't pay, and therefore, there is no sense in holding Jon and Camilla any longer.
We go to the Foreign Office and they say, "The government never pay ransoms.
" We totally respect that.
If you start paying ransoms, then it's just going to happen more and more and more.
[man speaking Russian.]
[Wood.]
You don't just say, "We're not going to pay.
" You want to encourage some sort of dialogue with them in the hope of learning more.
You just need more evidence.
You need more clues.
You need more luck.
It's a horrible guessing game.
Of course, I have to be confident.
It is such a terrible situation, I couldn't bear it if we were not confident.
[James.]
I couldn't quite work out where they were coming from at all, you know.
Ordinary guys, doing ordinary jobs, got caught up in a war.
Their country's destroyed, and then they decide, "Ah, we're going to put our talents in a different direction.
" [music playing on TV.]
As time went on, they were getting a bit hacked off that nothing was happening.
[man speaking Russian on TV.]
[James.]
They were having to do 24 hours on, 24 hours off.
They were tied to us.
In the same way, they were being held as well.
They had to stay.
I don't think they realized, because there was only four of them, how much pressure that would actually How much time and effort that would be.
I think part of the scenario was there was no distraction.
[dog barking.]
[fly buzzing.]
It was 50 degrees outside by now, so it was very hot.
They were getting bored, so they started playing these games.
GA used to come to the top of the trapdoor and he would shout down, "Johnny, Johnny!" like from the film The Shining.
Then he was swinging these handcuffs, and he handcuffed Jon's hands to the top of the ladder.
He started saying, "Oh, your story, working with the children, it's a cover.
" [James.]
"What's your target? What was your mission? Who do you work for? If you don't tell me the truth, I'm going to cut one of your fingers off.
" Dibbing between my fingers with this very sharp knife.
[Carr.]
And this went on and on and on.
And I was sort of a little bit getting to the point of thinking, "Well, you can just cut my finger off if you want," you know.
But, also, I was thinking, "I have to reach this guy.
" I was trying to ask him questions in my mind.
"Why you doing this? You're a human being.
You don't have to do this.
" And just then, I saw his eyes flicker and I thought, "Oh, maybe something's landed there.
" Then a few seconds later, one of the other guys walked into the room behind him with some tea and biscuits, and the whole situation just evaporated.
That really sort of is quite a bizarre scenario to get your head around.
[music playing on TV.]
[Carr.]
All these situations were mental torture.
A bit like having I don't know, like a needle being put into your skin and gently turned and turned and going deeper and deeper, trying to just erode you away.
What are they eroding? Your sense of a free human being, I suppose.
[phone ringing.]
[Helen Carr.]
Around Christmastime, I remember the phone rang late at night, and she said, "Mom, Mom, it's Ca-mil-la.
It's Camilla.
" That's what it sounded to me like.
She sounded not quite right, you know.
"Ca-mil-la.
" And I said, "Oh, this must be a hoax.
" I said, "Mom, it's me.
" And I had to say, "Look, you've got to ring this number, and if you don't send the money, it's good-bye.
" And I tried to make out "good-bye" like it was just a good-bye, but I knew that she would understand what the message was saying.
And I just burst into tears.
And they were saying, "Pachi moo? Why?" And I said, "Well, she didn't believe it was me.
" [Helen.]
There's no way we could get the money.
[Little.]
There's no way we can get a million dollar ransom.
The government would never pay.
What happens next? Nobody knew.
That was one of the hardest things, that Christmas.
And I think particularly after the phone call, that was a real low.
- Be good.
- Please don't make it too much longer.
I don't know how long I'm gonna stay sane.
But we will.
And we have a shortwave radio now.
So, we listen to the World Service.
[chuckles.]
Keeps us sane.
As time passed, I began to think they would never get out.
The situation was was really so bad in 1998 that I thought that they would disappear.
To think that we had failed to take every possible opportunity to get them out of it is hard to live with.
- [gunfire.]
- [shouting.]
[siren wailing.]
And there were other people in Russia at that time that I had dealings with who were most definitely not honest, but that was the nature of the Russian system at the time.
Boris Berezovsky was notable for me, along with other senior people.
He was very close to the Kremlin, and because he's one of the senior business figures at that time.
He also had ties with Chechnya.
So he was the natural person to talk to about this particular case.
Boris Berezovsky became one of the main negotiators.
And it's not clear by any means what Berezovsky's role at this time was.
We participate in releasing of hostages from different countries, and including British people, including French people, and I participated directly in negotiations with Chechens.
[man speaking French.]
After three months, four French hostages are reunited with friends and family.
[chattering.]
[man.]
Berezovsky, once again the unavoidable middleman.
What annoyed us was that there were French taken in Chechnya and they all paid ransoms.
We got rather angry with our government for not.
[chuckles.]
The French journalists had been released and that obviously was because the French paid a ransom anyway.
And we knew we couldn't do that through the government.
So, we thought, "There's got to be something we can do.
" The families of two British aid workers held hostage for five months in Russia's breakaway republic of Chechnya have launched a campaign to try to get them released.
[Little.]
From the word go, we were strongly advised not to go to the media.
In a ransom situation, all it will do is put the price on their head up.
So it's very dangerous for Camilla and Jon.
But five months had gone by and five months seemed like a lifetime then.
We were getting itchy feet.
We just had to do something.
The friends and the families of two Britons being held hostage in the breakaway Russian republic of Chechnya are presenting a letter to Downing Street this afternoon.
We are deeply concerned about them, have been all the time that they've been in captivity.
We will continue to do everything we possibly can.
You believe, do you, that they will eventually be let out? Oh, yes.
Yes.
I really do hold that firm belief.
[sobbing.]
[Carr.]
One day, Paunch and Puppydog were on duty.
[urinating.]
And Paunch was really angry for no reason at all.
[speaking Russian.]
He sent Puppydog out to the bazaar.
[door closes.]
And then he came into our room and he had a knife, and then he was miming cutting off Jon's ear.
[sniffling.]
[James.]
And then he sort of got me to put the handcuffs on, and then, "Chain yourself to the radiator," and, you know, we're talking old school radiators.
[kettle whistling.]
And then he took Camilla into another room.
[Carr.]
And forced me to lie down.
He just slapped me across the face and I thought, "Okay, I'll just have to go through with this.
" [whistling intensifies.]
[whistling stops.]
Going within someone else's body, I mean uninvited, you know, [stammers.]
it's just huge.
And I survived 'cause I took my mind away.
I thought, "You can never, ever harm my essence, my spirit.
My body is only part of me.
It's not the whole of me.
And you can't touch me there.
" Afterwards, he allowed me to go and make some tea.
And I remember sitting in this kitchen, telling my mother what had happened in my mind.
And I could cry And I cried.
[belt buckle jingling.]
What I didn't know was that Paunch in the other room was just forcing Jon to play a game of backgammon.
[James.]
And then now I sat there opposite this guy who just abused my partner.
My mind was a total whirl of thoughts and emotions.
I couldn't really You know, it was like a big whirlpool of mess.
Went to the loo.
I was thinking, "Well, there's a lot of heavy heavy cooking implements in the kitchen.
I could actually knock this guy out.
" [Carr.]
I knew he could knock him out, but, you know, what then? What would happen? We could walk out the door.
They could be surrounding the building.
And I knew for certain that it would be much, much worse if we were caught again.
And so I went back in from the bathroom and sat down and lost the game of backgammon.
[Carr.]
I was hoping that was only going to be a one-off but it wasn't.
"The minutes lengthened to hours and the hours into days.
And it's hard not to let the mind weave its dance in dangled spirals through gray pitted potholes of despairing thought.
If we feel life becoming too intolerable, we know there are ways we could end it.
There are plenty of sharp shards of glass lying on the ground.
" I sort of contemplated, um, committing suicide.
I think I just got into a really low place.
And I just thought, "I'll rob our captors of their prize.
And I'll escape.
" I'm Jon James, and, uh as you can see, I'm still alive and still wanting to come home pretty soon.
I'm Camilla Carr and [sighs.]
Yes, I hope to be freed very soon.
[laughing and men speaking indistinctly.]
[Ashok Carr.]
I've never been angry at them for going, because I understood, and I still understand to this day why they wanted to go and help those children.
These children were traumatized from shelling, permanent noise, loss of their siblings, their parents.
[Carr.]
I'd always wanted to do something like that.
At this particular point in my life, Ashok was being brought up by his dad, and I'd met Jon by then as well.
It felt the right time.
It just came from inside and it really was, you know, like being thumped [thumps chest.]
in your heart, you know, you've got to do this.
This is something you've got to do.
And I remember turning to Jon and Jon was nodding.
[laughs.]
He didn't know what he was letting himself in for.
Now, please make this the last video we have to do.
[Parsons.]
Seven months after they disappeared, the search for Jon and Camilla goes on, though with little evident sign of progress.
The investigation is held up by a conspiracy of silence.
In a society as tight-knit as Chechnya's, few dare speak out against the kidnap gangs.
[Parsons.]
The Chechen government obviously wanted to have them released because of the embarrassment of having them kidnapped on their turf, but they seemed powerless to achieve their release.
They didn't think that the British government was going to pay, so, I wasn't optimistic.
The only possibility was that someone would come up with the money, but it wasn't clear where the money was going to come from.
I personally thought that Berezovsky was the one most likely to be able to bring it off.
[Parsons.]
He had links with everybody, with the Chechen leadership, with Russian military intelligence.
[crowd applauding.]
Many people suspect that he was working hand in glove with Russian intelligence, effectively, to fund the kidnapping, by paying ransoms to different kidnapping groups within Chechnya.
[indistinct chatter.]
[speaking Russian.]
I do not think Berezovsky himself ordered kidnappings, but he'd been linked to kidnappers operating in the region.
Maybe the British knew Berezovsky was somehow linked with this case.
- [chattering.]
- [camera shutters clicking.]
[Wood.]
I do not think that he was a villain.
I understand that he exploited every opportunity he could have, but you could say the same thing of most of the people I had to deal with.
[speaking Russian.]
Berezovsky never did anything for free.
Everywhere he went, there was always blood.
[static hissing on TV.]
[Carr.]
As the time went on, HC changed and his hair was getting very greasy.
And I remember being let out of our room one morning, and HC was just sitting there and he had made this little kind of sculpture with his toothbrush and the toothpaste.
And he was just watching it.
[sighs.]
You know, and I thought, "Oh, my God, he's losing it.
" He was smoking a lot of grass, trying to suppress trauma from his fighting times the death that he saw, and the loss of his family.
[Carr.]
You could feel it cracking and the sadness that he did not want to face sort of half seeping out.
[rock music playing.]
We had gone out there to help the children, and then when we were kidnapped, it slowly became very aware to us that these guys were equally traumatized In fact, more traumatized.
[music continues playing.]
- [grunts.]
- [glass shatters.]
[Carr.]
We were both determined to survive and to survive as sane as possible as well.
[James.]
Whatever happens, I'm going to come out of here being me.
I'm still going to be Jon to the best of my ability.
And the only place to place your security is inside yourself.
Then it doesn't matter what else is happening around you.
"Twice when I was a builder, I had suffered from a slipped disc.
The second time I was so afraid of not having enough money, I carried on working until the pain forced me to stop.
It was then I discovered tai chi.
The essential teachings that I learned I can use now.
How softness overcomes hardness, as flowing water will eventually wear away a solid rock.
Good lessons to remember in our captive state.
" I could think in three dimensions, so I would build shapes, visualize them in my head.
So, that was my escape, was to build rooms in my head.
[Carr.]
I used to go to the sea, walk along the beach.
I had the imaginary little cottage that I used to go into.
[laughing.]
You know, where everything smelled of that wonderful sea, seaweed smell and you'd go in, and it was suffused in the walls of the cottage and the curtains, and always bright sunlight.
We would take it in turns to take each other on, like, a visualization [James.]
our first step onto the soft, giving grass.
- It's lovely.
- [both chuckle.]
So, I would take Camilla on walks through the bluebell woods, under the beech trees and things like that.
[Carr.]
They did used to threaten to separate us, and we really thought it was going to happen one night.
And we lit the candle, and then Jon then proposed to me.
[chuckles.]
I mean, why he did I don't really know.
In a way, it was just like In a way, I felt it was like to give us strength, added strength, if we were gonna be separated.
So, he sort of said, you know, "Will you marry me?" and of course I said "yes.
" [church bells tolling.]
[cheering and whistling.]
[Carr.]
He's one of the most honest people I know.
And he's very giving.
He has hidden depths that he doesn't really show people.
Thank you.
[Wood.]
Over time, there were a couple of calls saying Berezovsky hoped to call me before too long and that I would be pleased to have the call.
There'd been too many disappointed hopes, if you like, for me to immediately start dancing on the table.
But it was exciting to know that something might be happening.
[Parsons.]
One has to assume that although the outside picture is one of total confusion, that there were certain channels which were operating effectively.
That Berezovsky knew who he was talking to among the Chechens and that he was getting proper reassurances from the key people on the Chechen side.
I suppose if I was a real prune, I could have said, "Tell me in advance what you're going to do," but that would've been the action of an idiot.
Berezovsky and I knew each other well enough for him not to say, "Look, this is the price and I'm going to pay it.
" [Carr.]
As the time went on, there were these extraordinary moments and very touching moments, I found.
One day, there was HC with his, well, sort of his nose to the ground, you know, to the floor, and I was thinking what on earth he's doing.
And then I realized that he was watching this hedgehog walking across [laughs.]
the floor.
[inaudible.]
[HC whispering in Russian.]
[Carr.]
And we were all just, you know, standing there and sitting there and watching this hedgehog lapping up the milk.
[HC shushing.]
We'd even forgotten we were captives.
We were just watching.
I remember looking up at their faces and seeing the awe of little children.
And it was like, this is in them, too.
This is the other side of them.
- [Carr.]
Ooh! - [all laughing.]
[dog barking in distance.]
[Carr.]
Every month they would say [speaking Russian.]
[speaks English.]
"Freedom soon.
" So you'd just have that little sense of hope, "Well, maybe, you know maybe something's happened.
" In the middle of the night, they came down.
And we were taken out into a car, heads on knees.
And then we were taken to another car.
And this guy actually turned round to me and said, "Jon, domoi," and really sincerely saying, "Jon, home.
" [Carr.]
And he actually said to us, "I work for Berezovsky.
" So that was the first time we heard of Boris Berezovsky.
And we got to the border and this voice said, "You'll be pleased to know you are now leaving Chechen territory.
" Good evening.
The two British aid workers held hostage in Chechnya for more than a year have been freed, and they're expected back in Britain later this evening.
Eventually, there was a wonderful telephone call saying, "I've got them.
Come to the airport and get 'em.
" [James.]
Landing on the tarmac, it was like, "Wow! We're finally home.
" It's like, [softly.]
"Wow! What a journey.
" [chuckles.]
[crowd cheering.]
[Carr.]
I was aware of the photographers, but what I was really aware of, I think, was just our families were over there.
They still don't know if we're okay.
We need to show it, and it was like we were going, "Yes! We are here.
" We just absolutely fell into each other's arms.
I just remember hugging her completely, and we kissed each other and hugged.
[chattering.]
[Little.]
I think we were all in our own worlds then.
Yeah, it was amazing.
[Ashok.]
Ran into her arms Long, long, deep, deep hug.
Yeah, it was lovely.
It was beautiful.
I'm very happy.
Very, very happy.
I said, "How did you cope, Ashok?" And he said "Of course I cried, Mom, and then I got on with my life.
" [laughs.]
It's beyond words really, isn't it? I mean when you've been captive for that amount of time and you come out and you see the dawn and and see all our family again.
[sighs deeply.]
They both sounded very well and, of course, very happy.
[Wood.]
In many important ways, you've been lucky.
You cannot say to yourself, "I did this, I'm a great guy.
" What you can say is, "We have tried our best and thank God something's worked.
" [man on TV.]
But attention has now turned to the role played by the Russian politician and businessman Boris Berezovsky.
It was his private plane they arrived in last night and though the Foreign Office won't comment, the speculation is that the man paid a ransom to free Jon and Camilla.
[Wood.]
When he delivered them, I didn't ask him, "Did you have to pay?" I mean, it's perfectly ridiculous to suppose that if he said, "Yes, and it cost $2 million," or something, I would then say, "Well, I can't do that, so please take them back.
" I mean, that's just impossible.
[chattering.]
[Vatchagaev speaking Russian.]
I think the British authorities maybe didn't pay the ransom directly, but gave Berezovsky carte blanche to do business in Britain.
In other words, they turned a blind eye to his methods.
[laughing.]
Maybe it is worth dealing with an animal like Berezovsky if it saves somebody's life.
[Carr.]
I used to think about what happened to all of them.
And I know there was another war, so it's quite likely that they fought again, probably, and probably were killed.
After we had been out a few months, we heard the same music that was playing on the tape when Paunch raped me.
And, so immediately, I was on the alert, and then I suddenly thought, "Right, I'm going to change this.
" Because it would affect me for the rest of my life otherwise.
And I jumped onto the table, and I just danced and danced and danced.
In a sense, I have forgiven them.
But what does that actually mean? It doesn't mean that I might not be angry with them again.
You see, it's not like that.
But I also have a sense of compassion for them and understanding of where they came from.
There's one quote that kind of encapsulates my feeling about this and how we are as human beings.
And it's Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
"If only there were evil people somewhere, insidiously committing evil deeds and it was necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them.
But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.
And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" [somber music playing.]