This World s10e08 Episode Script

All hell broke loose.
(GUNFIRE) I was lying on the floor of the bus thinking "Is this going to be it? Is this the end?" I suddenly heard this "Da-da da-da da-da"! The terrorist said, "Don't talk or I'll kill you.
" An awful cold feeling went down my spine, that I probably wouldn't see him again.
She wanted me to send stuff to the kids.
I said, "No.
I don't want the kids to know.
I can't deal with that.
I can deal with you, but I can't do the other bit.
" Even though everyone was screaming, I could hardly hear the screams because the sound of the bullets hitting the vehicles was so loud.
The terrorist detonated the suicide bomb in our car.
And I thought I was dead at that point.
Boom! I heard boom! That's it.
August 31st, 2013 A gas plant in a remote desert.
A showpiece vital to the Algerian economy.
I enjoyed going to work.
It was a special place to go.
We were all together as one team-- the contractors the staff, the Algerians.
Yeah, it was good, special.
The plant is a joint venture between the Algerian state oil company and BP and Statoil-- British and Norwegian companies.
Seventy foreign workers from a dozen countries worked here alongside hundreds of Algerians.
I love the place, I love the people.
They are so wonderful guys, especially my Algerian colleagues.
But the gas plant is in the Sahara-- a dangerous and volatile region, Al-Qaeda's stronghold.
I didn't feel insecure inside the plant at all.
And in the time that we'd been working there, we hadn't had any incidents before-- any terrorist incidents.
Our feeling was that the size of the armed police force, there at the site, was sufficient to deter any attack.
The sprawling plant covers several kilometres.
The living quarters or base de vie is in the south-east corner.
Three kilometres up the road, the CPF-- the Central Processing Facility where the gas is produced.
In-between there's a camp for Algerian gendarmes-- military police responsible for security in the area surrounding the plant.
I can honestly say up until the point of the morning of the 16th January, I had no concerns at all about working there.
Outside the living quarters, BP engineer Huw Edwards is on a bus taking workers to the nearby town.
It's accompanied by an escort of armed Algerian gendarmes.
About half a kilometre from the base, we came to our last vehicle checkpoint, which is a stop sign and a barrier.
Effectively all hell broke loose.
I heard what I thought to be stones hitting the side of the bus on my right-hand side.
Norwegian engineer, Kolbjorn Kirkebo is at the front of the bus.
I was sitting in the second seat and I see a lot of gunfire.
Almost at the same time the first bullet hit the bus and I felt that it was not the correct place to sit in the seat.
So I lay down.
Someone shouted, "Get down.
" And then, I saw the vehicle doors open from the first and third vehicle, and gendarmes coming out and firing off to my right-hand side.
I felt that something hit me in my right thigh, and it was like You felt like a little hammer hit.
It was bullets.
I was aware of a very, very deep sound-- the heavy machine gun whooping up on us.
You had this incredible sensation of being completely out of control of your situation.
While the attack on the bus continues, a second group of terrorists strike at the living quarters.
They overcome company security inside the plant.
BP's most senior manager, Mark Cobb from Texas, is in his office.
I felt like it was probably 10, 15, 20 people trading gunfire back and forth.
It was sustained gunfire, er, for a long period of time.
So once we heard the machine gun fire, I knew we were under attack.
A hundred yards away, the VIP accommodation block also comes under attack.
BP Project General Manager Nick Hitch is there with two executives visiting from the UK and Norway.
I opened the door, an alarm went off.
And as we stepped outside, there was gunfire coming in our faces, bullets hitting the wall and tracer coming overhead.
We ran back inside the building and followed the instructions we'd been given, which were to find a room to hide in, lock the door, er, close the curtains and get down low and be quiet.
We did that.
The three of us hid together in one room.
Around the same time, a third group of terrorists break into the heart of the plant the CPF where the gas is produced.
Statoil maintenance manager Bjarne Vage is just starting work with three Norwegian colleagues.
I suddenly heard this "Da-da da-da!".
And this was just 20 metres from me.
At the same time, there came four terrorists in through the front door with their Kalashnikovs.
Their faces were covered.
They said, "Don't talk or I'll kill you.
" Just yards away from Bjarne, BP team leader Lou Fear sees what's happening.
We opened the door and saw round the corner that there was guys lying on the floor face down with their hands tied behind their backs.
I could see the cords sticking up in the air and a guy above them with an AK-47.
So we ran back.
And the four of us went to the office, pushed the filing cabinet behind the door.
And then we got this big box of weights-- it's really heavy.
We didn't put it against the door, we picked it up and put it right on the top of this filing cabinet.
And then I got on the floor and hid behind it.
And then somebody tried the door handle.
They were saying, "Come out.
Come out.
We're friends," in Arabic.
But we didn't.
We'd never have believed there would be a terrorist attack.
It was like incomprehensible but, yeah, it was real.
The Foreign Office has confirmed that British nationals working in the North African state of Algeria have been caught up in what is being described as a terrorist incident.
The attack was quickly seen as the work of one of many militant Islamic groups in the Sahara.
Let's speak to a professor at Cambridge University specialising in North African For George Joffe, Britain's leading expert on Algeria, it all pointed to one man-- Mokhtar Belmokhtar.
He's known as Mr.
Marlboro, and that's largely because one of his activities had been, for a very long time, the smuggling of cigarettes.
I suspect he was also engaged in the smuggling of drugs and almost certainly in the smuggling of arms as well.
Mokhtar Belmokhtar, was born in Algeria but began his career as an Islamic militant in Afghanistan 30 years ago.
He returned to Algeria and became a key figure in the struggle between Islamist groups and the state in the nineties.
Belmokhtar gained a reputation for making millions out of taking Westerners hostage-- 32 of them in one raid alone.
Mokhtar Belmokhtar learnt that taking hostages was a very profitable business.
Western powers were prepared to pay to see their nationals released.
And on that occasion, they are said to have gained some five million euros as the price of releasing their hostages Belmokhtar and his group swore allegiance to Al-Qaeda, taking part in the Islamic uprising that nearly toppled the government in neighbouring Mali last year.
But in December, Belmokhtar received a letter from Al-Qaeda's central council complaining he was out of control.
Belmokhtar resigned, and defiantly formed a new group the Signed-in-Blood Battalion.
Now it's interesting to note that the council's letter basically suggested that there should have been a spectacular attack because that's precisely what he then produced.
At the beginning of January, Belmokhtar and his men travel secretly 1,500 kilometres from Mali to Libya.
Belmokhtar stays in Libya to direct the operation.
His men cross the Algerian border near to the plant.
The Algerian government is determined to preserve the integrity of its borders and therefore, in effect, the fact that they didn't spot this convoy-- small though it was-- moving across is an indictment of the effectiveness of their surveillance.
It's still dark at In Amenas when the terrorists begin their attack.
As soon as they hear gunfire, Algerian technical staff set off the alarms, shutting down the gas supply to the plant automatically.
The terrorists confront maintenance manager Bjarne Vage and his three colleagues.
They start asking, "Who shut down the plant? Who shut down the plant? You need to start the plant.
" And, er, we said that we don't know why, we need to go to the control room.
The terrorists bundle the four Norwegians into the back of a pick-up truck and set off to try and get the plant restarted.
I was thinking, "They're going to take us into the desert.
They are going to ask for money for us.
And to demand money.
And I will not be like this.
I'm not going to be a hostage.
I'm going to escape.
" The truck stops by the control room near the massive gas processing machines.
The terrorists are desperate to restart the plant so they can blow it up in a spectacular terror attack.
The Norwegians have been tied up with electrical straps.
If you have electrical straps like this, if you do it the right way-- like this it's absolutely impossible to open again.
But if you just turn it the wrong way-- like this-- it sounds like it's okay but it's not okay because you can do like this afterwards.
And this had happened to me.
But I still pretended and I was laying there.
Suddenly, what I think was the leader of the terrorists-- because he spoke a very clear and I say Oxford English-- he came up to me and I just ran.
Between the pipes, the motors, and he was coming after me and crying, "Stop or I'll kill you, stop or I'll kill you!" I just kept on running.
I jumped over the first fence and then I came to the next fence.
Unfortunately, the structure broke, so I landed on my back and broke, I thought it was one rib, but it's actually three ribs.
But then I was outside and safe.
An hour after he was seized, Bjarne makes it to the nearby gendarme camp.
And, of course, then the thoughts about my colleagues came because could I do anything? Could I do anything to help them? Outside the plant, Huw and Kolbjorn are still sheltering on the bus.
The gun battle has been going on for nearly an hour.
At about 6:40, the next wave of attack opened up.
It was mortar fire.
Everyone was calm in the bus, there was no panic.
I was laying in the front, closest to the doors, and I felt that I was probably the first guy that was shot if people come into the bus.
I was quite sure that we will be killed.
I composed what I suppose you'd say is a difficult text message to my wife.
"I'm in a bus, I'm under attack by armed terrorists, I think.
We're under constant fire.
" She texted me back, saying, "Keep safe, I love you.
" All around the plant by now, people are texting.
Hunkered down in his office, Lou Fear hears that two friends have been seized in a nearby building.
He texts his wife Lori at their home in Lincolnshire.
I got a text from him, saying there had been a terrorist attack, that he was in hiding, that he was safe.
I was told off for not saying the words, "I love you," but I just blanked all that.
She wanted me to send stuff to the kids and I said, "No.
" I actually cried when that bit happened.
I said, "No, I don't want the kids to know, I can't deal with that.
I can deal with you, but I can't do the other bit.
" My world just froze and just everything stopped.
I couldn't think and I didn't know what to do, whether I should tell the children or not.
I didn't know what circumstances he was texting me in.
If he was close by to the terrorists, if they could hear the beep of the text messages come, I daren't reply to it because if I replied to it, maybe I would give away his hiding place.
I didn't want anything bad to happen to him.
By now it's getting light.
The terrorists are systematically searching the living quarters.
An Algerian worker is hiding in his room.
Ahmed, not his real name, still feels under threat from terrorism and doesn't want to be identified.
This guy broke the door of the room.
He asked me if I was Algerian and I said, "Yes.
" He looked like nervous or pissed off because I was Algerian.
He was asking for the expats.
He said, "Okay, we have no problems with you Algerians.
We are looking only for the expats.
You can go out.
" The terrorists allow the Algerian workers to walk freely around the plant, but don't let them leave.
Some of them catch remarkable images on their phones of foreign workers being brought out into a courtyard.
They kicked the door in immediately and knew we were there and took us out into the courtyard outside as hostages.
They have their feet and hands tied.
I saw five or six terrorists and they had their heavy machine guns and Kalashnikovs and everything.
Among the hostages, two BP construction workers, Angelito Manaois and his friend Jojo Balmaceda.
When we start to surrender, when we raise our hands, they told us, "Nationality?" "Philippine," we told them we are Filipino.
It was done by the nationality.
Jojo, Angelito and the Asian hostages are put on one side of the courtyard, Nick and the Europeans on the other.
The three of us were taken out and sat down in an open area, a paved area outside, between our VIP block and the canteen.
We were probably the first half dozen to be taken hostage, but the number grew during the day.
I sent Nick a text and said, "Are you all okay?" And the reply I got back was kind of bone-chilling.
All it said was, "Hostage in VIP.
" So at that point, I knew then that everyone that was in the VIP villa was a captive at that point in time.
Many Algerian workers try to conceal their foreign colleagues.
My staff got pretty nervous and insisted that I had to find a place to hide.
They felt like, as the top-ranking American on the site, that I would be a prime target for the terrorists, that in all likelihood they were probably already looking for me on the site.
So I literally hid in the corner of the room between a filing cabinet and a steel armoire.
From a cursory inspection, they wouldn't have seen me.
Now it's light round the bus, Huw and Kolbjorn can see what's happening.
I looked down through the front window and then I saw first the top of a metal helmet and then, very slowly, two eyes.
He basically smashed the window with his rifle butt, basically.
At first, it was like, "What's happening now?" Then you realised it was the gendarmes.
So we clambered out and ran to where maybe some 15 gendarmes were sheltering from gunfire.
The gendarmes have been taken completely by surprise at the attack.
They help the men from the bus crawl half a kilometre across the desert to safety.
Only then do they learn that a British security liaison officer has been killed in one of the escort cars.
Paul Morgan was unarmed.
Algerian law does not allow foreign security personnel to carry weapons.
This is someone I was joking with the day before then, all of a sudden, to have lost a friend so quickly, it's it's just incredible, and it's like a wave of these things hit you when you you hear the first one and you wonder, "Well, is everybody going to be killed?" It's taken less than an hour for three-dozen terrorists to seize a huge gas plant.
They know the best moment to do it-- when there are twice the usual number of foreign staff and three top managers visiting from abroad.
It was clear that it was an inside job.
There were 20 or 30 Algerians who were clearly assisting the terrorists and very friendly with them and, er, even came when we were held hostage, to come to look at us as if we were in the zoo.
I recognised a cook who had been very friendly to me in the past and I was really very shocked to see that someone who had been friendly was probably plotting my downfall the whole time.
So I think, given that size of inside knowledge, they had a lot of information about who was on site.
For sure, this is a planned operation.
Someone from the inside gave some information, for sure.
I think it was planned to happen on a Wednesday because that's the day where the expats travel and perhaps the initial plan was only to take the bus.
The extent to which the plant was infiltrated is as yet unclear.
Some of the terrorists are believed to have worked here, but were not picked up by security vetting procedures.
I recognise this one.
I think this is the one with the North American accent.
Yeah.
This one is actually of Canadian origin, they think.
Right, he is Canadian and he was managing our hostage group throughout the whole time.
22-year-old student Xristos Katsiroubas came from Ontario, Canada.
With him was another Canadian, Ali Medlej, who took part in the attack.
They'd come to Algeria two years before.
Investigators believe at least one of them had got a job at the plant on a reconnaissance mission.
Skinny guy, white skin, with eyeglasses He speak to me in English.
They told us, "Nobody will hurt you, we will not harm you, we will let you free after this.
" It's terrifying to see such a baby-faced young boy who seemed so kind and nice on the first day, but turned out the next day to be a cold-blooded killer.
The Algerian army begin firing into the plant.
We had some messages via mobile phones saying that the army surrounded the base de vie very quickly and, as an Algerian, I know that usually the Algerian army doesn't negotiate with the terrorists, so from the beginning, we understood that that will be a very complicated end of the story.
The terrorists order hostages sitting in the courtyard to call their employers, governments and the media.
They wanted us to say that we'd been taken hostage, that they wanted an exchange of prisoners for people in Mali and they wanted us to say that the army should pull back.
They wanted, you know, not to be fired at from close range outside the camp.
Then, one of the terrorists grabs hold of Nick.
He was wielding a crowbar and I thought he was going to bludgeon me to death with it.
So every time he pushed me up against the wall, I thought that would be the last.
That was even more terrifying than being taken hostage.
It turned out they just wanted to use us as a human shield.
And then they arranged an explosive necklace round all of us, with One terrorist would have, er, a large amount of explosives with a detonator and this is attached by yellow cortex cord wound round all our necks, which I think probably would have decapitated us if it had gone off.
It was a plastic square with a cable, a yellow cord, that was connected on the neck of the hostages like us.
They told us, "This is a bomb.
" Just yards from where Jojo and Nick are being held, Mark Cobb is still in hiding.
His Algerian colleagues are looking out for terrorists.
My secretary, who was standing at the window, said, "Mark, get down quick, they are coming, they're coming.
" I heard them kick open the front door of the office building.
That was the point when I felt real fear.
I thought in all likelihood I was going to be taken captive or I was going to be killed, so I made some tough phone calls.
Mark speaks to his son on the mobile.
I said, "My sense is it is really bad, son," and he reminded me that I had a new grandbaby and that she couldn't grow up without a grandfather.
And, erm, basically said I had to do everything I could to try to escape.
And I told him I would do my best and told him I loved him and hung up the phone.
I heard the footsteps get closer then there was one more door and then the office I was in and I heard the footsteps come down the hall.
And just when I assumed they were getting ready to kick in the door, the footsteps just turned the corner, and they went right down the back hall, and right out the emergency exit in the back corner of the building.
I guess that they searched enough offices to convince themselves there was no-one in there and they just gave up the search a little bit early.
I was very lucky.
God was looking out for me that day.
Mark knows he has to escape.
He phones the commander of the gendarme camp, just a few hundred yards away, who sends a soldier to cut a hole in the fence near the office where Mark and his colleagues are hiding.
I told everybody, "When we hit the fences we've got to hit them fast and we've got to hit the ground, we've got to roll, don't stop.
" I took heed of my own advice, I never looked back.
I literally ran for my life across the desert.
I was in a first aid room and then, suddenly, there was something happening outside, and I went out, and there Mark Cobb came.
I saw Bjarne and to know someone else had escaped just gave me a heart-warming feeling.
Just to know that somebody else had got out.
He was really excited and he had run, and his muscles were stiff, and he had cramp but he was so lucky.
And that was amazing.
There were hugs between the two of us and our euphoria at being alive, and having escaped quickly faded, and we began to worry about our staff.
We began to worry about the people who were left behind.
In the central processing facility, Lou and his group have been barricaded in their Portakabin for six hours.
You use your senses and you couldn't hear anything, so we thought, "Well, there's a fair chance that there's nobody round," but, I mean, it was a risk but 11, 12 o'clock we needed to go to the bathroom.
Got up, opened the door went to the loo, got some water, got some biscuits and then carried on doing all the texting, and all that stuff.
He said, "I popped out to get some water," and so I was getting really scared about popping out.
How can you pop out when there's terrorists about?! How is that going to be safe? Why isn't he staying hidden and staying in hiding? My husband is not the smallest, quietest, most subtle man.
He can't even whisper effectively, so if he can't do that, how is he going to stay hidden? (BBC NEWS THEME) British workers are among those being held by Islamic militants at a gas facility in Algeria The first response from the British government comes late in the afternoon.
A number of people are held hostage there, this does include a number of British nationals and this is therefore an extremely dangerous situation.
The British government urges restraint but in Algeria ministers are taking a tough line.
(EXPLOSIONS AND SCREAMING) Algeria's hard line on terrorism is a legacy of the bloody civil war of the '90s.
An estimated 150,000 people died after an Islamic party won elections and the state prevented them taking power.
PROFESSOR JOFFE: It was a massive struggle.
Now, given that, you can imagine that the experience of the civil war is seared on every Algerian mind and heart.
And Algerians themselves have a profound fear of this occurring again, and therefore the government is able to insist on measures of control, and of the dominance of the Algerian army, and security forces in guaranteeing domestic security.
The British have offered to send the SAS to the gas plant but the Algerians aren't interested.
They have their own special forces, known as The Ninjas, who've fought terrorism for years.
Algeria's really been ruled by a small coterie inside the army command and inside the security services that dictate the nature of Algerian policy.
Now that means that, in effect, the army is the dominant element inside that constellation of power and behind it stands the unaccountable, and largely unknown security service, the DRS.
By evening, the DRS has sent The Ninjas to In Amenas to join army and gendarme units there.
Firing from outside the plant continues through the night.
We had to sleep out in the open and it was very cold, and, for people who were bound hand and foot, very uncomfortable, and still having the, er, cord round your necks, it was a very awkward night.
It was so dark I told to myself, "So I need to pray that, for my safety and also my colleagues' safety, that we are not being hurt, that we will be going home soon.
" Lori hears nothing from Lou.
His phone battery has run out.
Most of the night I lay awake.
It was just awful, horrible, horrible thoughts going through my head of what he was suffering, you know, what conditions was he in? We were lying on the floor through the night.
We could hear the helicopter gun ships.
We were told by everybody who we contacted, "Stay there and somebody will rescue you.
" "Okay, that sounds cool.
" So we did to start with, and then nothing happened.
Early on the second day, the amount of gunfire coming in from outside the camp increased and the terrorists got increasingly nervous.
It's 24 hours since they were taken.
The hostages are getting to know their captors.
This one I recognise.
Very, very violent and we were very scared of him, and we made a point of not looking at him directly.
Abdul Rahman Al-Nigeri starts to negotiate over a radio with an army officer.
PROFESSOR JOFFE: The command structure of the Algerian army changed at the end of the first day.
A new commander was brought in, a General Tartag, who is an extremely well known figure from the civil war, known for his brutality and his determination.
General Athmane Tartag is in charge of The Ninjas.
A shadowy figure, there's no confirmed photograph of him in existence.
It's quite clear he was brought in to command the army against the terrorist groups in In Amenas because he was believed to be the most effective and the most brutal soldier available.
And that it was he who insisted that the strategy should make no concessions at all.
The terrorists asked us to make more phone calls to demand that people pull back.
Then helicopter gun ships came in.
They were firing in indiscriminately, at the buildings around us.
They were quite large cannon shells, very large explosions.
I saw, personally, two of the terrorists, they have put on these bulletproof jackets and they have started running from a place to another shouting.
They looked nervous.
It was terrifying because of what it was doing to the terrorists.
Although the fire was bad it clearly wasn't aimed at us, it was as close to us as they could get away with, to intimidate the terrorists.
It was the fact the terrorists were getting extremely nervous about this that made the situation worse.
Now safe in the company's local headquarters, Mark Cobb receives a phone call.
And I looked down at the phone, and it registered Nick Hitch, and immediately answered the phone, I said, "Nick how are you? Where are you? What's going on?" I told him that I was going to die at 10 o'clock and, er you know, goodbye that I'd done my best and there was I think I told him that we'd tried to pull every lever we could to get a better situation from within the camp and, if at all possible, to get the military to pull back.
He said, "Their demands are that the Algerian military back off," he said, "You have 30 minutes to get them to back off or I will be killed.
Do you understand this message?" He was very upset.
We'd become close through working together for a number of years and he was safe by that time, and I think he was really hurting about how all of us were feeling still in the hostage group.
I said, "Oh, my God, Nick.
" I said, "I am praying for you, be strong," and the phone line cut.
So I honestly thought that Nick was going to be killed.
The deadline passed but I still thought, for the next hour or two, that they could shoot me at any point.
You know, I didn't expect them to be precise timekeepers but having said they'd shoot me, I expected it to happen at any moment.
So I think the terror continued, really.
We have had a rocket every ten minutes and after the second one, one of the colleagues told me that one of the terrorists had been injured.
This one looks a lot cleaner and younger than I remember but I do recognise the face and I think this is possibly the chap that we called the emir-- the boss.
The emir, the leader of the terrorists, Lamine Boucheneb is mortally wounded by army gunfire.
The rockets were closer and closer, and the third one was very close to the building, and that was the point where most of us thought we should definitely leave the area because it looked clear that the Algerian army was attacking.
Ahmed and hundreds of Algerian workers break out of the plant and flee across the desert.
The siege has reached crisis point.
Nick and Jojo are among three dozen foreign hostages forced by the terrorists into five Toyota jeeps.
They reworked the explosives that they had to make a suicide bomb, in each vehicle.
In my car it was a 12 inch diameter land mine.
They arranged the expats, mostly by national groups, in each vehicle and they were clearly getting more and more excited.
Er, they were shouting, "Allahu Akbar," and they were saying goodbye to each other.
I was sat next to the Canadian terrorist with the suicide bomb.
So I was right next to the bomb and I think as someone on a, sort of, VIP hit list for the site, that was exactly where he wanted me to be.
Helicopter gun ships were buzzing round, inflaming the situation more.
The convoy sets off.
Nick is in one vehicle with seven European hostages.
Jojo and Angelito are in another, with eight Asian workers.
They told us to raise our hands to show the chopper that we are hostages.
We went out at speed, through the fence, onto the main road that goes down to the processing facilities and turned left.
Almost immediately, the army, who were on the other side of the road, plastered the vehicles in bullets.
I saw the guns-- some firings and the chopper starts to fire on the vehicles and onto us.
It was an incredible noise.
Like a hailstorm on a flat roof, but so loud that, even though everyone was screaming, I could hardly hear the screams, because the sound of the bullets hitting the vehicles was so loud.
And-- and I think people on the right-hand side of the vehicle probably died at that point.
I starts to pray and I starts to kneel and I starts to close my eyes.
I am waiting for what will be done next.
My vehicle hit a ridge and rolled over hard.
There was a rollover cage above my head, so I think that saved my life.
A few seconds later, the Canadian terrorist detonated the suicide bomb in our car.
There was an enormous explosion and I was completely deafened.
Boom! I heard boom and that's it.
I could see everything in front of me, like a big just purple circle and shrank into a small white dot, like an old television going off.
And I thought I was dead, at that point, because everything went out.
I don't know how long I was unconscious, I really don't.
But when I woke up, I was upside down in the vehicle and I looked down and I saw a very big wound in my arm.
I did manage to move myself to the side of the vehicle and get out through one of the broken windows and dropped out onto the sand.
And I was just totally amazed that I had survived the rollover and had got out and two of my colleagues had managed to get out of the boot and we just stood there for a while, just saying we couldn't believe we got out of that.
I knew that 35 of us had got into the Toyotas and only four of us walked off.
Maybe 80% of the people I had seen half an hour ago, waiting for those cars, were probably dead.
Jojo also survives, protected by a spare tyre when the bomb in his vehicle is detonated.
His friend Angelito is not so lucky.
He was heavily wounded, so I told Angelito, "You need to stay, stay on the ground.
I will go to the government forces that we need help here.
" While Jojo heads off towards the military, Angelito somehow makes it up the road, to the CPF.
There, Lou and his group have seen the attack and have come out to look for survivors from the convoy.
We found Angel, with a face wound and a hole in the back of his head.
I know it is a horrible thing to say, but he was like the cartoon characters who have been blown up-- face all disfigured, all black and horrible.
They carry Angelito and another injured man back to their office block, but the danger is far from over.
Just as we walked past the end of the building, we saw, to the left-hand side, two terrorists.
They looked at us.
We thought, "Bloody hell, they've seen us.
We've got to go.
" So we ran back into the office and said the terrorists were coming.
They have just a few seconds.
Is there time to drag the two injured men into their Portakabin? I made the decision.
A voice told me, "Leave them or they'll give you away.
" We wouldn't have been able to move them in time.
And we went into the office.
I sat on the little plastic box behind the door and we listen.
And they came in and said to Angel, "Where are expats, where are expats?" One of them spoke a little bit of English.
And we heard some noise and scuffling and we assume they took them outside.
There were some gunshots.
Angel never said anything.
He didn't tell them where we were.
And they just went away.
NEWSREADER: A military operation has now left some hostages dead, some wounded and some freed.
Lou is one of an unknown number of people still hiding, or held hostage, in the plant.
29 have died in the convoy.
The British government is angry, but cannot say so publicly.
The Prime Minister addresses the nation.
It is a very dangerous, a very uncertain, a very fluid situation.
And I think we have to prepare ourselves for the possibility of bad news ahead.
When David Cameron said it an awful cold feeling went down my spine that I probably wouldn't see him again.
We thought they would come back and get us.
We didn't want to stay, so we made the decision, at two in the morning, we would wake up and go.
Lou's group make their way to the fence.
The guys just pulled the razor wire and it just snapped open.
And we dropped the bags over and we were all out in a minute-- gone.
Over the fence and away.
So, we thought, "Well, if it was that easy, why didn't anybody come and get us?" After 17 hours trekking, lost in the desert, Lou and his group are finally rescued.
All of a sudden, the phone rang.
I picked up the phone and this voice said, "It's me, I'm all right.
I'll be home in a few days.
" And it was a new phone, so I tried to put him on loudspeaker, for the children to hear, and cut him off! But I'd heard his voice.
I knew he was alive.
Lou has escaped, but at the CPF, the surviving terrorists chain the remaining hostages to the pipework.
They have explosives strapped to their bodies.
The next day, the Algerian army move into the CPF.
The terrorists blow up a section of the plant.
Everyone is killed.
This final act of murder brings the crisis to an end.
After the attack, the Algerian authorities promise an investigation into the deaths of the hostages, but it is not clear if they will ever make public their findings.
Internationally, the actions of the Algerian army have been called into question.
I think that they didn't necessarily want to harm us, as expats, but it was clear that we were not their priority.
I think they were humiliated by the fact that a small force of terrorists, perhaps only 30, got in under the noses of 150 gendarmes and had taken over the plant.
And they wanted to flatten them and end this crisis as quickly as possible.
The Algerian army is not negotiating with terrorists and I think this is a good position, personally, because if you give more money to these people, they are just able to hire more people and to make more trouble.
We are sad for the people who have been killed, of course, but what can we do? BP and Statoil are planning to send staff back to In Amenas, but not until the Algerians make radical improvements to security.
This was an unprecedented event in our industry.
No-one could have ever envisioned an attack of this magnitude on an oil and gas facility in Algeria.
Our security was not designed, nor is anyone's security designed, to repel a force of 35 heavily-armed, almost like soldiers, attacking your facility.
Statoil are holding their own inquiry, to learn lessons on how to improve security and emergency preparedness.
BP are not conducting such an inquiry.
40 people is a horrendous loss of life and over half of them were personal friends.
And to think that their loss would not even merit a proper inquiry is very distressing.
The way corporations operate, I would be held accountable, if something happened like that, if there was an incident on the plant.
And so, yeah, somebody should be accountable or there should be a proper inquiry, to find out what happened here, because we need to find out what happened to everybody.
BP say they are co-operating with the British police investigating the attack on behalf of the UK coroner and that inquest will be more comprehensive than a BP internal investigation.
It is expected to take at least another year.
More than 30 terrorists died.
They killed 40 hostages.
Amongst those who died, chained to the pipework Angelito, the construction worker who was left outside Lou's office.
Was it the right decision, do you think? It It Yes.
Now I know it is, but it troubled me a lot, for the first month or so.
I used to, you know, think about it and I'd get emotional, but if we hadn't done it, then I wouldn't be alive, so He's haunted by it.
I don't think he will ever forgive himself for the decision he made, but he's coming to terms with it.
I think it's had a huge impact on his life.
Still fresh in my mind, what happened to me.
Angelito shake on my hand and we embrace.
He told me, "Hey, buddy, the next time we will see, we will make a party.
" I miss my colleagues very much and I dream about them.
This is the hard part.
Why did I get this opportunity? I don't know.
It was luck and and just I don't know.
We have this opportunity they didn't have.
You try to normalise and do stuff together, but every now and again, you go back and get sad.
And I get emotional.