Captive

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...

Yes, I hope to be freed very soon.

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.

I said quiet!

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."

I remember being totally crystal clear in that moment

and thinking, "Okay, so we're kidnapped."

The only way to react is, like, stay calm.

Yeah. Just stay calm.

Keep quiet.

A few seconds later, the trapdoor came down,

and we were sat in complete darkness.

- Are you okay? - I'm okay.

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.

No.

I had no idea what was going to happen.

You have to sit and wait.

Help me!

That's my granddad.

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.

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.

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.

Suddenly, I was coming to terms with the fact

None of us knew the real dangers that we were gonna face.

Please.

Please, help me.

Help us.

I meant nothing to him, nothing at all.

I wasn't human to him.

That seared into my brain, looking up at those eyes.

"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."

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.

When the government heard

aid workers had been kidnapped, we felt insulted.

Chechnya was being plunged further and further into chaos.

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.

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.

I heard that they'd been taken captive

because a lovely police woman came 'round.

She sat me down. 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.

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.

No.

You listen!

You take it!

Listen to me.

I really don't know how I'd have reacted if they actually had killed him.

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.

"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."

"Beyond the thick wall,

we would have a problem of not knowing where we were,

and only a little Russian.

Is a dream."

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

There is no one strong card you can play.

So, you have to go 'round to the authorities,

to other people who might have some useful connections.

You can keep pestering people, essentially,

and you can use the media of that country.

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.

We knew we were in Grozny.

We could hear the 2:30 plane going to Moscow,

and we knew that was that time.

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.

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.

So we had HC.

HC being short for Handcuffs...

...'cause he seemed to like to put the handcuffs on.

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.

Paunch, he was named for his belly.