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  • I was captured in January 2012 by pirates,

  • and held for more than 2 and a half years.

  • I was held in the bush.

  • I mean, out in the open.

  • Also, on a fishing boat for five months

  • on the water with other hostages,

  • and then alone, essentially in a solitary confinement

  • in a series of prison houses in a town in Central Somalia

  • called Galkayo.

  • I’m American and I’m German.

  • Two passports, yes.

  • I arrived here in early January.

  • Eh?

  • January 6th, in Somalia.

  • I have to request from the American

  • or the German government the full ransom.

  • Theythey need to give an answer within three days.

  • And if there’s no answer to payment

  • of the ransom within three days, then the kidnappers

  • here will sell me to

  • will sell me to al-Shabab.

  • Our panel tonight is on freelancer safety.

  • Michael Scott Moore, he’s a Pulitzer Center grantee,

  • a journalist, and a novelist.

  • He also, unfortunately, was kidnapped

  • while reporting in Somalia and held captive there for two

  • years and eight months?

  • Eight months.

  • And eight months.

  • But in the vein of responsibility,

  • and this is sort of a question for me and for Michael,

  • many people feel it’s our fault, that in my case,

  • I acted recklessly by going to this Taliban interview,

  • that you were reckless for going to Somalia.

  • And that’s a problem.

  • And I regret my decision to go to an interview that

  • got me abducted.

  • And not in terms of your case, specifically,

  • but do you hear about or feel there’s

  • a change in terms of journalists themselves?

  • Are people recognizing how much more dangerous

  • the environment is?

  • It wasn’t totally clear how dangerous Syria

  • was until it became clear how many hostages there were.

  • And that’s one drawback to keeping hostage cases quiet,

  • actually, which yours was kept quiet,

  • mine was kept quiet while they were still going on.

  • And I think a lot of the cases in Syria

  • were kept quiet to the point where other journalists didn’t

  • know what they were getting into.

  • So slowly, just because of the horrors

  • that have come out of Syria, people are, in general,

  • are probably trying to be a bit more careful.

  • But that doesn’t mean that the general culture

  • of freelance journalism has changed, no.

  • Before you leave on a trip like this,

  • you have to think that in the worst case scenario,

  • youre actually going to be putting your family in contact

  • with some really unsavory people.

  • And that haunted me in Somalia.

  • That’s not something I ever wanted to do.

  • So no story is worth your life.

  • That’s just a hard and fast rule.

  • And almost no story is worth getting kidnapped for.

  • In fact, I can’t think of one that is.

  • News report: "Last night, militants from the Islamic state group

  • released a horrific video, showing

  • James Foley being beheaded.

  • It’s too graphic to show."

  • It was around the 20th of August

  • I was keeping pretty good track of the date at that point

  • there was news this morning on the radio

  • that about Jim Foley, an American journalist who

  • was decapitated by IS in the Syrian desert.

  • Horrifying.

  • I can barely imagine what my family is going through.

  • Marlis Saunders: From time to time, I did go down to the ocean and I, you know,

  • knowing that he loved to surf.

  • And I, you know, so yeah, I would do that.

  • And in the evening when I would look at the moon,

  • I would always think, you know, well, he

  • must see the same moon.

  • And I hope, you know, he feels that I’m thinking of him,

  • you know, that maybe he gets a little strength from that

  • and to cope, cope for another day, another week.

  • While I was there, I thought it would be a perfectly good idea

  • for a Special Forces team to come and get me,

  • especially after I was there for two years.

  • I mean, I simply had no other sense of hope

  • because I didn’t feel like there was

  • any progress with negotiations.

  • It was always hard to gauge what was going on behind the scenes.

  • And after a year or so, I wasn’t sure I wanted to live anymore.

  • So that risk of gettingof dying during a rescue

  • seemed a lot less intense to me.

  • And that’s still the official American position,

  • is that we don’t negotiate.

  • If anything, we rescue.

  • And as long as youre not going to negotiate,

  • you should rescue.

  • What’s true, I think that there were red lines

  • that I set for myself.

  • And a few of those I crossed.

  • I went shopping for insurance, and when

  • I got rejected shortly beforehand,

  • I should have just called off the trip.

  • Were here because 26 men that I was held hostage with are just

  • getting out of captivity.

  • And actually, I’m terribly excited.

  • They were the fishermen who I was

  • held with on the Naham 3, the fishing

  • boat that was captured in 2012.

  • And theyre the last large single crew that’s

  • being held by Somali pirates.

  • And theyve been in captivity for 4 and a half years, which

  • is extremely frustrating because I was hoping and working

  • for their

  • for their freedom as soon as I got out.

  • And it’s painful to think how long theyve been there.

  • On the last day, a car came, and they told me to pack my things.

  • And they had a sack of cash

  • that was part of a ransom that was paid.

  • And that particular sack was payment for the guards,

  • apparently.

  • And then I realized, you know, that what the pirates were

  • saying was real.

  • Before that, I was very much on my guard.

  • You know, I wasn’t allowed

  • wasn’t allowing myself to believe them

  • or to be hopeful because, you know,

  • they’d been telling me for months

  • that I was going to get out in a couple of weeks

  • or a couple of days or something.

  • I’d learned not to believe them.

  • We came up with an agreement and everything.

  • I mean, we made our demands when Michael would be brought

  • and how he would be picked up, et cetera, et cetera.

  • And there must have been some kind of rift

  • because when the ransom was being distributed,

  • they had a big gunfight, some of the top pirates,

  • andamongst each other.

  • But luckily, Michael was out of there by then.

  • I landed in Nairobi and this is the first place

  • I felt comfortable, at least for a little while

  • after you get out.

  • And it marks a change in your life.

  • I had my own bed, and I had my own shower,

  • I mean, a working shower for the first time in 2 and a half years.

  • And it was all mine.

  • I could just sleep in the bed and then take a shower

  • when I wanted to instead of having six guys get up

  • with Kalashnikovs to guard my way.

  • When we met, his first words were,

  • I’m so sorry to put you through this.

  • So I said, well, it’s O.K.

  • Youre free.

  • Don’t be sorry.

  • [shouting]

  • I contributed money to their release as soon as I got out

  • and I heard they were still in there, because there was just

  • no other way to get them out.

  • I could kind of tell that there wereout of five governments,

  • nobody was planning any kind of a rescue.

  • So the only way those guys were going to get out of Somalia

  • was going to be with money.

  • When they all noticed that I was there, it was just pandemonium.

  • It was really wonderful.

  • You know, it was obvious they hadn’t forgotten about me,

  • and it was really important for me to be there to show them

  • that I hadn’t forgotten about them.

  • In general, going to crisis regions like this

  • is still something that has to be done.

  • I mean, otherwise you don’t get a clear picture

  • of what’s going on.

  • That’s a responsibility the journalist has to take,

  • and it was a complete failure from my point of view.

  • There will always be journalists who take risks like this.

  • But it’s a — you know, I’m going to be living

  • with the consequences for the rest of my life of what happened.

  • So

I was captured in January 2012 by pirates,

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