Surviving A Kidnapping Against Impossible Odds - the Jessica Buchanan story...
In Somalia, Surviving A Kidnapping Against 'Impossible Odds'
May 14, 2013 - In 2011, Jessica Buchanan was an aid worker in northern Somalia, helping to raise awareness about how to avoid land mines. The north was the relatively safe section of the country; that October, she traveled to the more dangerous southern region for a training. The night before she left, she texted her husband, Erik Landemalm, also an aid worker in Somalia. She asked him a question: "If I get kidnapped on this trip, will you come and get me?"
In Somalia, Surviving A Kidnapping Against 'Impossible Odds'
May 14, 2013 - In 2011, Jessica Buchanan was an aid worker in northern Somalia, helping to raise awareness about how to avoid land mines. The north was the relatively safe section of the country; that October, she traveled to the more dangerous southern region for a training. The night before she left, she texted her husband, Erik Landemalm, also an aid worker in Somalia. She asked him a question: "If I get kidnapped on this trip, will you come and get me?"
On the trip back from the training, Buchanan and a colleague found their convoy surrounded by armed Somalians. The man responsible for protecting them had sold them out to land pirates, who demanded a ransom of up to $45 million. Buchanan has a thyroid condition and was developing a kidney infection, but the kidnappers provided no medicine. They forced Buchanan and her co-worker to sleep on mats in the open desert for 93 days, until U.S. special operations forces the Navy's SEAL Team 6, famous for killing Osama bin Laden came to the rescue.
In a two-part interview with David Greene, Buchanan and Landemalm describe the months she spent as a hostage. In , which aired Monday, Buchanan remembers her confusion during her capture while Landemalm recalls the agony of not knowing if he'd ever see his wife again. In part two, Buchanan recounts the details of her rescue, and she and Landemalm describe the moment they were finally reunited.
Interview Highlights
On the drive back from the training, when she and colleague Poul Thisted were captured...
Buchanan: "About 10 minutes into the ride, a big SUV Land Cruiser comes roaring up to the right of us and slams its brakes and blocks us, and splashes mud all over the car and the windshield and the windows. And I think that's strange, like, 'What a jerk,' like, 'Who drives like that?' And the next thing I know there are all these AK[-47]s, like the butt of AKs, banging into the windshield and banging into the windows.
"And I'm sitting next to the security adviser who is in charge of protecting us and taking care of us I later found out he was the one who arranged the entire abduction, and basically sold us to this group of land pirates. And next thing I know, there are some crazy Somali guy with an AK pointing at my head, screaming. He pulls the security adviser out of the car and climbs in, and another guy gets in the back and we just take off like 60, 70, 80 mph. And we just roar out of town.
"When [my colleague Poul] turned around and looked at me he's still in the front seat I asked him, you know, what's happening. And he just looked at me and he said, 'We're being kidnapped.' This is so far from my comprehension. All I could think was two thoughts: 'This is so bad this is very, very bad,' and, 'My life has changed forever. However this ends, good or bad, my life has changed forever. My work is changed forever.' Yeah, it's changed the course of my life."
On how Landemalm, working farther north in Somalia, found out about the kidnapping
