A Hostage's Story: CBS Journalist Speaks

Video Journalist Kidnapped While Working For CBS News Details His Ordeal For The First Time

Comments 9 | Page 3 of 4

April 28, 2008 | by Allen Pizzey

(CBS)  Butler: I think he was touched.

Pizzey: Not touched enough to let you go?

Butler: Who knows?

Pizzey: It must have been pretty disconcerting to be hooded and unable to go out and the fire going on all around you and you don't what it is and you happen to be in the middle?

Butler: The thing that was worrying me the most was I could hear the American jets screaming over the top. You know, I have witnessed J-DAMs go into buildings all over Iraq. So I was thinking, "Oh no, please not that way."

That would be just too much of an irony.

Pizzey: The ultimate indignity.

Butler: Yes. Let me go some other way.

Pizzey: You took a lot of pictures in Afghanistan of people in the situation you were in, people hooded, their eyes taped, their hands tied up, kept in small cages. You must have had a lot of empathy from your situation with what you saw. Did you remember all that stuff?

Butler: Yes, I did it is quite ironic. I was very pleased that I wasn't being kept in such harsh conditions that they were kept because I have seen them be put in stress positions for every waking hour, and at least they weren't doing that to me. I had loose handcuffs, whereas they had plastic tie wraps that were very tight, and they were also taped round their mouth the whole time and hooded.

So yes, I was relieved that my captivity wasn't as harsh as I have witnessed being applied to suspects taken from Afghanistan.

Pizzey: You were saying it is better to be kidnapped by Shi'ites in southern Iraq than by Americans in Afghanistan.

Butler: I was pleased I wasn't being waterboarded in Guantanamo or being held for six and a half years like an al Jazeera cameraman, for instance.

Pizzey: Did they mention that sort of thing, your captors? Did they not make the comparisons?

Butler: No, but there was one incident which I was grateful for cheap and nasty electronics because they took me into a room with a television and a video disk player and took my hood off and put a disk in which was a dramatisation of an incident that took place in Basra with the British army where they actually kicked to death a suspect, and just as it got to the crucial point, where they are about to lay into this Iraqi suspect with a hood on his head and his hands strapped behind his back, the video disk pixilated and wouldn't play. They tried to fix it, but it wouldn't play ball. I thought they were warming themselves up to give me a taste of that.

Pizzey: Looking for a bit of inspiration?

Butler: I don't know.

Pizzey: Did they say anything or was that your impression?

Butler: That was my impression. The people holding me at that point didn't speak much in the way of English and I am afraid my Arabic is almost non-existent.

Pizzey: So you were handed from one group of captors to another?

Butler: My understanding is that I was held by the same group throughout, but the people that were tasked with being my hosts at the various houses changed, and also they would occasionally rotate people in to give them a break, that were looking after me.

Pizzey: So then you have got to start again, building a relationship?

Butler: Yes, although I would see occasionally the same people returning.

Pizzey: When you say "see"?

Butler: Hear. I could make out through the woolen balaclava, I could make out form. I could make out the sides and the shape of them.

Pizzey: What happens to you while you are being hooded like that? Suddenly the hood is taken off after two months, and you can see.

Butler: Mm-hm.

Pizzey: What do you see? What happens to your eyes?

Butler: Well, it was a very bright day when I was rescued and it was slightly difficult to adjust to the brightness of the light, and also you get - I got color fringing like little rainbows in the side, which lasted about six hours. Then that started to fade away, but the biggest shock was I had lost my near vision. So I couldn't focus on anything closer than 2 feet.

Pizzey: Will your vision come back?

Butler: I hope so. I've got some exercises to do with my eyes and I have seen a specialist for an initial consultation.

Pizzey: Let me be personal and ask you what other after-effects are there that you can talk about to this kind of captivity, that kind of experience?

Butler: The most obvious one from the lack of movement is the muscle wastage. A lot of the weight has gone from just losing muscle tone. So I am pretty allergic to gyms at the best of times, but now I have got to find some discipline from somewhere and spend a couple of months in a gym, but I am not looking forward to it.

Pizzey: You can repair the muscles with exercise. What about your head?

Butler: I am pretty good with my head because I am more concerned for the family and the colleagues of mine. Because, as I say, it is easier for the hostage than it is for the family, much easier.

Pizzey: Will you go back and do this kind of thing again?

Butler: Yes.

Pizzey: You have a reputation of doing stories in bad places, going to dangerous places, places other people don't want to go. Has this put you off?

Butler: No, it doesn't put you off. You learn from your experiences every time. There are certainly places where I wouldn't go. There's always been places that I wouldn't go. One of the reasons why I like working for CBS is that I don't ever get put under pressure just to go into these places. You know, I demand time on the ground to build relationships. I don't like being put on a deadline. In fact I won't work on a deadline in these places and CBS 60 Minutes allow me that time. They have always said, "If this isn't right, walk away." So I wouldn't go back into Basra next week. I am not saying I will never go back into Basra, but I wouldn't go back into Basra next week. I also don't think it would be visible for me to go to Iran right now.

Pizzey: No, you would probably have to pick your places.

Butler: Yes.

Pizzey: Let me go back on something you mentioned. You said "cheap electronics." You also got to make what is known as a proof-of-life video, some way of showing that you are there. Tell me how that came about and what you did.

Butler: The first one was actually more the demands that I felt they were making. It was the day that … my translator, was released. All of a sudden they asked us to stand up and again they taped us … they put a plastic bag in our mouths and taped our mouths up, but they didn't take us out of the house. It was also in the morning, and every movement before then had been made at night.

So that was slightly easier on us, I think, that it was daylight. We knew it was daylight outside. They actually took us from the lower part of the house, up some stairs to a room upstairs with a lot of natural daylight where there were no curtains, and they sat us down or they sat me down on a chair, and then they took my hood off and I was able to see them with their hoods on, in this little Sony videocam set up on a tiny tripod, and they told [the translator] what they wanted me to say, which was basically that I request the British authority and the Iraqi authority and my family to do everything they could to secure my release, and that was it.

Then they did the same with [the translator] in Arabic, and then later that day I was aware of them talking to [the translator] a lot, and then [the translator] left the room, which was disconcerting. He was taken out of the room and I was left there. There was one of my guards spoke a little bit of English and I asked him what they were doing with [the translator], and they said he is taking the tape to Baghdad. I actually could buy into that at that time, because I thought maybe they don't know how to get the tape into the right hands and they couldn't know how to pass off any channels of communication they want to, be it e-mail or cellphones. So I was quite relieved at that point, because if [the translator] was out, then it meant my responsibility was less. But then I had doubts a couple of days later, and I had a different guard that spoke English and I asked him what they did with [the translator] and they told me they had killed him. So that made the following two and a bit months harder.

Pizzey: So you didn't know [the translator] was all right until you were released?

Butler: Even when I was released, when they got me up the road to an armored Humvee, with an Iraqi general, he spoke good English. I asked him whether there was any news on my translator and he said to me, "I am sorry, they cut his throat".

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