The small gesture of a fellow hostage silently putting their hand on his was “terribly comforting” during his four years in captivity, according to Sir Terry Waite.
Participating in Protection Review’s ProtectX7 event this morning, Sir Terry told an online audience about his experience as an envoy for the Church of England being held hostage over four years in Lebanon, facing torture, a mock execution, and being offered comfort from a fellow hostage.
Picking up his story, Sir Terry revealed he had gained experience negotiating with the likes of General Idi Amin in Uganda, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and the Hezbollah before being captured himself in 1987.
“I found myself in a tiled cell without any companionship and with the threat of imminent death over my head all the time,” Sir Terry said.
“I had to learn how to survive, how to in fact face the extraordinary tensions of this situation.”
Facing torture and mock execution
Sir Terry was kept in a cell for 23 hours and 50 minutes a day, had no-one to talk to, was blindfolded and faced torture.
“They took me into a room,” Sir Terry continued. “They asked me to lie down. They beat the undersoles of my feet with cable. That was extremely painful and I couldn’t walk for a week after that.
“I also faced a mock execution. I was told I had five hours to live. At that point when they told me that, I simply lay on the floor and I fell asleep.
“It was though my body was coming to my aid. And I remember years ago the late Carl Jung saying, ‘If you’re in a position of extremity, allow your body to come to your aid and it will’. And in some strange way it did as it enabled me to sleep.
“After what I imagine was about five hours, they came and took me into another room. They asked me if I wanted anything at all. I said, ‘Yes, I would like a drink.’ For the first time in my life I had felt my throat had gone dry. Dry from fear – not fear from death because death will come to us all eventually – but fear as to how I would die. Would I be beheaded? strangled? how I would die.”
Saying the Lord’s prayer
After being brought some water, Sir Terry asked to write a letter and to say a prayer.
“I said the Lord’s prayer because I wasn’t going to be intimidated in any way,” he added. “And they said, ‘Turn around’. I turned around and felt cold metal at my forehead. But they dropped it and said, ‘Another time’.”
After the first year in captivity, Sir Terry revealed he was released into good accommodation before returning to spend the next few years chained to a wall in the same conditions as before.
A small gesture
He subsequently suffered a very bad bronchial infection but was chained and could not lie down. He was eventually moved to be held with other hostages.
“There was around four of us in the room chained to the wall,” he added.
“At night when I was struggling to get my breath, one of the other hostages Terry Anderson, an AP journalist, just leaned across and put his hand on mine. It was just a small gesture. He never said anything. He just put his hand on mine.
“And you know I felt that terribly comforting. I’ve often felt that when I’ve visited people in hospital and such places, I often wondered what should I say and I realised it’s not what you say. It’s the fact that you are with someone. You’re there. And that was tremendously supportive, just to feel the presence of another human being.
“I think that’s the case with life today and it is difficult I know to trust people. Trust sometimes can be at a low ebb. But if you can be with a team of people you can trust, who you can share with at times, not necessarily everything, just share with and be with and supportive of them, then that it is a tremendous help because it will enable us to maintain ourselves to be at least in good shape to face the world.”