Cold Case Files - I SURVIVED: I'm In A Taliban Prison and Nobody Can Find Me

Episode Date: July 13, 2024

In 2008 Jere, a journalist specializing in the area, is traveling in Afghanistan to meet with a member of the Taliban he had known years before. While looking for his former contact, Jere and the team he is traveling with are kidnapped and held for ransom by a different Taliban faction in the mountains of Pakistan. Progressive: Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. Rosetta Stone: Don’t put off learning that language - there’s no better time than RIGHT NOW to get started! For a very limited time, I Survived listeners can get Rosetta Stone’s Lifetime Membership for 50% off! Visit rosettastone.com/survived Trade Coffee - Visit drinktrade.com/SURVIVED to enjoy 30% off your first order when you subscribe! 

This program contains subject matter that may be disturbing to some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. And a man held a rocket-propelled grenade launcher to my head and his eyes were cold and fiery. Real people. I am in a Taliban prison deep in the mountains of Pakistan. And nobody can find me. Who faced death. He said,

we can do to you here whatever we want. And lived to tell how. If you even think about escaping, I will come after you like a dog. This is I Survived. February 2008 in Pakistan. Jerry is a journalist specializing in Afghanistan. I'd gone to Afghanistan as a young man before the Soviet Union even invaded Afghanistan in the 1980s. So I had an understanding and love of the country and of the culture.

Secondly, I went as a young newspaper reporter for the New York Times in the early 1980s, and I lived with various members of the mujahideen, holy warriors, our allies fighting the Soviet Union, the most important of whom was a man named Jalal ad-Din Haqqani. Today, he is the leader of the most powerful, the most lethal, the most violent and the most effective anti-American insurgency or insurgent group, part of the Taliban, closely allied with Al-Qaeda.

25 years ago, he was our ally. After 9-11, I was hired by CBS and and I became their Afghan-Pakistan consultant, and I found myself saying, I have to go back and see if I can find these men with whom I lived before. I could perhaps find out what no one else could find out, what the CIA could not find out, what nobody else seemed to be able to even get close to finding out about, and that is al-Qaeda. Jerry's Taliban contacts were located in the dangerous tribal areas of Pakistan. I wanted to get to the Taliban leaders,

who had been my friend, who had taken care of me before, to see why and how he had changed. In the 1980s, I had lived with and wrote a book about the Mujahideen, explaining them to the West, to the outside world. And my goal this time was to try, based upon my experiences, to write a book about the Taliban. And I remember sitting in a diner here in New York with a publisher, and he said, can you do this? Do you want to do this? And I said, yeah, let's go.

Jerry based himself in Afghanistan near the Pakistan border. I had been living along the border for months now, crossed over now and then somewhat. So I didn't consider myself naive at all. I knew I was going into the most dangerous place in the world for an outsider, particularly for an American. I knew from the 1980s that I could disguise myself as a Pashtun, as a member of the Taliban, as an Afghan. I knew how to tie a turban. I knew how to wear a hat.

My beard was long. I was skinny. I was out in the sun for days, weeks, months. I understood the tribal code called Pashtunwali. Pashtuns are the people, the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan and across the border in Pakistan. The Taliban are Pashtuns. I did not register with the embassy. I began to disassociate myself with other journalists. And then I began to work with members of parliament, in the Afghan parliament, and I began to tell them and no one else what I was doing. Twenty-five years ago, the Mujahideen were all one.

Today, a great many of them are now part of the government. But they're still in touch with members of the Taliban. They promised to protect me and I felt I would be okay. The original plan was that my interpreter and a member of the Taliban who had come across from the tribal areas of Pakistan to escort me all the way down to Miram Shah in Pakistan, in the tribal areas where Haqqani is based. A driver took Jerry, his Taliban bodyguard, and his interpreter to the border.

We got out, and the driver came close to me, and I could see that his eyes were watery, and he kissed me on the cheek, Joined by a second bodyguard, Jerry and the three men headed into the mountains. We slowly began to climb higher and higher, still in single file, walking for hours and hours, and my interpreter's falling farther and farther back, but we were about 20 yards apart. One of my bodyguards stopped to rest to wait for the interpreter, and I said, Afghans don't stop. They always walk. We always have to get to someplace before sundown. There's no electricity here.

Why are we stopping? And I looked up and I saw movement. A small tinge of black. And all of a sudden, that small black tinge became a turban as a man rose, this tall, lanky man rose, jumped over a rock, and he came running down the hill in front of us, and they spread out, about 12 of them. And they were like Indians in an old Western movie, shouting,

Canna, canna, canna, get down, get down, get down. And I saw this smaller guy in the center. I said, that's the leader. That's the Taliban leader. I'm dead. I'm dead. Jerry recognized none of the Taliban group that ambushed them. And I was surrounded. And I looked up and I saw that my first bodyguard had his rifle taken from him. And a man took the rifle butt down on him.

And he looked up with fear in his eyes. And I looked at my other bodyguard, crouched behind a rock. I said, why doesn't he fire? Next thing I knew, I'm standing there, and a man held a rocket-propelled grenade launcher to my head, and his eyes were cold and fiery and gleaming all at the same time. And then the Taliban commander came over to me,

and he said, in Pashto, where were you? And where are you going? And I told him, in Pashto, where were you and where are you going? And I told him, in Pashto, I can't let him think I'm an American. If they think I'm an American, I am finished right here. I have to keep the fiction alive. I said, we've just come from Kabul and we're on our way to Peshawar,

the name of the city in Pakistan. I'd been in the city a hundred times over the years. And he looked at me and he said, you're not Bushed. They grabbed my hand and they started to carry us, take us up into the mountains. And then my bodyguard, the lead bodyguard said, I'm tired, I want to sit down.

And one of the men said, if you sit down, you'll find your head rolling over there. They set me down on a ridge facing west. At that time, I was still in shock. They took a turban, and they wrapped it around my eyes, and my whole world went very black. They tied my hands, And I was in such shock that I just sat there like a sheep before a slaughter. And I waited and I waited.

And I thought of home and I thought of my family. And I said, so this is where I die. Then they picked me up. They grabbed my hand. They dragged me down the mountain and I fell once, twice. I heard a car engine. We got down to the bottom.

They opened the car door up. They throw me inside. Oh no, they threw me inside. And we begin to climb, climb, climb, go over rocks. The tires start to spin. We keep climbing and climbing. They're going to take me up into the mountains, and they're going to kill me alone.

And finally, we stop. They open the door, and they pull me out. And then they take me into a room, and they set me down. And then, very slowly, they untie the turban. I'm not alone. There's my bodyguards, and there's my interpreter. And the Taliban commander looks at me. And then a man next to him says, what is your name?

I can't keep this up. My language isn't good enough. My accent is obviously horrible. But something deep inside of me said that if I tell a lie that things are going to go bad, and I give my name, which is clearly not a Pashtun name. And I said, I'm American. I had to convince them as best I could that I was not a spy and that I was a journalist and that I was a writer. And I was there to tell their story.

I kept mentioning this one man's name, Haqqani, who I'd lived with before, who's such a powerful Taliban leader today, and I lived with him when they were our allies in the 1980s, to try and win them over. They said, we're going to investigate you. And if we find that you have been invited here, as your bodyguards say. We'll let you go. But if not, we will judge you under Sharia, Islamic law. A spy, Sharia, would be the end. And so they left. And then I looked around me at the walls. I looked for blood on the walls. I looked over on the floor and I saw chains

and a stake in the ground. And I said, I am in a Taliban prison, deep in the mountains of Pakistan, and nobody can find me. There are 12 Taliban in the next room. They were eating. We could hear their voices through these thick, big mud walls.

My one bodyguard said, if they start to torture us, we have to kill them. And we're going to kill or be killed. I had never in my life thought that. Exhausted, Jerry eventually fell asleep. And then for the next few days, they said, the Taliban are investigating you. If you hope to get out of here,

you have to convert. You here, you have to convert. You're going to have to become Muslim. We would pray five times a day, and I prayed with them. We would begin to learn and memorize the prayer. And then on the fourth night, the Taliban commander returned. It was probably around midnight. It was late at night. First one bodyguard went out. I heard a cry.

Are they beating him? Are they going to kill him? Will I ever see him again? Then he came back in. His eyes were down. He didn't see anything. He sat down. And they called the next person out.

15 minutes later, he returns, and then the Taliban commander walked in. He had a little notebook, and he said, I have some questions for you. I have to now give the speech of my life. I have to save my life, and I have to save the lives of these men I brought with me. So for the next hour and a half or two hours the questions came. Where are you from? Who are you? Why are you really here? You say you're a journalist but you have three cameras. Why would you have three cameras? You were here before but you were doing this. How do we know you're not a spy? On and on and on and on and I kept

going and going and going and going. Am I doing the right thing? Am I telling him what is acceptable? Finally, finally, exhaustion, we stop. He got up and he looked at me and his eyes were cold and he walked outside. Did I survive? Are we going to be okay? Are they going to let us go?

What? The commander returned with two men armed with rifles. They came behind me. I said, oh no. Oh no. I know what's coming. The Taliban commander, anger in his eyes, took this small handheld camera I had. How do I turn this on? He asked. I said, oh, I'm going to help you film my own execution. Jerry thought of Daniel Pearl, a journalist executed by the Taliban six years earlier. I know what's coming. I'm no longer naive. I'm no longer in shock. I know. And I bend over and I'm way down. I don't have the strength to stand up. I am subconsciously trying to protect my neck. So he kept filming.

And the room is silent. I raised my back and I... I looked at him. I said, okay. Okay. Go ahead. Trade Coffee is a specialty coffee marketplace that matches customers with the best coffees from local roasters around the country. You take a short quiz to share your preferences, and Trade matches you to personalized recommendations. It's a convenient way to

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Visit rosettastone.com slash survived. That's 50% off unlimited access to 25 language courses for the rest of your life. Redeem your 50% off at Rosetta stone.com slash survived today. Jerry is locked in a Taliban prison in the Pakistan mountains. The Taliban leader begins to film what Jerry believes is to be his execution. And I thought of Daniel Pearl. And I knew it was going to happen. And I waited. And I waited.

And he lowered the camera. And he stopped. And he walked out. Just walked out. Just walked out. I sat there. Beats with my spaghetti. I was just exhausted. And the room is silent.

And then they walk back in. And the men come closer and the Taliban commander said, take off his hat. I lifted my head up and he kept filming. My back was straight and I was shaking inside. I was petrified inside. But I didn't dare show fear to him, although my eyes were filled with fear. I couldn't dare show emotion. All right, here goes, here goes, here goes.

And then he stopped. And then they walked out and the room was dark. And I picked up my blanket, sort of staggered over to my cot, and I put it over my head, and I cried for a second. I came out, and I just laid there. Jerry was locked up with his interpreter and his two bodyguards. After a few days, anger started to come out.

My interpreter said, well, if you hadn anger started to come out. My interpreter said, well, if you hadn't wanted to come here, we wouldn't have done this. It was you. It was your fault. And I said, if you had done this, you hadn't done that. And it all started to come out. We began to hate one another.

We began to argue with one another. And my interpreter increasingly began to go closer and closer to the to the to my bodyguards because he was afraid to become too close to me and began to distance himself from me and so our whole world became this very small dark room that belonged to us and became a bit like a cocoon. I would think after a while, every day of escape, how can I escape? How do we get out of here? We weren't allowed out during the day. It was dark. I could see maybe four or five feet in front of me clearly. And at night we were allowed out for about three to five

minutes to use a makeshift toilet and I would look at the stars and which way is west and which way is east and the Taliban jailer was there with his rifle and he was big and he was like a fire plug. I did exercises because if we were going to escape I had to run and I had to be able to outrun them. I to get up in the mountains I constantly kept myself in shape as best I could when the jailer said after watching me do exercises I'm getting heavy I'm getting fat it's hard for me to attack the Americans and run away. Maybe Mr. Jerry can help me get in shape." And I had to be silent. No, no, I'm not going to help you get in shape to kill American soldiers. No. One day they took my bodyguard and they said, we're taking you away.

When he stood up and he said, goodbye, Sir Jerry. And I was convinced, convinced without a doubt, that he was being taken away and I would never see him again. The jailer brought the bodyguard back a week later, unharmed. The jailer said, one of the Taliban commander's sons needs a new kidney. Maybe we should take your kidney. And I envisioned this little man coming in with a satchel, and they're going to tie me down and hold me down, and they're going to put a syringe into me to knock me out.

And they're going to take a knife, and they're going to cut out my kidney. And I said, I'm old. You don't want my kidneys. I'm trying to make a joke. And then he left. And I said, that's it. That's it.

I'm not sticking around anymore. Tonight we're going to go. We had it. We had a wire. Found a wire. I'd been in the Army a long time ago, and I remember paying half attention to when they said, if you're in a situation, this is how you strangle a man.

And I began to think for the first time in my life of what we may have to do to get out. We had to do this together. If I was on my own, how in the world was I going to do this? But I may have no choice. And I'm pacing up and down the room and I get more and more excited and more agitated. We're going tonight. There is no way I'm going to allow my kidneys to be cut out. There's no way this'm going to allow my kidneys to be cut out. There's no way this is going to happen.

As Jerry thought about escaping, one of his cellmates went outside to the bathroom. When he went out to go to the bathroom, he was not out for three minutes. He was out for ten minutes. Why? Why? What's going on? What's going on out there? And then the jailer came in. And he came up to me, about this far from my eyes, and he said,

if you even think about escaping, I will come after you like a dog. I was not just petrified of him, but I knew that I had been betrayed, and I wanted to harm him very, very badly because he betrayed me, and I felt I had to fight him. It was completely irrational, but we were like animals. We became very, very primal. And now I don't trust anybody.

Now I am totally alone. There was nowhere to go, and I became darker and darker and darker. For days I would lie in my cot and I would feel my neck and I would wonder how long it would take when I was being beheaded before I passed out. How painful would it be? How long would it go before I blacked out? You begin to accept it, which seems horrifying, which seems beyond comprehension, is acceptable. You are in this cell, and the cell is your world.

And there is no way that anybody can come and find you, no way that anyone knows where you are. And so it was just a matter of accepting death. We would listen for hours and hours and hours to these suicide recruitment tapes and they talk about death, they talk about martyrdom, they talk about suicide. You live in a world that worships, glorifies death. To keep himself sane, Jerry took notes for his book. At first, I was afraid to take notes in front of them.

But after a while, they chose a name for me, you know, Mr. Clerk or Sir Clerk, because I could read and write and it gave me a certain status. And then gradually, I do feel that they knew I was telling their story. They knew that I was going to take their words and their story back to the world. The jailer still kept Jerry locked inside 24 hours a day. The jailer began to be afraid himself that people outside would find out I'm here, want to sell me to other Taliban, that the Taliban would come after him. I had become a commodity.

I was called the golden goose. The Taliban commander who had kidnapped Jerry returned with his demands. And the Taliban commander said, we would like to exchange you for three of our brothers from Guantanamo. And I gathered my courage and I said, the Americans will not negotiate. And then he said, if we're not able to exchange you, we would like you to make a contribution. And the original demand was one and a half million dollars. He said, but we don't make the final decision. That comes from the military commission.

And I imagined older men, hard men, men with long beards, men who ran the show here. So when the military commission came in, and believe me, there's nothing more frightening when the door opens and a tall man with a black turban holding a rifle stands there in the shadows staring at you. And you know that all he has to do is go like that and take you outside. And I was afraid. And they quizzed me. How do we know you're not a spy? Why did you bring in cameras? And on and on and on.

And he had the questions all written out. And I knew that he would kill me in a second, but he wouldn't do it without just cause. And then they had me get on the ground. They gave me a piece of paper and a pen, a rifle. Write a letter to your wife and tell her that you've been captured by the Taliban and that you need money to be released.

I'm not married. Couldn't dare say that I wasn't married. Was I homosexual? Taliban kill. People like that. I could not appear to these men not to be married. I had to be normal. I had to create a wife.

An old girlfriend of mine was subletting my apartment in New York. She was renting my apartment. And so I used her as my wife. Jerry wrote the ransom letter after being in captivity for over three weeks. I realized that the world would soon know about me, and I remember so clearly he said, the older guy, the military commission, we can do to you here whatever we want.

You mock our prophet. You desecrate our holy Quran. You torture us in Guantanamo. And then he repeated it. We can do to you here whatever we want. And I shuddered. I Survived is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Let's face it, sometimes multitasking can be overwhelming. Like when your favorite podcast is playing, and the person next to you is talking, and your car fan is blasting. all while you're trying to find the perfect parking spot. But then again, sometimes multitasking is easy, like quoting with Progressive

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It made news throughout the entire region that these two people had been shot while they slept in such a safe community. To give a new perspective on the devastation crimes can cause. It was shocking for something like this to happen in our little town. Featuring cases from quiet towns to bustling cities and interviewing the people closest to the case. My first thought was that it's an unusual location for us to have a homicide.

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available wherever you get your podcasts. Jerry has been imprisoned in the Pakistan mountains for over 30 days. The Taliban demand $1.5 million for Jerry's release. I'm never going to get out of here. How long will I be here? How long will we, how long will we last? I was constantly, constantly living in a never ending cycle of fear and being increasingly isolated. About that same time, a drone appeared overhead, and I could hear every day, 18 hours a day, this low sound, a bit like a lawnmower engine, high up in the air, overhead.

Is that drone there for me, or is that for the Taliban? Were the Americans tracking them? Were they going to shoot a missile at us? Or was the government aware generally of where I was watching me? After 45 days in captivity, the Taliban commander returned to talk to Jerry. And he said to me, congratulations on escaping death. Tonight, you're going to be with your wife in Jalalabad. Jalalabad is the main city across the border in Afghanistan. My wife did the woman that I wrote, old girlfriend that I had written the letter to did she get the money is she waiting for me and he repeated it again congratulations on escaping death I said to myself you were going to kill me weren't you you said nothing would happen to me. You would not harm me.

Somebody above you said, no, you were going to kill me. Jerry was blindfolded and put in a car with his companions. And we drove for an hour and a half or two hours. We got out. They took off the blindfold. And for the first time in a month and a half, or over a month and a half, I could see the light, my eyes were blinded. We slowly began to walk up a mountain. And they put us in this, hit us down in a rock facing forward, and I thought, is this where they kill me? Is this where they do this? Because my back was exposed, and I waited, and I thought is this where they kill me is this where they do this because my back was exposed and I waited and I waited and I looked up I saw a man

there with a rifle and he was smiling I said no I don't think he's going to shoot me now and I saw a man with his hands bending over in what looked like a plastic, small plastic sack. And they waved away, don't look. The Taliban commander said, we're sending a suicide bomber to the prisoner exchange. And the Taliban commander said, we're going to release you. We're going to be watching you. We know where your families are. We know everything about you.

Za, go. And we walked away, and I waited for them to shoot me in the back. We walked, we walked, and now it's pitch black. And I fell down. I got up, kept walking. I fell again. I got up.

And soon, my lead bard of God whistles. And out of the darkness come these men, like ghosts, like apparitions. They're wearing white. And they have bandoliers. And they have rifles. I go, oh, no. I had just been passed from one Taliban group to the next. We came to a river, got in a boat.

They took me across and on the other side, a pickup truck came down and then my interpreter and I got off the barge. These were the Taliban. This was Pakistan. They could not enter Afghanistan. Once we got off that barge, we were back in Afghanistan. And there was a small pickup truck waiting. Got in the back of the truck.

We drove on a dirt road, bumpy dirt road. Kept driving and driving. Finally, I saw a man holding a light like a man on a railroad here, a lantern going back and forth. I go, oh no, oh no, the Taliban. The truck stopped. I said, get out. I got out of the truck.

I was so exhausted, I could barely stand. And then a man came out of the darkness. And he held up a CBS card. The CBS barrel chief. We hugged one another. Are you okay, Jerry? Did they torture you? And I began to feel, for the first time, safe. And my interpreter came up to me,

closer than he'd ever been before, six inches away. He began to tug at my beard, the sign of begging, of supplication, of asking for forgiveness. And I said, you were in on this? Did you betray me? I began to think that this was all a setup. Jerry was taken to a nearby military base. The next morning, I realized I had to take a shower, and I looked at myself in the mirror. Who are you? Who are you? My hair was long, my beard was long and dark. And then I took a shower, and I realized I was washing away all that time in the mountains.

And I was washing away all my years in Afghanistan. Jerry was flown back to New York. The FBI met the plane and they walked me through the airport at JFK and I'm holding my clothes up because I'm skinny. I go into a room just off the passport control. And a man next to me puts his hand on my shoulder, and he said, welcome home, Jerry. Welcome home.

And he said, when you go home tonight, you'll find three messages from the Taliban on your answering machine. We'd like you to tell us, if you can, who they are, what they say. What he was telling me also was that we've been to your apartment. And I realized this was a lot bigger than me. Since his release, Jerry has received over 70 phone calls from the Taliban. An editor of a newspaper asked me why I don't change my numbers.

Two reasons. I'm not going to give in to them. And I want the recording. I want the proof. Not all the phone calls have been pleasant. There are so many unanswered questions. There are so many things I don't know. There's no resolution.

I don't know, in the end, why I survived. I may be here today because I knew the Taliban. I knew them. I knew their culture. And they believed me, ultimately, when I said that I'm here not as a spy. I'm here to learn about you, that I want to write a book about you. I have learned a lot since I've gotten out. I learned that my main contact, the member of parliament today, a former Mujahideen commander, part of that network that I was a part of in the 80s that still exists today, had called

the leader of the Taliban group I was supposed to meet with, called him to his house and said, while I was in prison, release Jerry and do not harm him. I know the government was involved. As the FBI agent said to me when I asked him about that drone, I said, was that there for me or was that there for the Taliban? And he said, we brought all assets into play. A lot of things have happened. It was very corrosive.

It takes a long time. I need to forgive. Otherwise, I'm still in that prison. I'm not quite there yet.