The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - Convicted Drug Smuggler On Surviving The DEADLIEST Prison In The Middle East

Episode Date: May 24, 2026

Actor and Hollywood stuntman Erik “All Day” Audé joins The Connect for one of the most intense stories ever told on the channel. In 2002, Erik was arrested in Pakistan after unknowingly being used as a drug mule and accused of attempting to smuggle narcotics through the airport. What followed was a nightmare: a death sentence, years inside one of Pakistan’s most dangerous maximum-security prisons, brutal conditions, riots, violence, corruption, and the constant fear that he would be the next prisoner executed. Erik breaks down how he was deceived, what life on death row was really like, how he survived the prison system, and how he eventually fought his way back to freedom after proving his innocence. He also talks about his career as a stuntman, the importance of safety on film sets, and the lessons he learned from surviving the unimaginable. This is a story about betrayal, survival, faith, justice, and what it takes to keep fighting when the entire system is against you. Go Support Erik! Book: https://www.amazon.com/Years-Pakistan-Erik-Aud%C3%A9-Story/dp/B0D1YFHP5X Movie: https://www.amazon.com/Years-Pakistan-Erik-Aud%C3%A9-Story/dp/B07FSRBWGL Aude’s Ice Cream Bar: https://www.instagram.com/audes_ice_cream_bar/ Tipsy Cow Bar and Grill: https://www.instagram.com/tipsycowshermanoaks/ Wine Bar: https://www.instagram.com/buvettela/ This Episode Is #Sponsored By The Following: Betterhelp! You don’t have to be on this journey alone. Find support and have someone with you in therapy. Sign up and get 10% off at https://betterhelp.com/connect Lucy! Find LUCY near you at https://lucy.co/stores or save 20% on your first online order at https://lucy.co/CONNECT with promo code CONNECT. Join The Patreon For Bonus Content! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow 00:00 Erik Audé's Nightmare: Pakistan Death Row 01:39 Introducing Erik's Story & Book 03:11 Hollywood Stunt Work & Industry Dangers 07:53 On-Set Injuries & Stunt Safety Culture 13:32 Behind the Scenes: Drug Smuggling Logistics 16:08 Exploiting Drivers & Realities of US-Mexico Smuggling 18:29 Deception Schemes: Mules, Tragedy & Innocent Couriers 20:15 This Episode Is Sponsored By Betterhelp 21:24 How Eric Became a Dupe in the Drug Trade 29:34 Pakistan's Corrupt Justice System & Bribery in Courts 33:24 This Episode Is Sponsored By Lucy 34:56 Erik's Recruitment—A Glamorous Leather Industry Cover 46:14 Erik's First Suspicious Smuggling Trips 55:02 The Trip to Pakistan: Red Flags and Arrest 01:03:54 Jailed in Pakistan: Culture Shock and Danger 01:14:17 Abuse, Survival, and Corruption Inside Prison 01:25:27 Violence, Survival, and Learning the System 01:41:09 Erik's Survival Tactics and Prison Power Plays 01:54:28 Prison Riots, Boxing, and Navigating Pakistani Jail Hierarchy 02:15:33 Appeals, Pakistani Lawyers, and Winning Respect 02:35:07 Fighting for Freedom: Legal Maneuvering from the Inside 02:57:06 High Court, Vindication, and Leaving Pakistan 03:02:39 Return Home, Civil Suit, and Final Justice 03:11:00 Erik Today: Lessons, Life After Prison & Reflections 03:13:33 Final Thoughts & Where to Find Erik's Story Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I said I need to speak with the American embassy. Embassy can't help you. We're going to hang you after 5 o'clock prayer. Then they bring me over and they hook me up and start turning up the electricity. And they hang me up like a punching bag and go rocky on me. So I only know pain. Kassori in Pakistan is the size of a closet. The only time you see light is when they feed you one time a day

and also when it's your turn to be brought out to have the bottom of your feet beaten. You have to fight the guards. Otherwise you will starve to death. I see the other inmates get killed. I watch people get hung. I watch people get stoned. I watch a guy get lit on fire. I had a hit on me one day where I had three knives sticking out of me and I had a guy underneath me who was popping his eye out.

So I snapped his neck. It haunts me every day. I went to jail for a crime I didn't commit and I came out of murder. Eric A'Day is an actor and Hollywood stuntman from Los Angeles, California. In 2002, he was accused of attempting to smuggle heroin through an airport in Pakistan and sentenced to death. He spent three years on death row inside of the largest maximum security prison in Pakistan, where he survived insane prison riots, was forced to kill multiple inmates who were trying to kill him,

and witnessed one by one as his friends got executed by hanging. Eric assumed he was next to be executed, but by the grace of God, he was able to prove his innocence before a Pakistani judge and was given his freedom in 2005. Today, Eric is still working as a busy actor and has written a best-selling book about his experience called Three Years in Pakistan, the Eric A'Day story, which I highly recommend you check out.

A link to that will be in the description of the episode. Ladies and gentlemen, this is one of the all-time great interviews on this channel. It's Eric Aude, right here on The Connect with Johnny Mitchell. What's up, everybody? This week's episode is a certified banger. So make sure you're subscribed to the channel. Hit that little alert bell. And if you love the interview, drop a comment and hit the like button.

It helps us out so much. all right, let's do this. People want to be entertained, you know, regardless of how it is. It's just, it's a definite evolution. I think SAG is dying. SAG is, you know, people, there's no reason for people to join SAG anymore. Also, they don't have anyone's back. Like, I did a movie last year where they fired me because I was not saying yes to a lot of stunts.

They wanted to have a baby tackled in the hands of the actress who was only six months old. And I was like, yeah, we're not doing that. And the director was like, the mom, the parents are okay with them. Like, I'm not okay with that. The actual, an actual baby. An actual baby. And it was like a demon movie where the girl's crazy. And she's like, she's being scapegoated by the nanny, who's the demon.

She knows it. The mom knows it. But like, she's going to get the baby. And she's got a knife. And the knife is plastic. But still, I was like, let's try it with the doll. Right. And then she like grabs the doll by the arm.

And I'm like, that's why we're rehearsing with a doll. Yeah. I was like, no, let's pick it up like it's a real baby. Okay, both hands over here. when you yell, don't yell on the baby's ear. Let's get it right here. Okay, just got a baby's ear there. Like, this is, I was the only one in the room that was like,

when I'm a stunt coordinating movie, I got to be everyone's dad regardless. I want everyone to go home safe and everything else. And I'd rather, if I'm wrong, I'd rather like, hey, let's just figure out a safe or where we do it. So they fired me because a few things. That was the baby. I wouldn't let the baby get tackled.

And I said, we'll hand it off to the father, which is what we did. And the cops come in and tackle the girl, arrest her and go. That's fine. It works, right? And that's safe. then they wanted me to have a 70-year-old woman get bum-rush at the last second.

Like they're telling me this at the last second. I'm like, no, that's what doubles are for. I don't want her to get bum-rush. She's frail. She's an old lady. Of course, she doesn't want to say no because she's an actress and she doesn't get that many opportunities. So it's my job to stand up and stand up and these people.

So I came up with another scenario where we're going to tackle her onto the bed. So it's a little cushiony and then the girl puts the syringe in her neck. And I worked them out so it's safe, but it still looks good and it works. And finally, the final straw was I had a stone performer who was, was getting beat up by an invisible demon, but we were filming in like a 300-year-old home. And so there was a lot of like low-hanging ceiling, sharp edges, real wood, metal, and all. And so when he came in and rehearsed to so I could see what he was going to do, I told him pace yourself because, you know, he was young, so he didn't know any better.

I said, we're going to do this like six, seven times. You're going to get tired. That's just experience. So he comes in, he does it crazy. He went 100%. I told him to go 15%. But he was doing 100%. And he was like, ha, ha, ha.

And I was like, you're a dumbass. All right. So when we do it, I want you to do it. like half that. And then here's their director going, no, that's exactly what I want. And she don't know any better, but well, on take one,

he's about to come in. The door was not all the way to the wall like we did on the rehearsal. It was now out. And this is a very thick, unforgiving door with all this sharp metal on it. So I said, stop, go back to one. I opened the door wider.

And then she's like, you don't call shopping. I'm like, that's exactly what I do. I ignored her because she's an idiot. She doesn't know anything. Tell the, tell, I said, go back to one. Keep the action.

When it comes to stunts, it's my job, dude, for safety, right because that's my name oh so is that so is that also part of as a stunt man are you also allowed to do that are you also when it comes to safety absolutely okay because it's our because we're the ones you know it it's my name on the on the insurance it's not theirs so if someone gets hurt no one ever says hey who was directing they always say who was stunt coordinating ah okay so you're coordinator as well as a stunt actor yes okay so do you have rank are you able to when it comes to safety yes okay it comes to safety i absolutely have rank if a stunt coordinator is telling you to

stop, we're stopping because it's safety. You never, some directors will get people killed and they have. They don't care. All directors care about is- Michael Bay got a guy killed and some other director went to jail for doing a shot on a train track, I think in Chicago that they didn't have permits for. And the train hit a hospital gurney and it killed, I think, a PA. Oh my God.

Yeah, but that's why you got stunt coordinators there to say no. I say no all the time. I say, but I come up with options that we can use that will work. Right. Directors, like, just hit him in the face. No, we're not going to hit him in the face. All directors want is a shot. They don't give a shit.

No, you don't hit him in the face. We're going to move the camera. We're going to react to it. We're not curing cancer. We're doing make-belief. There's no reason for anyone to get hurt ever. Stunk guys are there in case, worst-case scenario. People are like, oh, you guys are tough.

No, stunt guys are vulnerable to. They're humans. We don't want to get, you know, we're not punching bags. We're not expendable, even though sometimes people say we are. You know, we come up with ways to sell the shot. That's all it is. We'll do some crazy stuff. We'll push the envelope.

But we're not there to just be your punching bag. Well, Brandon Lee, that's the most famous example, right? No way, that was a bad. No, I'm sorry. Fucking. Well, Brandon Lee got killed on the Crow. Yeah. And that was just a whole really bad coincidence stuff.

That was also people cut in corners. Because what they had done is taking that gun for insert shots, but they went to the pawn shop, a real pawn shop to find bullets. And they emptied the bullets, and they put it. So they had real bullet casings. Right. But they filled them up. so that they would have the blanks and they wanted the insert shot of like the like shooting.

Well one of the bullets got mixed in with a real bullet and even though they had redone it someone put powder in there and so when the bullet shot they when they were doing the insert shots they were like what was that and they were looking everywhere because they heard an actual shot and there shouldn't have there shouldn't have been shot at all. Well the the powder inside a blank still pushed out a real bullet but the bullet got wedged in the gun so this whole time the gun still had a bullet in the barrel. So when they used that gun for the scene to shoot him,

the blank pushed out the real bullet into him that was stuck there. That's why nowadays they take a light down the barrel of the guns to show you. And they should. And everyone's like, oh, it's repetitive and everything else. Well, you know what?

It would have saved Brandon Lee's life. Well, we'll have saved that. The lady that got whacked on the set of the Alec Baldwin movie. Also, yeah, he's a dipshit for, he's a dipshit for all that happening as well. Do you think he should be criminally liable for that? 100%.

He was a producer. and also he's also been in the business 50 plus years, so he knows better. So he was probably an asshole on set. Like, no one talked to me, no one told me anything. Let's just do this, what I'm going to do. When I got a gun, you don't ever point it at the other person.

You always go off just a little bit, always. And people are going to, even on screen. Yes. Right, right, right. Yes, like if I'm shooting at the camera, that's one thing. But because accidents happened, there was a music video was in Australia, but the guy had a shotgun, and he was leaning on it in the dirt, and it had blanks in it.

all the debris went back into the barrel because dipshit was pointed it into the dirt and leaning on it. So when he shot someone, the blank pushed out all the rocks and everything and killed somebody. Oh my God. Because of stupidity. Yeah.

So that was stupidity too, because that wasn't the first live fire on that show. That was the fourth live fire. There shouldn't have been one, little less four. And the stunt coordinator was Alan Graff. Alan Graff knows better, but he wasn't there on set at all. And so it was a really bad chain of command. That girl, her dad,

adds a great armor. She got the job because of nepotism and because, you know, we want to fill the job with women and all that stuff. She had no business being there. Everyone's like, oh, her dad's great, cool.

I got, my brother, one of my brothers played baseball in the majors. Does that mean I should be on the field in the majors? No, I suck at baseball. Right. You know? But just because your dad was great

doesn't mean you're great. So yeah, you really do have to have the discipline of kind of a military person because that's what it is. It's just doing the same thing every time. It's having systems. Yeah, they're there for a reason. Yeah.

And when you start to get lax, like for whatever reason, that girl was allowing the actors to go and shoot real guns on their time off. Yeah, I heard that. That's why there were three previous live fires. So there was already slapping this on that set. Right. They didn't have, they had one, two, three examples to fix that problem. And then you've got Alec Baldwin, who obviously is his own guy and does whatever he wants. Yeah.

Going and doing a scene without the stunt coordinator there, first off, the guy who took the gun shouldn't have been able to do it. Should have gone from the armor to the actor after she did the whole. hole here, look down the barrel, da-da-da-da-da-da-da, you know, empty it just to make sure. Oh, so they shoot it until it's empty? I do. Okay. I do. Everyone does things different.

You can always, look, there's a million ways to get to the number 10. Everyone does things different. I've watched so many people do things differently. When I get on set, I'll be like, that's not how I would do it, but it works. And there's a thing that there's a saying that I, there's a saying, if it's stupid and it it's not stupid. But I will go, even on airsoft guns, here, see, it's airsoft gun. Look, there's no reason not to.

It takes two seconds to do it. And it's just everyone wants to see it. Everyone should have that right, too. Yeah. And let's go film this same. What's your last name? Odd day. What is that?

What is that? It's French. French. Yeah. Like you're having a very odd day. Yeah. Odd day. Yeah.

How do you know Vincent Vargas? I know Vincent because he, I just have done his podcast a couple times. All right. We're kind of in the same space. We do this narco kind of, he does more. He just focuses on like narco shit going on in Mexico and, you know, law enforcement and stuff like that. So we, I talk to people of all different criminal, not just criminal backgrounds, but they have crazy stories about criminality or incarceration.

And we've been down to Mexico quite a bit. We've had some cartel, real cartel guys on the podcast. So he reaches out from my expert opinion, which of course I'm not. But I do know a shitload now just in the course of doing this show about, you know, international drug trafficking and narcos and cartels in Mexico. Did they ever share with you what their ways of getting drugs across are? Dude, absolutely. This last guy, a couple about a month and a half, two months ago, fat, fat mass guy.

He, yeah, he broke it down to me in the most illuminating way. And I'm like, oh, that may, I feel like I finally know how cartels work after just having him on. And it's really nothing, it's nothing mysterious. It's, it's cargo, it's freight, it's logistics. and just odds. That's all it is. You know, he, a trucking company, that's why you see all these Indians

and these Pakistanis, speaking of Pakistanis, getting arrested because they're the ones who own these huge trucking companies in America. It's a lot of Indians, right? The owner of the company is in on it. Sometimes the drivers are, sometimes not. So they got a lot of dupe drivers. They got dupe drivers.

They, they get, and then you, you've got our friend who's been on the show. He's got a crew of distributors. He's Mexican. He grew up with affiliations with the Sinolec Artel, right? Grew up in Mexico, but he lives here now. And his partner is still in Mexico. They've got their sources in Colombia who get it to Mexico.

That's none of their business, how they get it there, submarine, maybe it's sent to Panama and then driven overland, whatever it is. They've got their Mexico price. Boom, he gets a call from his partner, hey, we got a load of 2,000 bricks in, to say it's like Colima, which is south of Halisco, I think. Yeah, so, and then he calls up the owner of the trucking company.

That guy dispatches to, could be a woman that lives in Iowa. Hey, we've got a load down in Kalima. You know, we've got some cargo. This is the rate that we'll pay you, blah, blah, blah. She just takes one of the trucks all the way down into Mexico. They have drivers from Canada. They go all the way down into Mexico. Pick the load up from the port and drive that bitch over the border.

It's crazy. Then they got stash houses in Los Angeles. Yeah, how many of them are getting caught, though? I mean, the ones are getting caught. Probably not as many as the ones who get through. Not even close. It's like I asked him when's the last time he got a load intercepted. He couldn't even remember.

Oh, man. So it's amazing. Yeah, yeah. It's pretty. also going through checkpoints where those guys are on the take as well. Some of them, for sure. Some of them. But I don't think the drivers get a lot of time because they do a plausible deniability.

Because, again, they just got the ticket. They're truck drivers. NAFTA. There's so much freight, legal freight, that's going from Mexico into the U.S. and Canada every day. Like, hey, they just got a bill. they're charging for their time. They just went and picked up a load. So a lot of these U.S. attorneys,

they don't want to risk going to trial. So they'll just say, okay, sign for three years. Right? So they just take a quick federal bit in like a camp or whatever. And, you know, they get, but if they make it through, it's $80,000. $80,000 or three years of your life?

Oh, my God. I know, I know. It's not a good deal. It's not a good deal. But for people that don't make a lot of money, they think 80 grand's a lot of money, right? I guess. But yeah, you know, and the, yeah. So that's how cocaine smuggling into the U.S.

and, of course, fentanyl and all that other shit, you know, heroin, meth, that's how it all, basically all makes it in. D.HL from Puerto Rico, right? They put it in boxes. You know, that's maybe 10% of it. But it's not a glamorous, you know, it's not some James Bond. You would think, like, all the drug sniffing dogs and all the, you know, people that they have. But, yeah, things got to get through as quick as possible. So I'm sure stuff gets by all the time.

Yeah. And sometimes they, sometimes drivers, especially young Mexicans, they're offered, hey, will you allow a small load to get caught? You'll do a couple of years. I was going to say, that happens up all the attentions on that little load, all the big loads get through. Yeah. Yeah. That's bad. You'll do a couple of years, but we'll pay you $50,000.

You know, and 50 grand to a poor Mexican is still a lot of money. Oh, I get it. Mexico's not doing that well to where. People do it for the family or whatever reason, some of these surgery. Yeah. More sinisterly, I've heard from a journalist that they're now kidnapping people and making them do it, which I hope isn't true. Oh, no, that's just true, for sure.

I feel bad for the people who, like, there was a woman who, there was a story I read where a woman was working in Mexico, but coming back, and as soon as she got all, work she went to a mechanic to get her oil change and some stuff and then they were like you got a problem and they saw underneath her car welded a fake compartment that had all these drugs in it so she could turn herself into the cops say hey and they deemed her a dupe because clearly she's the one turning it in but what it would have happened had she been caught at the border you know it would have been her word against it never no one's ever guilty but that they don't give a shit like

drug smugglers are shameless they'll get the product across any way they can like keeping somebody in the dark they don't draw a suspicion to themselves and also they can make a lot of money now Nigerians are the worst drug smugglers ever. I'm sure there's a lot of other people, but I single-handedly got to hang out with these guys, and everyone wanted an American drug smuggler. Everyone.

So these guys are like, oh, yeah, we know how to get the drugs across, no problem. I'm like, oh, yeah, but you're in jail telling me this. So, sure, tell me what you would do. This is what you do. You go and you find an ugly woman, and they're serious. You make her fall in love with you, and then you say you come back with my country and treat you like a queen,

and then you smuggle drugs in her suitcase. She gets caught. I don't know this, bitch. Fuck off. And that's fucked up. These guys will do that. They'll go find a girl, and then they'll say, I'm going to bring you back to my country. I'm going to make you, you know, give you a happy life.

And these girls just want love. And then they get caught with these drugs and guys like, I don't even know this girl, whatever. The worst thing I ever heard, and always from the Nigerians was they'll go to families with lots of kids and say, hey, I can give one of your kids like a baby, a newborn baby. I can give their kid a future. I want to adopt it. And they'll pay. In Pakistan, they sell their kids and all that stuff all the time because they sell girls for marriage and everything. else, but they sell kids all the time.

But they're also thinking, oh, this is the best chance for their kid. You know, they don't care. It's money, and they just want to give the kid a chance of a future. Then they'll kill the kid and stuff the dead carcass with narcotics because drug-sniffing dogs can't smell narcotics through a dead carcass. Yeah. And they'll ship that body. They'll carry that body as if it's a sleeping baby.

Out of Pakistan. Yes. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. And then obviously there's the people small owning the pills. 1.2 KG through condoms and everything else. There's a million ways to get their products across that they're all more sinister than the next.

I found out the hard way by being a dupe myself thinking that I was working for a legit leather courier company. Before we get too far into it, did you watch the documentaries or listen to the audiobook or anything? I'm sorry. I did not have a chance. I was in Miami taking a very rare vacation all week. And I promised myself no work.

No, Miami's a place you go to relax and eat and chill. I was with a really hot Colombian girl, and she would not have, you know, they're not easy. Say no more. You had me at Miami. So it's all good. It's, I hear a lot of horror stories about the Nigerians. I, you know, they're infamously ruthless in places like. They're not alone, though.

The world sucks. There's evil everywhere. But, yeah, Nigerians got quite a good monopoly on their own evil. Well, how you went down as a dude. dupe was from this evil guy that you thought was your friend. He was an American. One of my best friends. No, he was an Armenian-American. But yeah, there's a big difference. Since then, I've learned that Armenians love to just jack credit cards and oral money and never pay it back. And so all my Armenian friends have screwed me in one way or another.

It's just the way it is. Yeah, and they know it too. They'll laugh about it. If anybody thinks we're being like racist or whatever, you just don't know Armenians in L.A. You can call me a racist, but you're not going to call me a liar. That's for sure. Every time I've got, every time I've gotten into an I mean a cab from Burbank Airport and used my credit card within an hour. My credit card's already being used in Albany, New York. It's weird. Isn't that crazy how that happens? Yes.

I've had so much credit card fraud from every single Armenian cab driver I've used a credit card in. And then, of course, it was an Armenian that had me unknowingly smuggled narcotics and put me on death row in Pakistan. So, yeah, I don't like Armenians at all. And it's safer just to avoid them at all cost. otherwise you might be on death throw in Pakistan like I was. Or have your credit stolen. Like that's happened to me too. Today's episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.

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I, myself, am a mental midget, as my father used to say. Why would you say that? just because I don't think I'm very mentally tough. And it's just what it is. I probably had it too easy as a child. It's part of nature. Maybe it's character flaws. I don't know.

I mean, I've been in some tough situations, but, you know, this is one that's extremely rare, and I'm grateful for you to tell it. Have you ever seen the movie Broke Down Palace? No. With Clara Daines and Kate Beckinsell? What about Return to Paradise with, Vince Vaughn and Joaquin Phoenix.

I don't know if that's a true story, but it was like, Joaquin Phoenix was in Thailand and with his friends, Vince Vaughn, another guy, and then he wanted to stay and the guys went back. Well, they were all, you know, hooking up with hookers and smoking pot. And when the guys went back,

the cops came and found the guy with a little bit of pot. But if it was just him and his friends, it would have been two years for everyone, but because it was him by himself, all the pot was his responsibility, and that was death row. So his sister, who was played by, who was the girl who died, who was dating, anyways. Oh, I know. That girl that died said that she was in American Pie?

No, no, no. Crip Murphy? No, no. No, no. She's, right, Murphy, no. It was the girl who was in like seven days, seven nights with Harrison Ford and used to. Oh, shit. They said she died in the car craft, but supposedly she knew some stuff.

That's a conspiracy theory. Anyways, she plays the older sister, and she tries to convince Vince Vaughan and the other guys to come back to take their part of the punishment to save their brother's life, who is either going to get death or is going to get two years as long as the other two guys come back and go, yes, we were part of this to give the guys two years. But they see how dilapidated he is and how fragile he is and how prison that he's been in prison now is just destroyed him. So they're like, no, screw that. I'm not going to do it. Vince Vaughn does it.

And they still end up hanging the guy because the other guy had bounced. But when I watched that movie the first time, I watched it when I had never been to jail. And I was like, could I do two years for a friend? Damn, like, it would have to be a really good fucking friend. Well, now after I've gone to jail, I'm like, oh, shit, I do two years in my eyes, close.

It's easy. People think, the reason I bring that up is like, you ever jump in a pool and swim around? It's like freezing cold, but then, like, after eight seconds, all of a sudden it feels good. You adjusted that quick. you're built to adjust. We think we're not, but we're absolutely built.

Our bodies are built to adjust. Our mind is our most powerful weapon. Our bodies are just the greatest instrument we'll ever own. Everyone, whether they like it or not, is built to adapt to a situation. We hope we don't have to go through a bad situation, but the truth is we're meant to adapt to whatever's thrown in front of us. So it's all mental. It's all mental. I'd rather have a great attitude in a bad situation than a bad attitude in a great situation.

Amen. Yeah, I think just the, the first thing. Facing potentially being hung, as I think you said, a friend of yours on death row in Pakistan was hung, I think that is kind of what I was referring to. I mean, yeah, you can survive horrid conditions. But, yeah, I think to keep fighting, even in the face of what looks like certain death, is not something that everybody just has the strength to do. There's a great saying that I learned in Pakistan. It says a guy who's suicidal will suddenly find the will to live when thrown into the deep end of the pool or into an ocean. Right.

You'll see people start finding a way to keep the head above water. Now, is that in Pakistan death to drug traffickers? You know how that's on the, when you get into, you go into Saudi Arabia? Like I've seen videos as soon as you're entering before you get to customs, like after you get off the plan in Saudi Arabia, as you're going down, an escalator. There's big signs that say deaths of drug traffickers. Is Pakistan kind of the same way? Is it a known thing? Yeah. Like one KG is that's up to the, it's up to the discretion of the judge. So if the judge got in a fight with his wife that morning, he could absolutely take it out on you. It's also a very corrupt country. So the corruption actually works in your favor if you're guilty.

Because if you're innocent and you fight it, you're, you can be severely penalized for it. So one KG, which is 2.2 pounds, it can be anywhere. It's a big window. One year to death. It's up to the discretion of the judge, whatever judge you get. So judges give out death all the time if they're pissed off or if they're not getting money, you know. Or they'll give you one KG if you play the system right. So there's people who know the system in Pakistan because of how corrupt is the Nigerians are like masters at it.

And they'll pay the judges off to pay the NRA, the NAB, sorry, the narcotics. basically police over there, pay the prosecutors off, and they'll get smuggled tons, like five tons, and get like five years or less. And then with good remissions and bribes, they get out in like two, three years. But I was innocent, so they put me on death row. And I wasn't pleading guilty for a crime I didn't commit.

So I was put on death row. And then I got my sentence reduced to seven years, three months. And then I got myself out in three years because I became a lawyer while I was over there. So if you're innocent and you fight it, you're going to be, like, Even in America where we're supposedly educated, there's people here who don't know, they're scared to try to fight it and prove their innocence.

So they're always cop and pleas, the crimes they had nothing to do with because they're worried that if they lose, they're going to have the key thrown away or they're going to face such a bigger punishment for something they didn't even do. And that's here in America. So people are constantly cop and please all the time.

There's a lot of innocent people in jail all over the world, but especially in America. And before I went to jail, I would think, you know, hey, possession's 10, tense to the law, if you were stupid enough. But no, drug smugglers are shameless. They can keep you in the dark.

They won't have to pay you what you're worth. Also, they figure you won't draw suspicion to yourself because you don't know you're being used to smuggle anything illegal. It happens all the time. Yeah, and in America, you know, that's a tactic just to get you to plead guilty. We're going to throw, we're going to threaten you with the book. So just take a small charge so we can keep the system moving because it's so backed up. Exactly. And they'll lay it forever.

So even if you do fight it, you're still going to be punished because you're going to get a court. in a couple months and you're going to have to go if they're denied bail me or if you do get a bell you can be financially ruined there because how many people got 60,000 dollars lying around to get you know on if the six of the bell is less than 600,000 or whatever you're still throwing away an outrageous amount of money and then you got to get law fees and everything else so you're already being punished just to try to prove you innocent there's a lot of people who can't afford to get bail there's a lot of people can't afford an attorney and so they have to stay in jail while they fight this very slow draining process it sucks sounds like it's almost better

if you are connected and have money to get cod smuggling drugs in Pakistan? Yes. No, you figured it out. That's not, there's people who had been arrested multiple times while I was there. There was this one South African kid.

He loved Tupac, so his nickname was Tupac and they're tall people. So he was a white dude. He was like 610. And he'd like look over the wall and the third time he was here in jail. Like, dude, you miss me that much? What the fuck?

And this dude knew how to play the system, though. He was in his early 20s. He had been arrested at the third time with 7 KG on him. He had 1.2 KG, that's the most you can swallow in his stomach. He had 5KG in a bag, and he had 2KG, 1 KG in each shoe. So they found the bag, they found the shoe. And then he had the 1.2 in his stomach.

So when he got into jail, he was already shitting it out, had his own bed. He had people getting water and food for him because he was living like a king because he's already got so much money going into jail. And then he paid off the cops who said, oh, it was all fake. it was just powdered sugar or whatever else. And so they took it from what would be a 9C down to a 9A, which is less than 100 grams, which is only going to be like a max a year in jail. But it takes time to go through all the legal system because it's so slow.

Right. But he does third time in jail. Right. And he has seven and a half kilos of heroin. And he's making money in prison from the heroin that he was able to get into the jail. You're selling it in there. Yes. That's why he's got his own bed now. He's got his workers already because he knows how to play.

the game. And it happened all the time. So for him, oh, well, I'm in jail, but I'm still going to make a bunch of money in jail, and he's going to make by their contacts, and they're going to steal their career criminals. The average person in jail, especially the foreigners, would have been in multiple prisons in multiple countries. There's this one dipshit German named Ziggy, who had just been in jail for two, no, for four years in India, and then like two and a half months later, he was gone in Pakistan doing the same shit. And it was his fifth country, a fifth prison in his fifth country. Wow.

But they know how to bribe, and that's why they're able to get caught and get out so quick. Well, no, these guys didn't know. They're just career criminals. Right. But certain people like Tupac knew how they gained the system, so they would get, they would plead guilty to pay the judge. The judges are the most corrupt people on earth.

Because I was an American citizen. I didn't have a chance to do anything like that reasonably. Like the judge that was handling my case in the lower court wanted $125,000 from my acquittal. Like this is ridiculous. Had I been Pakistani, it would have been 500 bucks, you know, which is no, nothing. But because I'm an American $125,000.

And then the process, so he delayed my case religiously. Like he just, he wanted me to pay. And finally, when he realized I wasn't going to pay, he's like, fine, I'll just take the $1,000 and give him a couple years. And I still wasn't, but I would still have to have pled guilty. And I still wasn't going to plead guilty for

a crime and I didn't commit. I was offered a deal. Plead guilty. Pay the judge off. the prosecutor off, it's only going to cost me $1,000, which was $60,000. This is normal. This is absolutely normal. But you've got to plead guilty. The judge is going to give you a two-year prison sentence, and I'd already been there for a year. So with good remissions and probably some more bribes, I probably would have only been in jail another four and a half months. When they presented this deal to me, everything sounded great until they said, but you have to plead guilty. I was pissed. And I was like, why would I plead guilty for a crime and didn't commit? I was so

piss, but I was torn. I wasn't sure if I was going to plead guilty or not. I didn't want to. But then the Pakistani interpreter has a little fucker name Alvzal, who was always there. He was a corrupt bastard. But he says, Eric, what's worth more to you? Your pride of your freedom. And when he said that, I said, you little bastardies, because that answered my question for me. And my pride was worth a hell of a lot more than my freedom. So I refused to plead guilty for a crime I didn't commit. And then he delayed the case, like two more days, because he wanted my attorneys and and everyone had talked to me. And the embassy, I don't remember this woman's name so long ago,

but she was so pissed off at me. She was like, you're a punk. No one cares. It's Pakistan. Just go home. You're putting our lives in danger. I was like, don't visit me. Don't visit me.

Because at the embassy, you know, yeah, they had some issues. Like someone threw a bunch of grenades at a church on the day after St. Patrick's Day, the first year I was there in 2002. And thank God it was the day after St. Patrick's Day because everyone was hung over and they didn't go to church. But the ones who did got, you know, they killed like. I think they're, no, seven, seven or 13 people. I don't know why.

I'm not forgetting you have to Google it. And then they had like a little rocket shooting at their convoys occasionally when they were coming to visit me. So yeah, their lives were in danger. But anyways, I wasn't going to plead guilty for a crime. I didn't commit. And I got, and then I was at the time, I was on death row. But I got taken off death row when a new superintendent had come.

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Lucy near you and grab it today. And now here comes the fine print. Lucy products are only for adults of legal age and every customer's age verified. Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. Do you think the death penalty is threatened as a way, as a bribing mechanism? Like the judges, they know they can get paid off. So they say, hey, we're going to kill you unless you give me $100,000. Probably. I mean, I mean, it seems like that. How do you go from getting a death sentence all the way down to, hey, just plead guilty and do a couple of years? It's a lot of corruptions. It's like buying a rug and turkey. You know, there's a lot of negotiating going on. Like I said, I went the court 50 plus times before he finally got my sentence

because there's a lot of like weighing and kind of going. And that was just the lower court. The higher court is a bit different because the lower court's only up to one judge. There's no jury here. But the higher court is two judges and they swap them. It's a rotating schedule. And the reason why they do this because they don't want two judges to get too comfortable with each other because then that'll up the chance of them being bribable. So a lot of people move forward as far as, like being promoted in Pakistan by ratting out the corrupt ones. So that's why they entice them to like, this guy took a bribe and try to get me to take it. And then they'll, you know, demote that guy and promote that guy and promote this guy.

So in the higher courts, it's not impossible, but it's a lot less likely to be as much corruption. Even though there's corruption everywhere, it's harder to bribe the judges. So you actually get your real sentence in the higher court. And that's where I was able to rock and roll. Except, so because I was an American, I'm the only American in the entire country in jail at the time. In Pakistan, it was right after 9-11. I was always in the newspapers because I was an actor stuntman since I was a kid. So I was big news whenever I went to court.

So I was always on front page and whatnot. The lawyers just wanted crazy amounts of money. I wasn't getting any kind of chance. Like I literally had, this is a $400 case for anyone else. If it's a local $400, that's $24,000 at the time. I was being charged $25,000. $35,000. One lawyer wanted $4 million.

And I'm in chains. I'm looking at this guy who looked like he was hung over. I'm like, you mean rupees, which is still ridiculous because it's the 24,000 rupee case. He was like, this is a death sentence case, my friend.

Dollars. And I'm like, you take check? I would laugh every day at myself. It was so ridiculous of everything that was happening. And then when I, you know, I wasn't worried about the lower court. I was expecting them to give me life or death.

I always focused on the higher court. I always prepared myself mentally that I was going to have to fight for my freedom in the higher court. And then when the guy gave me seven years, three months, I was stoked, I was happy. I was like, oh my God, because I was expecting life for death. So higher court was going to take a while.

But my mom at the time, you know, the problem with my mom being involved is it was hurting me. It was hurting me really bad. Not intentionally on her part, but Pakistani people in America are pieces of shit, all right? They don't see a situation and think,

fuck, that's fucked up. I'm sorry. I wish there was something I can do. They see an opportunity. They say, oh, I absolutely know someone who can help you. Like cousin or my brother or so-and-so is a lawyer and he's high-ranking. And what they're doing is they're trying to find ways to get kickbacks and money and all this stuff. So my mom was getting siphoned left and right by all these scumbag hustlers who were Pakistani,

making empty promises she'd get some money. They disappeared. And they were ghosting her left and right. I'm like, stop giving these idiots money. They're a bunch of fucking leeches. Stop it. You're making my life worse. she found someone through her Pakistani connections that was like one of the best lawyers in Pakistan.

Like he had a good reputation in Pakistan and it was like really exaggerated. Like when the other prisoners heard of this guy's name was Siddhir Khan or Siddak Han. I'd have to go back and look at my doubts. But people would literally exaggerate. They're like, well, when he's done talking to the courts, the judge will get up and start clapping. Like it was so over-exaggerated. I'm like, all right, everyone agrees. This is a good lawyer.

My mom's like, he's going to take the case pro bono. I'm like, that doesn't sound like a Pachie at all. And she's like, just trust me on this. And here I was just sentenced. I'm like, I don't want to trust my mom on this. And I just smuggle the phone in trying to calm her down. I'm like, look, don't trust these people. He's taking the case pro bono.

He just wants the exposure. And I'm like, maybe. I don't know. This guy lives in Lahore. I'm in Islamabad. Well, I'm in Rabat. I'm in Raub, I'm in Raub, which is about an hour or so. east of Islamabad.

And I'm like, all right, let's see what happens. So I'm thinking this guy's going to come to the prison and meet with me and we're going to have a game plan. He never comes to the prison, but he's in the newspaper all the time talking about how I'm representing the famous Hollywood actor, Eric Anthony. They always went with middle names. They never went with first and last names because they got like five names, you know? And it's like happening all the time.

And then finally, like after months, I'm like, what is going on with my case? Because I have no idea what's going on with my case because this dude's not coming to the prison to talk to me. And finally, because I had a smuggled phone in the prison, I'm finally able to get an answer out of my mother. I'm like, what is going on? Because she's acting like, she's crying. I'm like, oh, Jesus, all right. So what's the good news?

He says he can have you out of jail next week. Okay, that's a lie. That's impossible because now I've got to get a visa. I know how the system to get out, like, because I'm a foreigner. If I was a local, we can get out, you know, but not if you're a foreigner. You have to go through a bunch of steps to get a visa to get to the airport. It takes months. So I know that's a lie.

And I go, okay, but what's the problem? She goes, he wants $9,000. I'm like, what do you mean $9,000? I thought you took the case pro bono. How much have you given this guy? She was giving him thousands and thousands of not telling me because I had already warned her months back after I've been sentenced that this is how these people were,

but of course, you know, I don't know what I'm talking about, even though I was right. And sure, she was keeping that she was getting funneled all this money out by this guy. I said, 9,000. All right, that's very nice. And then she said, he says that if he can't get you out from the high court, He's, oh my God, I just, I turned it around.

He wanted 25,000, which was the remainder of his fee for the high court. And I was laughing about that. The remainder of his fee, and that's how I learned that she had been given him money. But he said that if he can't get me out in the high court, he's only going to charge $9,000 for the Supreme Court. And it was basically saying, not only am I going to fuck your son, I'm going to fuck him again. Right. Just like, mom, you're being involved, this completely fucking be over. So I said, I'm sorry.

And literally I hung up. I was pissed. But I should have known this is happening. I wasn't shocked. So I wrote to the embassy and I told him my mom is no longer allowed to have any information on who I'm having to represent me. Because her being involved is screwing me because the lawyers don't want to deal with you if they know you've got a small pool because you're in jail. But if they got someone else outside on your behalf, the resources are endless. That's how they look at it.

So they want to go for a family member or a loved one so they can siphon off whatever they can because they don't see a human being. They see an opportunity to just milk everything they can out of you. So I let the embassy know. Don't tell my mom anything. She's not allowed to be involved because she's going to meddle and she's going to fuck things up. Not intentionally. It's just the way it is. All right.

I have to do this on my own. Embassy was actually happy about that because now they didn't have to deal with her anymore because she was calling him and bothering him and everything else. You want someone fighting for you, but unfortunately when they're fighting for you and they're muddying the waters, it's just going to make it impossible. Then I wrote a note to this lawyer who lived in Lahore. Mr. Sadak, I'm sorry, I can't afford. $25,000, I'm going to find other legal representation. Take care. God bless. That's it. I sent it to him.

All he had to do was say, oh, that sucks and go on with his life. So I can't, now that I'm convicted in Pakistan, the embassy doesn't have to get me another lawyer. They don't have to help me anymore. All they have to do is come see me every four months. That's it by law to make sure that I'm not being treated any differently than anybody else. The American embassy. Correct. And that doesn't say a lot because people are being tortured and starved and all the time. But I don't care if the embassy came to see me because I'm adjusting to the system and work in the prison, and I'm doing just fine. But I still need a lawyer.

So I'm trying to get outside lawyers to come into the prison to help me, but they need the embassy's permission or the backing to come see me. But now that I'm a convict, I don't have that anymore. So no lawyer is coming to the prison to come see me. And while this is happening, Sadiya Asocki, cock sucker from Lahore, got on a plane, flew all the way to Islamabad, and says, my client is happy with the seven-year, three-month prison,

prison sentence, I withdraw my pill, cost to me my one chance in high court. So my mom being involved is about to cost me another year and a half in jail, unfortunately. That sucks. This is where I'm like, well, that fucking sucks. I learn about all this through the newspapers, by the way, because there it was like front page, you know, the American loves prison. Like, you sons of bitches. Visit BetMDMDM Casino and check out the newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only.

Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor. Free of charge. BetMGEMGEM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Okay, so before we figure out how you actually got out, let's talk about what got you in. Well, I was arrested with 3.6 KG of opium. How they pronounced it as opium. I was working at a gym in Burbank as a trainer back in 99, and one of my clients was a very successful Armenian businessman. His name was Ray Gazarian and I would work out three, four times a week. That's how I'd always known him. It turns out that wasn't his real name. His real name was Razmic Manassian, but I wouldn't learn that until I was in jail. Ray Gazarian and I would work out three, four times a week. And when you work out with someone that much, you become friends.

don't just talk about working out. You talk about women, you know, sports, whatever. You become buddies, and we became good friends. Nine or so months later, my girlfriend broke up with me. I was depressed. He knew I was depressed because it was my friend. He knew there was something wrong with me. And I was working the front, the front, literally he walked in.

It was December, I want to say December 15th. I don't know why I'm remembering that way. December 15th. and he was like, you need to make a trip for me because I was depressed. And a week later, I was on my first trip out of the country to Turkey that quick. He saw an opportunity to strike and he took it.

What did you tell you he did? He had a used car dealership. He had leather stores. He was a very successful Armenian businessman. I mean, he was a businessman. And he was hiring people in the late teens, early 20s, college kids to travel around the world for him importing expensive leather goods and paying them for it.

Now, here's how the hustle went. supposedly we're bringing back $25,000 to $30,000 worth of leather goods. But by sending someone like you or me or someone else over there on a free trip and then they have to bring back all this stuff in their own clothing or in the suitcase that they're given as their own clothing, they're beating, you know, he's saving $15,000 to, you know, $16,000. You get $800 spending. You get a free trip.

He saves a ton of money. On the taxes, you mean. On the import tax. Because there's a 40% import tax back into the U.S. I mean, have you ever been out of the U.S.? and come back? Yeah, but not with goods. Well, but they gave you a paper to sign. Right. You have to, everyone gets that paper, have you brought you anything to declare?

Everyone gets that paper. Is there really a 40%? Yes. Even back then? Yes. Back then, yes. I thought that, you know, the tariffs were this big failed thing that Trump tried to do last year. No, tariffs have been around for a minute. It's been around forever. 40% is murder. Yes. So we're bringing back $25,000 to $30,000 of leather goods and bags and skirts and shirts and pants. But by sending someone like you over there claiming it as your own clothing, they don't have to declare any of that. Got nothing to declare.

So you knew you were doing this and you figured, okay, this is just like dodging taxes. This isn't big. This is like a crime. See, at the time, I was like, my mom and everyone was like, I told everyone I didn't hide this at all because I was like, this does sound too good to be true. And so, and every people, all the kids at the, I say kids,

everyone's kid now and who's under 25. but everyone that was making these trips were coming back talking about great trips in Italy and Turkey and Sweden and I was jealous but I still brought it to my mom who worked at the sheriff's department once upon a time in her life

and she had friends who were also still in the sheriff's apartment so when I told her what I was going on she had a friend of hers who knew a little bit more about people who did stuff like this and had this guy actually call me and my question was he's like so what they're bringing in stuff and I was like yeah

people do this with rugs, they do it with jewelry, they do it with other things. He goes, it's very common. And I was like, so will I go to jail? Like, that was my question. Would I go to jail for it? He's like, no, they'll confiscate it, give you a fine. But I was like, really? He compared it to a jaywalking ticket. He goes, it's illegal, but you're not going to go to jail for it. I was like, okay, as soon as he said, I'm not going to jail for it, I was all in. I wanted to go and travel the world and do cool stuff and have threesome like my friends were having. It was, you know, it sounded like a great opportunity. So you're, you had friends.

friends that had done this for this business. Yeah, at the gym. I was at the gym for nine months before I'd gone on my first trip, and I was watching all these other people make these trips. And they were coming back, and I mean, you become friends with everyone at the gym, especially all the regulars. It's just what's going to happen. And were you working as a stuntman at this time? Uh, somewhat, not as much as I do now, but yeah, I've been working as a stuntman actor since 92. Right. So, like, when I was working at the gym, you know, I had, I worked the nighttime shift so I can keep my days open and so I can still audition and everything else. Um, and then my, you know, I was working. I could pay my bills, uh, from the work I was getting, but you always wanted to keep a job there just in case, you know, because you never knew when your next job was. Fortunately, for me, I was working all the time. I was doing dude with my car. I was doing bounce. I was doing TV shows. Guest hours recurring. And I was getting, you know, and I was getting, you know. I was going to network all the time for different shows.

It came down to me and like three others for Kelso on a 70s show that Ashton Kutcher got. I actually booked Steve Stifler in American Pie and I got paid for a week of work. I never did. I was told that I looked, they wanted someone to look goofier and I looked too much like the Klein kid at the time. It came down to me and Josh Hartnett for Virgin Suicides for Sophia Coppola. So I was screen testing with all these people for these roles. And it came down to me and Stephen Howie for really. Reba. So you were really almost breaking in.

Well, you were... I was right there. I was going into the big rooms and sitting with like in a small room with the guys who would end up going forward. But I was still getting co-stars and guest stars and nice little small little reoccurings on all these shows. So I was still being filled in where I was, where it was appropriate. So how much were you, you were getting $800 a run? Yes. Which is nothing. No. But I started when I was 19. So he wanted me to go every month. And I was working. I was working on Scorpion King. I was working on Planet of the Apes. I was working on dude, where's my car? You know, I was, I was actually making, I was making a, I was making a, good living as a, as an actor slash stuntman. But I wanted to keep these opportunities

open. So I was encouraging them to all my friends, my family, my brothers, my mother. I thought it was a great opportunity. And so I encouraged it to everyone. And so then I would, when I had some time off, nothing was going on. I was like, hey, I'm available. I can go again? And then I would go again. And then time would go all. Hey, can you go again? And I'm busy, but I didn't want to lose these opportunities. So people were going on these trips because of my recommendation. And so no one got caught. Thank God, God, I would have felt terrible had someone gotten caught because of me.

The final trip was right. Hang on, just because I want to build up to it. How many trips had you made before the trip where you got caught? Only two. To where? Turkey. Turkey, but then on the way back, I'd come back through Sweden. And he gave you the routes?

Obviously, he had the itineraries. Yeah, he booked everything. Right. Okay. So you're going to Turkey. and you're picking up leather. Correct. Leather, what kind of leather?

Like jackets, shirt, skirts, clothing. Right. Yeah. And it's cheap as shit over there, right? I guess at the time. I never actually purchased it. His contacts would meet me, I'd have a little manifest. I'd have to go through everything to make sure it was in good condition, if it was

tattered and everything else. They made it as official as possible. And then I would come back through and just go through customs and have a good time in Turkey and have a good time in Sweden. Or have a good time in Sweden. And Turkey is a cool country too. Now, if you ever go to Turkey, if you can, it's a beautiful country. But make sure you pack your own stuff.

Don't ever care anything for anyone else. And plus, I was 19. Look, when you were 19, you think you know everything. You don't know shit. You don't know anything. And I never thought that someone could do this to somebody else. Now, people who are criminals since, I mean, I'm 46 now, but people who are criminals go back and get in trouble again and again and again.

I haven't been back to jail or in trouble in any way, shape, or form. I won a $20.4 million suit against the dipshit that set me up. I could have gone home early had I just pled guilty, but I refused to plead guilty for a crime commit. I didn't commit facing a possible death sentence, and I still refused to plead guilty. I got myself out in just under three years. I've had a great life since.

I've got two documentaries about my life. I'm still doing stunts and acting. I just bought a couple buildings. I opened up a couple businesses. The only reason I share this stuff with everyone is because I want people to be very well aware of what is actually happening in the world. Had I had heard of a story similar to this,

I would have been wiser. I would have said, you know what, that's a little too good to be true, and I would have been spry enough to walk away. And so I've had people contact me saying, hey, I was doing something that sounded a lot like what you were doing, and I think I was smuggling drugs. I'm glad you told your story,

so I'm not going to get in trouble. I'm happy to hear that. But then I hear all the time from people who have family members who are stuck in other countries, especially when they get stuck in Pakistan. And they contact me, what should I do and everything else? I say, you tell them that they need to get very comfortable. They need to be patient because everyone's going to try to take advantage of them.

All right? And they need to find, you know, prisoners that have lawyers that will actually do the jobs, all right, but they're going to have to make friends. You know, I tell them to relax, don't, you know, and they're going to get empty promises left and right. So I try to avoid having them be taking advantage of, unfortunately, they're going to have to do a little bit of time. And especially if they're guilty, it's going to work on their favor because they can pay the judge off.

They can pay the prosecutor off. So presumably that first trip that you made to Turkey and then back through Sweden, you were carrying? 100%. Because I was carrying two suitcases that lay – and I was a big kid. I was benching 420 pounds. I was at the gym all the time. I was a gym rat. I didn't do drugs.

I didn't drink. I was just a gym rat. And I was a stuntman. I was crazy. I wanted to be an actor. I wanted to be an action hero. So I remember carrying these two suitcases that – would just absolutely weigh me down.

I had to pay extra money because they were so heavy and I was so pissed about that. And then when I went to Pakistan, which wasn't even supposed to be my trip, it was supposed to be my older brother Peter's trip. But when he found out it was to Pakistan, he backed out. And thank God he backed out

because it was supposed to go to Turkey. But then for some reason, it was the Pakistan. I can't vouch for Pakistan because I'd never been. And I had just booked the show Arlis, which is crazy. I booked a guest on Arles. I had a pilot called 360

that I booked the lead on for Warner Brothers. That was going to be filming the end of the month and another movie called Velvet Blue that I played like a bully throughout. That was going to be like a month and a half after that. I was a working stuntman actor. The day I went, the day before I went to Pakistan, I was working on the Andy Dick Show as his psychic.

And I was, I mean, I was working actor stuntman. I was living my dream, but I wanted to keep these opportunities open. And the fact that my brother, who I vouched for backed out, I felt obligated to my friend Ray to step in and take the trip from my brother. And I'm glad I did. I mean, my life would have been completely different had a knock on.

How many other people had you recruited to get for Ray to bring stuff back? Dozens. So you unwittingly moved like dozens of kilos of heroin. Well, I don't know what they're moving. Well, opium was, see, everyone was like, why are opium? Because opium is considered the small man on the totem pole. You got opium, you've got hashish. You've got, you know, the other things.

And then you got heroin. So heroin is the big guy. Opium's considered the bottom of the dweller, you know? What do you think the opium that you got caught carrying? How was that resold? Like, I don't even know anything about the opium market. Like, what is this, the 1850s in San Francisco? I have a guesstimate only, but remember when I said the first two trips, my arms were

weighed down? On this trip, I had one suitcase, and it wasn't that heavy. And instead of me having red flags galore, I was like, oh, right, I'm not going to get screwed at the airport with the way. I'm not going to have the inconvenience of lugging around all this weight. That should have been a red flag. And like we were talking before, where someone will get in trouble to open up the floodgates for everyone else.

My theory is they said, let's put all the attention on this guy. You were the dummy. Well, definitely the dummy. They call that in Mexico, the rabbit, the one who gets caught, Oconejo, the one who gets caught to let the other ones through. Well, I was definitely the rabbit that day because all the attention was on me that day. And because the guy told me at the airport, when they went through my stuff and then put it back in, I was about to walk through the customs when somebody grabbed my arm and turned me around. And I looked at him.

He goes, are you carrying? No, he says, are you carrying narcotics? I said, check it again. They took that suitcase and only that suitcase, not my bag or my backpack. And he opened it and threw all the clothes on the ground. I was like, whoa, like, I'm there for the clothes. Like, oh, I thought that was so disrespectful. So I'm like folding it all and they took the suitcase to another part of the airport.

I wasn't there. And they brought me to another room where they had like one guard in the room with me and I folded everything up. And while time was going by, I'm just worried about missing my flight. And I'm even trying to tell this guard who doesn't speak a lick of English. I'm like, they can just throw that suitcase out. I don't care. Get me another suitcase for all this stuff. Well, then the hallway starts to fill up with guards.

And I'm like, I'm worried about missing my flight. And then finally that dude who grabbed my arm comes back in and he's followed behind by this other guard who has like these two very thin. The way I describe it is it was like newspapers. They were thin like newspapers but they were vacuum sealed. And it was like a grayish green and he goes, what is this? And I'm like, he's holding it. Meaning like you should know he's the one holding it. He goes, this is Ophium. Two plus two became four very quick. And I said, why are you showing me this? He says it came out of your luggage. And then. And I said, the second that happened, I felt like such a fucking idiot. And I said something you never want to say when you're on vacation. I said, I need to speak with the American embassy. And then he said, embassy can't help you. We're going to hang you after five o'clock prayer.

And then that's when the shit hit the van. This is at Islamabad airport. Okay. How long had you been in Pakistan before you went to the airport? I arrived February 11th that morning is a Monday. And I thought Pakistan being a desert. This is how naive I was when I was younger. I thought it was going to be hot because Middle East countries are always picked as hot.

It was freezing cold when I got off the airplane. This sucks. It's cold. The first day there, I had met a girl on the plane flying in from my connecting flight from U of A, United Arab Emirates. And we were making out in the plane, Muslim girl. That was just the way it was 20. You're already giving a middle finger to Islam as you're flying in. I didn't know.

Did you know that Pakistan is one of the most violent? At the time, I knew nothing. Insanely fundamentalist Muslim countries? He asked me a million questions. No, the answers I didn't know of shit because I was an idiot kid who thought that the world loved us because we're America and they listened to our music and wear our clothes and watch our movies. I knew nothing. I had no idea. And this is 2002?

This is February 11, 2002. Oh, just right after 9-11. Right after 9-11. Wow, bro. You really were just up for adventure. Yeah. That was an arrogant piece of shit and nothing changed. I was a jock.

I was a stuntman. I, you know, I was the first person on earth to have their urethra severed reconnected. I'd already had 52 surgeries between 8 and 15 years old when I was running by a school bus. And I was, it can't hurt me. Right. So I was invincible. I didn't give a shit. Yeah.

And I would flirt with everyone and a smile is universal. and there was a girl on the plane who I sat by, and she was cute. We were making out on the plane under the covers. It was only a two-hour flight, too. It was great. Her name was Sedef Sadiq, and I remember that name because I was like,

it's like, you're sawing a dick, and she was laughing because she's like, I never even thought about that. Oh, my God. So she asked where I was going to be. I'm like, I'm in an Islamabad somewhere, and I get to the airport, and this guy's got, like, my name on a little napkin, and the guys, like, they were talking,

they were talking like they were from San Diego. they had American accents and everything else, and they said Ray fucked up. I'm like, what do you mean? They're like, ah, we were supposed to go to Karachi. And Karachi is like eight hours away. You know, it's a different part of the country. I'm like, so what does that mean?

It means we're not going to be able to hang out with you. We're just going to put you at a hotel. I'm like, what? No, Ray says, I was going to be chaperone. I was going to be showing a good time. We were going to get girls. Like, that's how he actually promoted this trip because I didn't just be like, let's go to Pakistan.

At the time, when I found I was to Pakistan. I was like, well, fuck wants to go to Pakistan. And he was like, don't worry, it's going to be so much fun. I'm getting a very good deal. And I was like, if you're getting such a good deal, FedEx that shit back. He's like, no, you're going to have a good time.

Because the war's in Afghanistan. I was like, that's like saying, LA or East L.A. and Mexico, there's not a big difference. Regardless, you know, I took the trip from place of my brother. I'm in Pakistan now when I could have been filming a guest on the show, Arles, which paid $5,000, but I'm a loyal friend. I'm also an idiot, and I wanted to keep these opportunities open.

So I met this cute girl, but when we landed, she immediately, goes to the bathroom, puts on her whole burqa, you know? So it's head-to-tto-me, like, why do you look like a goalie? She's like, you don't understand. This is Pakistan. This is just the way it is. Well, it was head-toe.

Oh, she had like a little slit right here. Like, and that's- That's major. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So this girl was, like, all dolled up a minute ago. Next thing I know, she was looking like a head-to-to-to-golly. And I wanted to give her a hug in the airport. She said, she can't walk near me or nothing. But she wanted to know where I was at.

And what, so she got, when she got, when I, She saw the guys that were giving me the thing, who had my name on the napkin, and asked what hotel I'm going to be staying at. And so she did her own research and called the hotel that I was going to be staying at. These guys just dropped me off at the hotel. And that's when I first time I saw a squat toilet,

I'm like, what fuck is this? They're like, it's a toilet. That's not a toilet, dude. That's not a toilet. It's a hole? It was a fucking hole. This place looked like shit. I'm like, you guys need to take me to another hotel.

And I'm like, what have I got to go to the bathroom? Go right there. And I was like, what are you talking about? I was shit on my shoes. Like, no, you're not. I was like, let me borrow your shoes right now. The guy's like, no. I'm like, exactly.

So they leave me at this hotel. Day one, it's Monday. It sucks. And I'm like, well, Ray says you guys gonna give me $200. They're supposed to give me spending money. I didn't bring any money with me. And the guys give each other a little look. There was red flags everywhere.

I'm fucking idiot. All right? But anyways, they gave me a thousand rupees and tell me that's like $200 American dollars. That is $17. And Pakistan, fucking assholes. So I got a thousand rupees. And the first thing I do is I go into the hotel. Like there's a little restaurant in the bottom of the hotel.

And I don't know what the order. No one's speaking in English. I can't read nothing. I just, I order something. Someone brings out like a couple eggs and some toast. And maybe water or jam or juice. And my first meal was 360 rupees. I'm like, oh my God, dude.

I'm until Friday. I'm so screwed. So I need to go find an internet cafe. And I go and I'm jogging down the streets. of Islamabad and, man, Islamabad. There's no white people. There's no, there's no ethnicity there whatsoever. It's just Pakistan's every direction.

And no one speaks English and I'm just jogging down the streets like a dipshit because that's what I'm doing. I'm exploring. And I come across these three girls outside this like shop. And I go up and start talking to them. But they're smiling. They don't know what the hell I'm saying. But they're still smiling.

I'm still flirting with them and everything else. And then I go and I jog across the bridge. but when I look back, I see the girls waving like, all right, okay, I've got some seeds planted. I go in and I find an internet cafe and I started sending out emails and everything else. This girl that, I'll get to that a little bit, there was this girl named Missy that I had loved

since I was in kindergarten. It's just a stupid love story. Everything I did was for this girl. Every time I would get tired, I was studying. I would study a little harder. Missy doesn't want an idiot. every time I got tired at the gym, miss you wouldn't want to go out with a fat guy. So she was my motivation in life for every little thing in my life.

For some reason, I was head over heels and loved with this girl I met when I was five years old. And she never gave me the time of day. And I was funny how that works. The girl you want, it's not the girl that wants you. All her friends wanted me, and I hooked up with all her friends, but she didn't want me. Anyways, she doesn't email me back that day, but this will make sense in a second. I sent out an email. I'm trying to, and I email that girl who I met on the plane.

Because she says, what hotel are you at? Which is fine. Email that girl where I'm at with the plane. I'm like, hey, this is where I'm staying and everything else just in case, you know, you're around. And then I jog back over the bridge, and I see those three girls that I was flirting with over. I come over and try to flirt with them again a little bit like an idiot. And this little guy comes out. The guy's like 5'3 comes out maybe a buck 10 soaking wet.

And he's going off from me. The guy's got a lot of confidence, right? He's pushing me yelling at me, like starting to me while I'm talking to the girls, well, your brother doesn't want you guys to have any friends or whatever, whatever, and keeps pushing me, keeps pushing me. Finally, I put my backpack down, and I grabbed the dude's wrist, and I bent his whole wrist back, he's on the ground screaming, and now the whole crowd there is on me, yelling at me and whatnot.

And I realized, like, this guy's, you know, got allies. I'm an idiot for being right here, you know. So I let him go, and I'm about to pick up my bag, and my bag's gone. And the one person I know who had it was this woman who wouldn't make eye contact with me. This old fucking lady right here not making any eye contact with me. And I know it's under her fucking, but I'm already pissed off the whole crowd here with dipshit over here. So I'm losing my CD player. I'm losing my, you know, stuff like I was listening to American Pie soundtrack and the CD player jogging around.

That sucks. So my pet, so thank God I got my wallet on me. But I don't have, you know, everything I was in that bag was gone. and I go back to the hotel. Now this girl, who I met on the plane, had contacted the hotel, and then I give her a call from the room, and I'm like, he coming over? She's like, well, I thought you'd be at a closer hotel. She goes, but you're going to come hang out with me.

So she tells the front desk person how to tell a cab driver how to get to her place. I go downstairs, yeah, I want to do something fun, so the cab driver's driving me forever. I could have easily, man, I could have easily had all my organs stolen a long time ago because I just don't care. I don't have any common sense. And we're driving forever. And these aren't like roads. They're like, you know, off the beaten path.

And it's all dirt. And the sun's leaving. And now it's nighttime when I get to this house in the middle of like, it's, it was weird. It was like a bunch of houses that were built side by side. But all the walls between the houses were covered with broken glass and bobwire between the houses. And that's the first thing I noticed. and there was a bunch of kids outside this one particular house.

The girl comes out to talk to me. She goes, I fucked up. I told everyone you're an actor, so all that neighborhood wanted to come meet you. Now because it's after dark, though, her coming out was a big deal. I would find that out later. She was risking a lot by coming out at night

to come get a foreigner. So people talk and people were cucks, and I didn't know anything, so I put her in a lot of danger. She talks to the cab driver. Cab driver wanted like hundreds of dollars off of me. She said, give him $100 rupees and tell him the fuck off. I gave him to do the $100.

And the guy was like, honk on yelling everything in the book at me. Like, he was not happy. $100 a good, that's a lot of money. But I'm a foreigner, so they want like a ridiculous amount. I go on the house. They lock the gate. They got guards outside, too. And so that's just how these houses have their own guards or whatnot.

That's normal in Pakistan. I go, it's a nice house. I go in this house. She goes and makes me a hamburger. She makes me a hamburger fries with their weird ketchup. that would be the last good meal I eat for a while. So I was like, all right, what are we doing today? She's like, I fucked up.

I told my family, my brothers want to hang out with you. Four brothers, 24 on down to 14, come to hang out with me. Even the 14-year-olds got like little stubles growing. Everyone else already has their beards going and everything else. Nice guys. I ate the burger and everything. Hang out with the girl for a little bit, but I'm not allowed to hang out with her at all. Now I'm hanging out with the brothers.

This is not why I drove all the way over here. I don't want to fucking hang out with the brothers. The fuck is this. These guys put me in bitch on a BMW. I'm right in the middle of the backseat between everyone. And all they were doing was driving around Islamabad and showing me there's KFC. There's Pizza Hut. And I'm like, yeah, great.

Came all the way around the world to see fast food restaurants from back home. That's awesome. And even though it was at night, I started to realize it was all dudes outside. I was like, man, this place is a cockfest. Where's all the ladies? Like, I know that it's not allowed out, but we're going to find one. and I was like, okay. And they were driving around just trying to,

like just joyriding them, just joyriding with these dudes in Pakistan, like nothing. And they did like a, not a drug deal, but an alcohol deal because alcohol is illegal in Muslim countries. And we went to like the most shadiest neighborhood with like one streetlight. And some dude runs between,

like these big buildings, but there was no electricity on it. It was weird. Some guy comes running out with a bag out with a beer inside. And they did a transaction. and he runs back in between these two buildings. Like, what do you guys just get?

Like, I'm thinking, like, you guys got, like, some big-time drugs. Like, got some beer. I'm like, what the fuck? And so we go to some random park where their friends meet us, and they're just drinking beer. And I don't drink at all. So I'm just hanging out with these guys while they're drinking beer. And we're talking about movies I've been in,

and I'm like, whatever, just telling them about shit I've done. And these guys are realized, like, they're talking about trying to find a girl for me to entertain me. Like, what are you guys talking about? And they're like, well, because they wanted to gang-reate, a girl. They were trying to find a girl so we could gang rape her together. I thought they were kidding. They were not kidding. Their idea showing me a good time was trying to find a girl out after night so that we could all gang rape her, which is normal in Muslim culture. Well, I've heard

about that happening in India. It's everywhere. Every Muslim country is that way. Women are not allowed outside. That's why when that girl came out at night to the cab, she put herself in danger big time right there because that brings dishonor to the family. So she can be, Honor killings are a real thing. And they can kill you for simply dropping a piece of trash outside of a mosque because that's considered blasphemy. And if somebody kills a blasphemer, they get rewarded with 72 virgins in heaven.

So if these guys, these young boys find a woman out at night, it's not a crime to gangraper. It's like a least we didn't kill her. Well, no, that's the right. And then a lot of the times the girls that get gang raped have to marry their rapist. So rape is, and also punishment is, when someone does something wrong in these families, the punishment will be that a daughter or a sister or a mother will be gang raped by men from a higher tribe. They're called Jurgas. Jurgas in Pakistan, most of Pakistan is not run by the government.

Most of Pakistan is run by elders and people who are like small towns and they're called Jurgas. So you've got these higher tribes overseeing everything else. And as someone from a lower tribe does anything wrong, these guys go to their own little panel and decide what the punishment is. So their punishment will be, it's always sodomy on like the boys and gang rape as like a sister or a cousin or someone related to that boy who did wrong, even though they had nothing to do with whatever was considered deemed wrong. One small example was this 12-year-old boy was seen walking down the street

with a woman from a higher tribe who was 29. While they're hanging out, I don't know. But had the role has been reversed, she would have been the one being punished, but because she was from the higher tribe, the boy was being punished. So the town Jerga decided that he was going to be gendomized by 10 men from this tribe, and that his sister, his 18-year-old sister, who had nothing to do with it, was going to be gang raped by 10 other men. Her father came to the council meeting and says 10 is too many. He negotiated it down to five. Now, people say, oh, God, that's one of countless scenarios. It's that common.

Sharia law is perverted. Sharia law is about hurting people. Now, people say, well, it's only the women being gangraped. No, it's not. There's something called Chokrabazi or Bakrabazi. Look that up. It's called dancing boys. It's very common in Muslim cultures.

It's where they put feminine boys all near them. In Pakistan alone, they estimate nine out of ten men have been molested by family members, by uncles, neighbors, and everything else because it's the right of passage. So everyone in Pakistan is gay, is absolutely gay, but they don't think it's gay because it's just the way growing up. They have sex with their children. They have sex with their nephews. They have sex with their cousins.

And they have sex with donkeys and goats. It's not, I'm not exaggerating this shit. Were you hearing these stories in prison when you got there? In prison, though. So in prison, this shit was happening in jail, like left and right. There was a scene eye dog that was brought into jail, and they had to put the dude who was blind into his own prison cell because when he was in the barracks,

everyone was having sex with his seeing-eye dog. These are disgusting people. And the shit that they do to each other is barbaric. And it's normal to them, though. They were fucking the dog, not the seeing-eye guy, not the blind guy? I didn't hear about it. That could have been happening, too.

But the thing that jumped out was the scene. I would have fucked the blind guy, I guess, you know? There was one tranny, known tranny, because homosexuality is illegal in Pakistan. I watched these guys throw homosexual people off the top of a building as punishment. as punishment. But there was one guy who was in jail who was under trial, and he was in two cell. He was with the hijackers. The hijackers all had their own cells. Two cell was a, was a, it was a privileged

cell because it wasn't packed. The barracks, which I was in the biggest prison of all of Pakistan, a prison called Adialla, and it was only built to house 1800 prisoners, but there were 6,000 prisoners there. Hundreds coming and going every day. Thank God I'm an American, so I'm not in the barracks. The barracks suck, because the barracks have like two to 400 people in each barrack. And now there's eight buildings, and they're double-stacked, and there's barracks everywhere. So you've got a couple hundred people sleeping shoulder-to-shoulder rows and rows, feet to head, feet-to-head, all the way down. The foreigner barracks full of all the Nigerians. Now, if I was in the barracks and the Nigerians, it would have been probably a bad scenario for me,

especially since I'm the only American, but because I'm the only American, everyone's trying to kill me in this jail. They'd put me in, I was on death row. And then when a new superintendent came, I got taken off a death row after nine and a half months, and they couldn't put me in the barracks because I, there was a, now I'm jumping around a little bit, but there was a, um, 5,000 rupee bounty on my head that everyone was trying to collect. From who? I have no idea. Someone put, whoever kills me gets 5,000 rupees and that rumor went throughout the whole prison.

I have no idea who started that rumor. But at the time, 5,000 rupees was exactly $87. So that's what my life was worth and everyone was trying to collect it. So they put me in, uh, uh, One, they put me in Tucson. And two sales was with like political prisoners. Like the leader of the Shias at the time was in jail with me. And he was like in charge of 5,000 different Muslims.

That's a pretty good army there. But that was considered a very small sect. Most of the people were there for corruption, like national accountability bureau. A class were like the future prime minister and the future president of Pakistan would be. Those are like the top tier politicians that were in jail. But in two cell, that's where I was at. And we had in one cell, that's where the hijackers were at, the hijackers from the Pan Am hijacking of 86 that was responsible for 23 deaths. Those guys would end up becoming my best friends because they were Palestinians.

Now, Palestinians are still considered foreigners, and foreigners in jail have to stand together because of the Pakistanis. So it doesn't matter who would make it. You're lucky if you got allies in jail. I was lucky to have those guys as my brothers in jail. And you witnessed homosexuals being thrown off the roof in jail? Yes. So in one cell was where a tranny, his name was Mombati, which meant candle at the time. Mombati was in jail with us, but he got his own cell.

He looked very feminine, long hair, liked to put it on the makeup. They had to lock the inner gate and the outer gate because they didn't want the guards going and getting blow jobs from him at night. Mombati was only allowed out of his cell to come eat with me and the other hijackers because they knew we weren't trying to fuck him. He could cook, though. So we were buying all the food from the canteen, so he would cook the food for us and he would eat with us and everything else. he didn't want to get out of jail because his family was trying to locate him so they can kill him for an honor killing.

So when his family was trying to bail him out of jail, he was adamantly fighting going out of jail. Me and the hijackers raised the money to bail him out of jail on our own so that he could go and have a fighting chance. My guess is he got caught. He's dead because it doesn't matter if it's a family or somebody else

is going to kill him. That's just the way it is. It's weird. These guys are everywhere, but it's just if you come around the cross wrong person, you're dead. Like I said, these guys are all raping each other.

They're all mulful. molesting each other. And then they will kill them because it's haram. But yet they're all part of it. It's weird. They will jaywalk across the street to a protest about someone who jaywalked, you know, the do as I say, not as I do mentality. And I would watch the people get thrown off the top tower who were homosexual. That was their, that was their punishment. They would get to go to jail with those guys who were in the barracks. So I... Wait a minute. So the inmates, other inmates, who was getting tossed off the roof? The homosexuals were getting tossed off the roof and they were being pushed off by the guards there because that was their punishment.

Okay, so this wasn't an official sanctioned execution. No, they were. Those were their punishments. Those were their punishments. After they were found guilty? Yes. Okay. And their guilt was being a homosexual.

Correct. Okay. And then they would bury the women who were caught having sex or premarital sex up to their heads and they would have everyone else, all the other women and little boys throw rocks at them. And that was inside of the jail? Yes. Where you were at? Yes. I was in the biggest prison in all of Pakistan.

We had a hospital. We had the death cells. We had schools. They had workshops. They had canteen as hell. They had nurseries as far as like for plants. They had farms. They got all the barracks.

They got a big mosque. There was a city inside this whole prison. And this stuff would happen inside the prison, but would happen all the time, all outside the prison. So you're constantly always reading about it too. Now see the things when the law the first year in jail sucked for me by far because I had Eryx, I was on death row. I didn't know what really was going to happen, but my biggest weapon in prison was learning the

language. So I was learning 20 to 40 words a day and I was doing flashcards. So my grammar was shit, but people started to understand me. And I started to understand people too. So I was able to have conversations and people started to see me as a human being. But up until that first year, everyone was trying to kill me. The guards thought I was Brendan Fraser, no shit. They thought I was the hero of the mummies because that's how they portrayed me

in the stupid newspapers because I worked on the movie Scorpion King as a stuntman. So they thought I was Brendan Fraser, which meant they thought I was a multi-millionaire. So everyone kept trying to get money out of me. The guards got money out of me one time when I was asleep.

The only way they can get the best of me was when I was asleep, and they tried many times, and you have to fight back. You have to. Otherwise you're going to starve. They only feed you twice a day with a couple of lentil soup

and a roti, which is like a chappati, a tortilla, basically. and that's not enough. And all was 225 when I went to jail and I'd lost all this weight all of a sudden in a very short amount of time. You can buy money from the canteen.

You need money to survive in that jail. If you can get $50 into that prison a month, you can live like a king. You can't. But the guards, when they know you have money, you become the target, and all the guards attention focused on me, 100% because they thought I was a multimillioner.

And when the embassy would come and bring me my money, they'd bring me my $3,000 rupees with just $50 and hand it to me. And then that night, the guards who'd usually come to my cell in force and try to find the money. And they got it out of me one time. And that's when I started sleeping with the money on me. The time they got it out of me, it was bad. Like I was, I was fucked up.

And literally, I wrote to the embassy the first time it happened. And I was like, I need a book so I can learn the language. They got me a Hindi English book because Hindi and Urdu are a lot alike. There was no Urdu English book, but they had Hindi English books. And so then I started learning the language. The very next time the embassy came, I wanted, he was going to try to give me the palm, was that little guy Ovzol, who was the Pakistani interpreter, he was going to try to palm. And I was like, nope, I counted it. I counted three thousand rupees. I wanted the guards

to see this shit. I needed it to happen. And that night, I put everything I could underneath the blanket. And I put some dental floss on the wire of the light that was always on, and I just hit in the corner. And that night, I didn't hear him unlock the door, but I heard them unlatch it. And when they opened the door, three guards came in and started beating what they thought was me sleeping and I pulled it, complete black out and just started throwing haymakers in the dark. I was connected. And you can fight the guards. It's not like an extra charge.

You're not going to be charged with the solvent guards. You have to fight the guards. Otherwise, you will starve to death. Now, the reason why the guards are making life suck so bad for you in jail is because they only get paid $6,000 a month from the government. That's $100. But you know how much they have to pay just to work inside the prison? 15,000 rupees.

Yeah. How is this work out? They're paying $250 for the opportunity to work inside the jail. Because they assume they could just extort and make the money back. Because that's where the money is. So they're either beating it out of you, they're extorting it out of you, or they're working for you. Now, I don't speak or due at the time. Now, everyone thinks I'm a millionaire, and they know I got money. So they're all coming after me because what am I going to say?

Am I going to report these guys who's going to listen to me? Because no one going to understand me. Now I'm throwing haymakers in the dark here, and I'm lasting 40 minutes. The entire prison knows I'm part. party in that night. I'm yelling Sabacha and I'm making everyone laugh and everything else. The guards maybe 40,

45 minutes later, a dozen of them were dragging me to Kassori. Kassori is punishment sale. You know how in the movies here we see the hole. Well, the hole here is a nice luxury apartment compared to the hole in Pakistan. Because there you got light, you got water, they still feed you.

Kassori in Pakistan is the size of a closet. And the only time you see light is when they feed you one time a day, that doll and that and that roti, and also when it's your turn to be brought out to have the bottom of your feet beaten. They like to beat your feet with a cane. They got a real foot fetish over in Pakistan. So they beat your feet with a cane? Yeah.

How many times? How many lashings? I would spend 132 days and Qasuri the entire time I was in Pakistan. The longest time I spent in a row was eight weeks. Wow. In the complete dark. So it's like out of a movie from the 50s, like Shawshank Redemption. Like how American prisons used to be. You see nothing.

Except it's the size of a closet. So you have to like curl up like an egg and you fill a little hole in the corner. And that's just where you're going to use your restroom and everything. And so does your cell fill up with your shit and piss? I mean, it can. I was fortunate that it never did. Yeah. I was fortunate because there.

During monsoon season, my cell and two cell would fill up, but I was fortunate that when during monsoon season, when I was in Kasori, it would get bad. There would be, but I'd never like, because when you sleep, you have to sleep up. So they would get wet, but it wouldn't, like, drown you or nothing. You were just in the water and the muck and all the sewage and everything. Is there a mattress? No, not in Casari. There's no mattresses in the prison either. You have to sleep on blankets. Okay. Did you have blankets in Casori? No. You're just you and your clothes. Okay. And then so after eight weeks, your beard, I mean, what do you look like? What is your, what do you feel? I don't know. I didn't have, I honestly don't know. I didn't, I didn't, I didn't have a mirror in there. So the reason why I was in there for eight weeks in a row was that was after, because I was, it was related to that time because when I needed them to see it, well, I spent two weeks and I was supposed to be in there for two weeks. And then when I got out of Casori, I went straight back to my cell and one of the guards. was there who messed with me. He says, As alam alaikum. And so I hit him

right in his face as hard as I could. 15 minutes later, I was back in Kasori for six more weeks. That was the eight weeks in a row. After I was let out after that eight weeks, the guards were like, just go to your fucking room. Because I was ready to fight again if I had to. But I needed to make that message that it wasn't a target because these guys were

making me starve. And if I had to keep losing weight and I couldn't keep my money, I would have died anyways. So I had to make that message and that stand there. So then after that, they weren't robbing you and they were bringing you your food. They weren't going out, they weren't coming to my cell at night.

No, they were still trying to get money out of me, but they weren't coming to my cell at night because I was ready to rock. Okay. So were there victims in there who would just let themselves starve to death or who? People died all the time in Pakistan from guards, from other prisoners, from starvation, yeah.

People died all the time. And they just let people starve to death in cells. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You said guards would get killed? No, I never seen a guard get killed there. Okay. When other inmates get killed? Yes. I've seen the other inmates get killed.

I watched people get hung. I watch people get stoned. I'll watch people get thrown off the barracks. I watched a guy get lit on fire. I had to kill a couple guys in jail. It was self-defense. Over about what, they came at you? Well, someone put a $5,000 bounty on my head, so people were trying to kill me. So I had a hit on me one day where I had three knives sticking out of me, and I had a guy underneath me who was popping his eye out. And I felt like somebody else coming. So I was getting ready for a kick in the head.

And it was one of the hijackers ripping the dude off my back. And the other hijackers surrounded me. So those guys are saving my life. Well, a big crowd was happening. This was during a big riot that was happening. When the riots would happen, it was free for all, everyone against everyone. And I would always try to find a little sanctuary at one cell to hang out with the hijackers so we could all watch each other's backs.

and I was working out in my, I had a little garden that I've been working on in one, and too so. And I would be out there during the summer days by myself, just fixing the yard out. It was too hot for everyone else. They gave me something to do, and I enjoyed it. And this dude hopped the wall, and I didn't know what he was doing. And then he came, like, walking towards me all crazy.

And then you can kind of see when someone's demeanor that there's something wrong. So I knew something was wrong, and I looked in his hands. He was palming something. And the dude tried to stab me. And so I was holding his body away from me. I hit him with a rock and I was holding his body away from me while he was trying to stab. And I didn't want him to stab me backwards. So I snapped his neck.

And I didn't, I didn't mean to, but he was so fragile. That was the first time I killed someone in prison. And I was crying. I was crying when that happened. Fahad, I heard Fahat's voice. Fahad was one of the hijackers. He was in one cell. He reached, he was over, he was looking over the wall. He goes, you okay? And I was trying to explain what happened. His exact words were fucking packies. He hopped over the wall. Fahad was one of my best friends in jail.

And I just want to remind everyone, the hijackers are Palestinians. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Okay. By the way, notoriously good people I've heard. The hijackers? I mean, Palestinians. Oh. I mean, it's good and evil everywhere. were. So Fah had topped over the wall, and we lifted the body back over the wall. And he knew where to put it, and we put the body in a sewage. There was a manhole cover.

We had to both move it out. And then we put the body in. And he's like, you want lunch? I was like, sure. So I went and got lunch. And then that night, I was thinking, like, the guards were going to come to my cell. They were going to know I did it. I was scared as hell.

They found the dude a couple days later, and they deemed been a suicide. Hmm. Wow. Did you, what was it feeling like? I mean, you said you were crying, but were you feeling numb? No, no. It haunts me every day.

I went to jail for a crime. I didn't commit and I came out of murder. That's how I look at it. You know, I don't know what's going to happen in the next life, but I don't know. I'm sure I'm going to, I don't know how I'm going to answer for that. Yeah. I'd like to think that I didn't have to do that, but a sad way I did. Yeah.

Sounds like he himself was starving. He said he was all frail. He was probably, that's probably why he took the money trying to kill you. I'd never seen him before that. Damn. Damn. That is insane. That's insane.

And just imagine the guy who set you up. What, Ray Zarian? His real name is Rasmic Manassian? Six months after I was arrested, I'm still on death row. A DEA agent comes to the prison. First and only time I'll see him. and he brought me two sets of pictures. Each set had six photos on at mugshots.

He says, do you recognize anyone on the first one? I was like, no. And on the second one, I was like, that's Ray, right there. And he was like right in the middle. I want to say top. I don't know. It could have been bottom. But regardless, his face is there.

I knew him right away. And then he tells me what happened. He goes, well, Ray, a Swedish girl doing the same thing that I was doing, was lost her luggage at LAX Airport. But she continued on to her hotel in Glendale. Well, they found drugs in her suitcase, and they knew that who she was because she was trying to get her stuff. So they set up a sting, and they went to her hotel, or Ray, who I'd known as, or who's real name was Razmic Manassian, but I know him as Ray Gazarian, was arrested. Her and the Swedish girl were both arrested.

Ray posted bell under the name Razmic Manassian. My mom at the time had a private investigator looking for Ray Gazarian. No one could find Ray Gozerian because that wasn't his real name. I'd known this man for a couple of years. I considered him one of my best friends, and I never knew his real name. That's why we couldn't find him. Everyone didn't believe that I was innocent because, once again, possession is 10-tenths of the law. Now all of a sudden I got a DEA agent meeting with me at the front of the prison.

I've been in death row now six months, and I'm like seeing Raygas, this is great. And then I could see, I said, so what happens now? And he tells me the story about the Swedish girl. Because my mom and everyone else had come forward saying, we were making these trips, we didn't know. Because her story matched mine and several others, she was deemed a dupe and released without being charged in less than two weeks back to her country.

And this was in the United States? Yes. Okay. But Ray Gazarian, because of my mom's private investigator, was like, this is the same guy that set up Eric. And sure enough, they said, that is the same guy. Now they knew he had aliases. They re-arrested him, denied him bond.

So at least by my being in jail, that Swedish girl wasn't in jail, and now they got the real guy. So now I'm excited. I'm like, so what's happening now? And then I could just tell from the DEA agent's demeanor that this is bad news. He was looking down,

he's like, I've never seen this before. I don't know what? He goes, I've never actually met someone innocent. And he says, if this was happening in America, you'd be going home tonight. Because it's in Pakistan, you have to go through the legal system. I go, I'm on death row.

What do you mean you guys can't do anything? They go, America has a strict no, they have strict policy. They don't get involved if it's narcotics related. They said that if it's visa violation or a murder case, they'll get involved. I was like, pick a person. We could change that right now. But because it was narcotics related, I had to still go to the legal system.

So this is the first time I was hearing from the embassy themselves, or the DEA guy, who I mean, he technically wasn't the embassy, he's DEEA. That it's not that they can't help me, it's that they won't help me. They could help me, but they're not going to because they have a strict policy. And I know for a fact that America could have done something there because they didn't do it for, they wouldn't do it for one of their own, but they did it for a couple hundred Iraqis when we were trying to liberate Iraq. They were finding all the Iraqi prisoners at all the countries around who were deemed refugees running away from Iraq because Saddam Hussein was a, you know, it was a monster. But they weren't all refugees.

There was murderers and rapists and drug smugglers and corruption there. But Pakistan just wanted to get rid of all these prisoners at America's nickel. So they got a couple hundred Iraqi prisoners sent back to Iraq on America's nickel. And then they came back a few months later and got another couple dozen to send them back too. So they did that for another country's prisoners, but they wouldn't do that for one of their own. So you could have killed somebody. You could have gone to Pakistan and probably raped a girl and killed her. And the American embassy would have done something or at least tried to help you.

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How's that? because under Shariah law, if the victim's family members forgive you, then Allah forgives you and all is forgotten. So if I want to kill you, I'm going to go talk to your brothers and your brother and your father and make a deal. How much is it going to cost for me to you guys to forgive me for killing for killing you? And it's usually 60,000 to 100,000 rupees, which is less than $2,000. You're negotiating with your victim's family. Yes. And then as long as they forgive you, Allah forgives you.

and it's all you get. And I would see, there was this British dude, British accent, everything else, but he was Pakistani. He had two daughters who were growing up westernized. One was a 25-year-old doctor, the other was 20 Muslim girls, but they grew up with a Western mentality. He told them that we're going back to Pakistan for a family vacation. What he didn't tell them was that he hated how they had grown up westernized,

and he had arranged marriages for both of them. Well, the older daughter was like, fuck off, I'm not marrying anyone. Go to hell. this brought shame on the family. Now he's got to do an honor killing and he shot and killed his own 25-year-old daughter, doctor, right in the face. For two weeks, I heard this man complain about being stuck in jail.

The victim's family members have forgiven me. I'm like, yeah, well, who are those? Well, my sons, my wife? He stayed two weeks in jail for killing his own daughter before they released him. His 20-year-old daughter, she was sold. That's normal. And that dude lived in England.

That dude was from England. Right. And his embassy probably spoke up for him. But the point is, like, specifically you was an American. No, he was a Britain. Yeah, I know. That's horrendous. I'm just talking about the absurdity of being an American

whose own government won't step in and try to help them. They won't. No. For drugs. But you could. murder somebody. That's what the DEA agents said. How true that is, I didn't really care to find out. Should have told me you were Israeli. They would have had you out. It would have been nice. Yeah, licking split. Sure. And then, you know, what you don't, you can't prove it. And another charge on you.

Right. Okay. So you, you're charged at the airport. You're caught. You're not charged at the airport. Okay. You're found with, it was like a kilo and a half? Three point six KG of opium. Okay. And the walls of the suitcase that I never saw him take out. So when the guy says, what is this? I said, he's holding it. And he goes, this is all for him. I said, why are you showing me this? He says, because it came out of your suitcase. I said, I need to speak with the American embassy. Embassy can't help you. We're going to hang you after five o'clock prayer. Well, now I think I'm dead. So I figure I'm going to make my life worse something. And all I'm going to do is find a phone and warn the others, because I'm not the one making these trips. All they wanted to do was call my manager so that he could, because everyone knew

what I was doing, but I wanted to make sure that the other guys at the gym who were making these trips would know what it is that we're really being used to do. So I went blasting through these guys. I went into the hallway. Someone shot up the hall hallway with a bunch of other people in it. I barricaded myself in another office down the hall. I put all the tables and filing cabinets and everything else. I was squat pressing at the table while these guys were all trying to get in. No one could get in. There was no windows, though. I found a phone and I'm trying to call out, I'm calling 911, zero. I can't get out of the airport, nothing.

No one can get in. Stay, you're surrounded. I'm like, you can't get in. Give me someone from the embassy. It felt like forever. I honestly don't remember how long it was. I hear banging on the door. Eric Owd, it's like, odd day.

You want to speak to an American? Is he from the embassy? DEA. I'm not opening the door. I'm being stupid. I'm 21 now. I'm like, all right, prove it. I said, where you from?

Like I said, Texas. I'm thinking, like, everyone knows. Texas. I said, who's your favorite football team? The guy says, uh, Dallas. I'm like, Cowboys, they suck, you know? The guy's like, you want to speak to us or not? I said, they said they're going to hang me after five o'clock prayer. And then someone that was with them was talking to the guards and in Ardu. And then he goes, reluctantly, he goes, ah, they were kidding. Like, I don't know how you kid about some shit like that. I really don't. Because at the time, it felt pretty fucking real. And I was, you know, beyond scared. So I opened the door, guns are all on me

and everything else. Tall DEA agent. Because are you willing to talk to us? Yes, absolutely. Let's talk. So I get brought to a different part of the airport, but by the Pakistani guards. And they're like three on each arm

and people are putting like their fingers on my back. So it looks like a dozen people are walking me across. And they bring me to this other room where there's three DEA agents and the Pakistani guy. It's his desk. He didn't say shit, but there's DEA agent, a couple chairs on the walls. And I'm telling my whole story.

Like I'm just rushing. Now these guys are trying to like catch me I got you moment. By asking me a question and be halfway through an answer. This guy asked me a different question trying to talk to this guy. And this guy is like,

hey, how long you've been using, man? You drug addict? No, I don't go to that. I said, I don't do drugs. I don't even drink. Come on, everyone smokes. And this guy's like, come on, everyone smokes pot.

I'm like, no, that's just you. And the guys are, why, why Sweden? Like, I go, well, when I go back to Sweden? Because you get to pick a country, because I'm telling him you get to pick a country in the white guy's like, why Sweden? When you go back to Sweden,

you get to hook up with girls and whatnot. And I got some friends there. And the guys are like, what's their names? Huh? What's their names? I'm like, you're not their type. You know, like, it's stupid. They were trying to catch me in the lie.

And I'm giving them all the information about Ray Gazarian and everything else. But they want people who live in Pakistan. They wanted names. They want their addresses. They wanted it just like, they didn't want to do any research. I'm like, guys, I get it. I'm screwed. All right, but give me the benefit of the doubt.

Other people are making these trips. And I'm like, and I told this guy that. And he's like, oh, we're going to go through everything. And I was getting mad. I was getting really mad because clearly they didn't believe a fucking word I was saying and I'm scared and I this is all being thrown at me at the last second and these guys I'm clearly don't believe it because they're trying to twist all my fucking words finally I'm like adamant just call my mom she'll tell you everything that's happening make sure that the other people don't make these trips and the guy's like the one guy put his hand on my chest and he said why is you why is you why are you so scared are we talking about he goes you're lying to us he goes you're an actor right yeah I'm not a good actor but yeah I'm not a good actor but yeah I'm not a good actor but yeah I'm I'm scared. I was told him it was going to be hung in this whole scenario. Yeah, I'm in a savage country.

Right. And caught with fucking drugs. Also, someone tried to shoot me already. So, yeah, I believe these guys because it's, um, remember the guy said to me because you think you're a tough guy with this country is going to show you how weak you really are. And then I was, I was hit in the head by someone's fucking rifle and dragged out of there. They brought me to the suitcase that I was there, except now all my stuff was

thrown in that suitcase. my stuff that I was carrying. So instead of all the jackets being alone, they threw everything from that suitcase, all my stuff, my wallet, my cell phone. Can I ask you this real quick? Yeah. Did you check the luggage?

So after the night, I just want to rewind to the night that you were hanging out with all these guys, you ended up nine. That was the Monday. Okay. So you were not gang raping a woman. Correct.

Now, I, no, we did not. And we never would have. Of course. That Tuesday, something I drank, I got Manazuma's revenge. I was sick. Sick as fuck. So I'm back at the hotel,

which I had to... One of their friends brought me back to the hotel who... I felt bad for that guy because I felt like he was like, man, you guys were just using me for my car. That's what it felt like because he wasn't with us for the night.

But thank God he brought me back to the hotel. But I was sick. That Tuesday, I was sick. And I didn't eat or drink anything that Tuesday. I don't even think I wore pants. That's how bad it was. Wednesday, same thing. Thursday, I was.

was starting to feel better. Thursday, I was able to go get myself like a bottle of Sprite, you know, paying 10 rupees for a bottle of Sprite. And I was very like, I was frugal with my money because I spent that 360 that first day. The rest of the week, though, I didn't know how I was going to do it, but I wasn't eating because I was just sick, throwing up shit and everywhere. Thursday, I'm feeling better. Thursday, I went all the way back to the internet cafe that I had found. And I saw an email from Missy, the girl that I'd love since I was five. And in that email, it was a mass email. she sent it to everyone. And in that email, she was putting out there how she had, her mom had died from cancer

and that she was in a bad spot. She was just letting everyone know what was going on in her life. And the second, I read that email, I was like, yes, burning hell, bitch. Fuck yeah. Her mom was the reason why her and I had never been together. Her mom had hated me since second grade because she was a teacher's aide and I sprayed her with glue and threw her sweater in a mud puddle. But she was hurting me.

She put her like her nails in the back of my neck. She was a bitch. She hated me because I was a bitch. I was a problem kid. I was a class clown, and I was always a center of attention. I get it, but I'm still a kid. More of that story in my book, for sure. But Missy's mom was the reason why Misty and I can never date.

The girl that I loved my whole life, I can never date because of her mom. So now it's Valentine's Day. It's February 14, 2002, and I'm reading this email, like, holy shit, this is God being man, finally a win. Now I got a chance to go be with the girl. I've been pursuing my entire life. And what would happen the next morning is I would get arrested in Pakistan for a fucking crime I didn't commit. And when all this shit was going down, I literally swore at her laughing from, I was like, oh, you bitch.

I mean, what are the odds? What are the fucking odds? You have no idea. I don't know if you've ever been madly in love with someone. But I love this girl more than anything. Like I said, she was my motivation for working out, for studying longer, for trying to get in. into stunts and acting because I wanted to be someone that would impress her. I don't know why, but for this girl, man, I couldn't win her over.

She was the only girl that couldn't win over. And every time we got close, her mom would make her life hell. According to her, her mom just hated me. And like I said, so she would avoid the drama and stay away from me. And I was always pursuing her. And then now I see that email that her mom had died. And I'm an asshole. And I wanted to go be with this girl.

And I had the opportunity. And less than 24 hours later, I would be fighting for my life. Isn't that wild? It is crazy. Payback for that feeling of joy at someone's horrible cancer death. Yeah. Yeah. When did you go get the bag?

I didn't go get the bag. They came to the airport. They came to my hotel room that morning, that Friday morning, February 15th. Wow. And they wanted me just to go down to the cab. I'm like, no, I got to look at all this stuff first. So I was adamant about getting them to come up to my hotel room with everything. And that's when I learned it was only one suitcase.

And normally it was two suitcases. And the suitcase was light. And so something was wrong. I thought maybe they were shorting Ray. And so I even called Ray from my hotel room. I said, hey, man, it's only one suitcase. It was like seven pieces. That was it.

That's not normal. You normally have like 20 pieces, like thick leather jackets and everything else. And it was always two suitcases. And I go, it's only one suitcase. And he was like, oh, this is just the first. trip. Just want to make sure it works good. That's normal. I go, really? Like, it didn't make sense to me. Yeah, like, how are you going to make your money back off of seven pieces of clothing? Yeah, so, but instead of this being a big red flag, I was happy. That wasn't have to lug around all

these suitcases now. And then I wasn't going to pay all this extra money at the customs. Right. Because you got to pay for the weight. So you checked it, though, you couldn't visibly see any, anything. I went through everything. I went through everything. And I also folded back up. You didn't see any manipulation in the, in the suitcase? Because it was a, that was a, that was a smoke screen. It was the suitcase. The suitcase looked like an empty suitcase when it was open. Absolutely empty suitcase. Why those things look like newspapers, because they were so thin and vacuum sealed.

They were in the walls of the suitcase. So it looks like an empty suitcase. It feels like an empty suitcase. 3.6 KG, which is like eight pounds. People are, how do you not know? Suitcases is not that. Eight pounds is nothing, dude. Girls purse is like 50 fucking pounds.

Right, exactly. Eight pounds is nothing. And then I would go and find out that it was full of drugs. And then I was, the DEA shows up. I tell them everything I know. They say they're going to, you know, this country has a way of making you, the guys like, this country's going to have a way to show you how weak you really are. Well, I didn't know what they were talking about.

And then I got hit with a gun, got put in front of the stuff that they put all my, the suitcase that had the drugs in it. And then all the clothes on top of including the, stuff that I had with me to make it look like mine. Even my DVD player, which I had a portable DVD player, which were like unheard of back in the day, was in there. And they took photos. Now, like an asshole, I'm thinking, like, once they get a hold of my mom and everyone

comes forward and they arrest the real drug smuggler, I'll be out of here. I'm thinking two, three days tops. That's it. I'm like, all right, treat it like an adventure, Eric. Let's just enjoy it. So I'm like putting my arms around these guards. I'm like taking photos. Like, fuck it.

I'm innocent. So I'm not going to act like I'm a, I'm a. guilty at all. I'm doing everything wrong. All right. So in the newspapers, I look like a fucking douchebag right here because I am a fucking douchebag, but I'm an innocent douchebag, but no one here knows that. They bring me to this lockup, this airport lockup, and they put me in a cell with a bunch of guys. Someone says something to me and I don't know what he's saying. And someone else goes, what country and I went to America? Wrong, wrong answer. Next thing I know, I'm chucking old men around, throwing them in different directions and everything else because

these guys don't like that. I'm an American. The guard. to see what's happening, and they put me in another cell, okay? And his other cell, there's, there's like one dude in there, and they got a picture of some guy up there. I still don't know to this day

who this person was. Cell's dirty, but it's just me and another guy in the cell. He's got his own blankets and everything there. He's speaking a little English, though. And this girl from the embassy shows up, the name's Christia Gore.

She shows up to the embassy, and she goes, uh, she goes, uh, Eric Owl and I was like, well, shit, if I known I was going to meet someone like you, would have gotten arrested a long time ago. And she's like, yeah, he's from California. And I was thinking like, all right, cool, the embassy's here. Now, all eyes are looking at this girl because she is a bright spot in a very dark place. She's with Avzal, the little interpreter from the embassy. And she's like, how are you doing? I'm like, great, never better.

It's like, really? I'm like, no, I just got fucking arrested. I tell her everything, what's happening and whatnot. She tells me that I'm going to be presented back in front of the magistrate on Tuesday. This is Friday. I'm like, Tuesday, what are you talking about? Before that happens, she says, you don't have to talk to us. And I go, no, I absolutely want to talk to you.

So I'm telling them everything and everything. And I tell, call my mom. She says she'll come back Tuesday. That's what she says. She'll come back Tuesday. And she leaves. She was back within a couple hours. so whatever I said to my mom

or whatever they said to my mom was the exact same thing I had told her so all of a sudden she started to realize wait a minute that this guy might actually be innocent so she had brought back a Coke and a pizza like a little pizza box Pizza Hut but Pakistani Pizza Hut is hot

spicy as shit then she says you're going to be presented in front of the magistrate tomorrow and go well so what is that mean she goes you're going to it's called physical remand. She goes, they figured they can't get the truth out of you. They can beat it out of you. It's like, what does that mean? What are they going to do? She's like, they're going to

torture you. This is the embassy telling me this. Okay. I was like laughing. I remember I was laughing. I was like, this trip just gets better and better. And that was like a technical term. So like they're legally allowed to torture you in Pakistan? It's called physical remand. So the next morning, I go to the, I go to the lower. courts to see the judge and I don't understand what's being said because it's like there's people everywhere throngs of people I'm in like these barbaric chains as I'm being led through the crowds people are trying to ask me for money even though I'm in hand I'm I'm a prisoner and I get brought into this like little rickety shack and it's like stacked papers dust everywhere the the

table's like up to here on my neck even though I'm standing up and the judge sits high up and there's everyone's like shoulder to shoulder it's very like little so I don't know who's on my right I don't know who was on my left, and they start talking. I'm about to be led away when Christy goes and starts talking to the judge in Erdo. And I don't know what she's saying at the time, but then when I'm walking away, I was like, so what's happening? Because I'm being led back to the lockup, and they're moving me fast while she's walking and talking with me.

She says, they wanted 10 days. I got you down to 3. And I was like, I could have lasted 10 days. She goes, you're welcome. And I was like, thank you. They wanted 10 days of physical remand. People died during physical remand all the time. It's always in the newspaper.

So I went straight to physical remand, actually. So she was negotiating, like your lawyer, this woman from the embassy, with the judge. She wasn't supposed to get involved whatsoever. So it's like it's a bail hearing, almost. You're negotiating with the judge about the length of your torture. Correct. So these guys are trying to get it for 10 days. She heard that it was 10 days and immediately stepped in.

She wasn't supposed to get involved. She was just supposed to observe. I'm glad she did, obviously. And then I was taken to this, like, it was a customs lockup, but we went down into the basement, and you could hear everyone screaming down there. There was like one light down in this tunnel,

which you could see the stairs to the other side. So there was multiple entrances, but it was like a cross and then rooms on everything, and you can hear everything. And then when the room over, there was a light in the middle. So they had a fish tank with like a seesaw on it, like a wood platform seesaw.

They had chains in the ceiling. They had, it looked like one of those paddle things, like the machine part of it, but it was just wires. And they had a chair that can go on its back. And it was just like a dungeony room, and it was just real dirty. So they would ask me a bunch of questions, you know, who gave me? You know, who gave these drugs to you? What is your name?

Where are you from? And they're speaking in English? One guy is. Okay. There's two guards there. This is their job. You know, it's just a job. They're not, they would just make sure I was there and tie me up and, or chain me up.

And then I'd answer these questions, but it wouldn't get anywhere. Who gave you the drugs? Where are they? What are the addresses? They started asking me questions. I did not have the answers to. I'm telling them about Ray back in America. They wanted to know people here.

And then they would, you know, they would slap, beat, hit. And then they go for the feet. I love the feet. They start beating the feet. They beat the crap out of my feet. How does it feel getting your feet beaten? Because it's fun. It's great.

Is it tickle or is it painful as shit? We get through it. Let's do it now. Let's find out. I mean, I'm not even asking that in jest because, yeah, I mean, compared, like, is it like getting hit on your elbow? Like, how do you compare it? Compare the pain of getting hit on your feet compared to like,

like what do you compare that to? Is it a stinging? Oh, no, it stings. Because they're doing it with the cane. They're doing repetitively. And you can't move. Do your feet bleed? Yes.

On your feet bleed. My feet, when I walk, still are fucked up from bone splints and everything else. My feet hurt and they get swollen. So I can't walk. Too comfortably. it's it's extremely painful but it's more demeaning than anything you know it's not like the worst pain you'll ever feel

it just felt like I was getting beat by my parents for the weekend you know so it hurts it's bearable it sucks you're not going to pass out from it I mean that would have been nice actually it sucks and they just do it repetitively then they ask you the same fucking questions and then they go and they they drown you

They put you on the stupid thing and they drown you. In the fish tank? In the fish tank. But they put you on your back and then they lift it and then you get drowned in it. The crazy thing is like, I think like October the year before, I've been watching that show Fear Factor. And this guy won the first episode with some out of shape bartender who held who's smoking right before the challenge. And he held his breath for a minute and 13 seconds.

So I was like, fuck, I'm going to get on the show. He won $50,000. I want to go $150,000. So I was actually adamantly training myself from that one first episode that I just seen a few months earlier for a show that I thought maybe I could absolutely get on, but I never got on. And I got it to where I could hold my breath comfortably for almost three minutes. And I would be holding my breath at a stoplight before I went to bed and the shower just randomly. And it was crazy because I'm like laughing. I'm laughing internally because I'm like, well, fuck are the odds.

and so I didn't let these guys know that this was too easy for me but I saw my coming out you know making it bad because I don't want them to know that I can hold my breath for a lot longer than that they're holding me under there they're holding me under there for about a minute each time then they bring me over and they hook me up and start turning up the electricity and they hang me up like a punching bag and go rocky on me

and it's always between all this stuff it's always the same fucking questions where'd you get it from what's your name what's their address what's their number Did you give them Ray's number? They gave them everything about Ray. They didn't give a fuck because Ray's in America. They want the people here in Pakistan. On day three, they just wanted me to admit the drugs are mine.

That's it. They had pain, but it stopped. I never admitted anything. Day three, the guards were actually showing respect for me because I was taking it and I was cool with it. But the guards were just doing their jobs. It's just what they do in Pakistan. You know?

I don't know whether. I don't think I got special treatment. at all. And so people and other people are next to you. I'm imagining. I heard other cells and whatnot. People screaming. But I never saw.

Never saw them. That must, that's so terrifying. That must be like the most terrifying is hearing the screams of other people as you're being led towards your own, your own fate. Yeah, I guess it was. I don't really remember, but I was so pissed off about what's happening to me. I was thinking about getting my fucking hands on Ray. the whole time. So rather than being scared, I was mad. I was pissed off. And so I think that was

helping me a little bit. And then when these guys were talking to me, they're assholes. I know they're not going to figure it. And the guy's hitting me. I'm like, fuck you, asshole. You know, like, what the fuck? Because I'm innocent. I'm not guilty. And so I'm being tortured for information I don't fucking have. It sucks. Now, let's go back a bit. When I was eight years old, I was run over by a school bus. So people think that what happened to me in Pakistan was the worst thing that ever happened to me. No, it sucked, but it wasn't even close. close. Worst thing that ever happened to me is being run over by a damn school bus when I was eight years old. I didn't walk for two years. My pelvis was smashed like a glass jar. I only knew

what pain was. Like I said, between 8 and 15, I had 52 surgeries. I'm the first person on earth that had their ureth were severed and reconnected. So I'm in doctor's history books is patient zero. And all I knew, I was told I never walk again. I was a fucking wedge buster. All I did was work out at the gym and work out with the college football team from 14 until I was a senior in high school. had stats that last to this day. I have a record in California that's 20 years old. 147 tackles for a defensive end and 11 game. Those are video game numbers.

They'll never be broken. But it's because I always trained with the college football team from 14. So when I got on the field with kids, it was easy. Now, I was a wedge buster. I was crazy. I was a stuntman. I was in love with the girl that was never going to be with me. I wanted to be an action hero.

So I was so arrogant and full of myself. So everything that these guys are doing to me was nothing I hadn't already experienced. Like I said, you knew pain, you were an underdog. I could hold my breath, them beating the bottom. My feet sucked, but my mom used to take the belt to me like it was religious. I used to give my mom money after she spanked me

because I just as a fuck you. That's how I was. And so you can't hurt me worse than I've ever been hurt. The bus accident did all that for me. And so I only know pain. But I'm in a situation that I don't fucking belong in, so I'm pissed off. Well.

And that's kind of keeping some adrenaline going. It's keeping you from giving up. 100%. I tell people that if you ever get arrested in another country, don't waste your phone call on the embassy. Order a pizza because you're not going to get fed during interrogation. The only time I got to eat was that pizza and that Coke that the girls, Christy from the embassy brought me.

When I finally got brought back to the customs lockup, because now I'm fucked up and I'm pissed, I'm tired, I'm worn out, I'm hungry. This is three days. That's after, well, yeah. So that Monday night, Christy came back to come see me that night. She brought some douchebeg from the Army, I guess,

who was doing security at the embassy. And they let me use a phone to call my mom. So my mom, I'm telling her what's up. She's already been informed. She's already trying to get a private investigator, they're trying to find Ray Gazzarian. I'm like, look, I'm doing fine. She's like, how are you doing?

I'm doing just fine. Obviously, I'm telling her, I'm like, Mom, I didn't do this. And she's like, I know he didn't do this. But douchebeg from the embassy, the military dude, after I got off the phone, he's like, hey, I'm not, just going to tell you right now, just be honest, throw yourself at the mercy of the court, be honest, don't lie to them. Maybe they'll go easy on them. I'm like, fuck you, who the hell are you, dude?

I didn't fucking do this. He's like, yeah, okay, whatever, man. And I'm like, I'm getting, I was getting mouthing off to this dude because he's being an asshole. Like, that's not what I want to hear in this situation right out. But Christy said some shit that I thought was great, like I needed to hear it. She says to me right then and there, she goes, Eric, I believe you. And I was like, really? Because I was shocked, because I don't know this girl.

But just hearing her say that she believed me in this situation. Like I've just been tortured for three fucking days. And, you know, things, I thought I would have already been out by now, but I'm not. Now I'm on, that's Monday. I was arrested Friday. So for her to say that was sort of a fucky to him for her, because he was there for her, clearly. He wasn't there for me.

That was nice to hear. And I needed to hear that. Well, the next day, I got brought to the prison, his biggest prison in all of Pakistan. And Adiala. The front gates look like the gates of the more door, man. It's just massive. And it's in Islamabad? No, it's an hour east of Islamabad in a city called Robo Pindi. And how many people are in that prison? 6,000. Wow. And you said it's like a mini society. Yeah. There's a city inside this prison. You walk in, there's like big courtyards with a fountain and it's nice and grass and all these pomegranate trees. And then you've got all these walls with all this Islamic like verses from

the Quran all over the walls randomly. You've got A cell in the front. You got B class who are like prisoners with money. Like they don't put like, they don't put like, they don't put poor people in any of these places. They fit like politicians in A class. Behind A class is, because sorry, and behind that's the prison. Then you've got death row over there and then you've got farms all the way around. The barracks are in the far back.

There's a big mosque in the middle. I mean, you could literally, I probably walk the whole perimeter. and I would guess to me. It was two miles. Wow. It's just huge. You got the women's prisons to the right. Got the children's prison right behind that.

Then you got the nursery. You got the workshops. You got all these long roads. The front part is the nicest part, the way it looks. But then when you get further and further into the prison, it starts to get a little bit darker and dingy or more prisoning. Is it like South America where you can pay for yourself to get placed in a better section? I don't know the details about South America.

Well, that's how it is. In Pakistan, it's all money. So yes. Okay. Yes. You can pay for privileges and everything else. Unfortunately, when I'm going into the jail, they got this, so there's like this placard on my right that looks like scrabble pieces that they take out the numbers you see under trial.

You've got women's prisoners. You've got death row prisoners. You've got children's prisoners and whatnot. And they've got the numbers that are constantly changing over here. That's how I know the total number is over 6,000 because it's right there when you first come in. Now, this is a big, like, garage and the, I want to say the, the, is like 30 feet, not an exaggeration. It's two floors. When you first walk in, they open these big gates and they close it. There's a little door on the gate, and there's also a little door on the

right side, but the gate can open in and out for when they bring in vehicles like the canteen or to get the furniture that they're building or whatever other reason when they need to bring vehicles into the prison. They always lock this one before they open this one and vice versa. Well, there's one little table over here with all these books stacked, and all that's in the books or thumbprints. You know, you got names and Urdu, but it's all thumbprints. So I get brought over here, and they're taking off all my chains and everything, and then they have me do a thumbprint.

It's funny, they got thumbprints because people are illiterate in Pakistan. But yet, how are they, they don't have any way of knowing who's thumbprints who. They don't. They don't have any computers. They don't have anything like that. Nothing. It's barbaric over here. Yeah, I'm doing a thumbprint.

They take off the chains, and I hear, like, chanting behind the gates over here. And the guy brings me over, and one of the guards are over here just laughing. Like, they're enjoying it. The guards are laughing what's going on. And one guy goes like this, and I'm, like, looking at him, and he's doing it. And then they're, like, they're, like, trying to, I don't know, they were trying to scare me. And I was just like, open the fucking door already. As soon as they opened the door, I treated it like football.

I went in, like, kickoff, opening kickoff, and went right through these guys because I knew that these guys, if they got me at the door, they could corral me. So I went through them so I can get turned it into one-on-ones. These are guards? No, these are prisoners. These are prisoners. These prisoners are called the number dards. Number darts are prisoners who do the guards dirty work to get extra privileges and rations. And for doing that, they get to keep whatever valuables they get, whether it's money, like nice sandals, watches, nice clothes, or whatever. Normally prisoners come in two, you know, three, a dozen at a time. And these guys branch off slapping them. These are the bigger prisoners. They're like, you know, guys who are like five, nine, hundred and seventy-five pounds. That's big. in Pakistan. I'm 225, 6-1, and I was fucking Jim Beast.

Yeah. And I watched the show Oz, so I was thinking, like, if you go into prison, scared, you're going to be someone's bitch. And I was like, fuck that shit. I'm thinking I'm only going to be here three days or so because, I mean, my mom's nowing on it. I'm still learning as I go. And so I treated it like kickoff. I went right through these fucking guys so it become one-on-one.

Now, these guys got big beers. They got dresses on. I'm using that all against them. I'm throwing on the crown. I'm cracking guys. And I'm backpedaling and just dropping all these dudes. The guards are up in the towers. was just loving it, fucking loving it,

because I'm just dropping these guys as I'm backpedaling. They're trying to corral me, but I'm not letting that shit happen at all. Finally, this lasted for a while. I'm tired of, but I'm, like, amped up. I made that courtyard, like, everyone knew I'd entered the jail. It became, like, my own little mosh pit.

I remember thinking of, like, kid rock, bomb did the bang to bang. So I'd always think of shit like that when I was on kickoffs and whatnot, like cool music. I don't know why I was just, stupid like that. I'm like, I'm not going to be someone's bitch. Fuck that. Let's rock. This little dude who's like 410 who's a number, a mashakti. Meshakotis are prisoners who just

get assigned prison or jobs putting chalk down, painting, delivering food buckets, messages. He's like, I don't know, no, no, I'm like, I don't know. He's not going to try to hurt me. But he sees everything that's going. It's like a little old man, like a hobbit, but he had like authority about him. And he's like, ah, la la la, he grabs my wrist to like follow him. So I'm like, okay, I'm going to follow this guy. And these guys, they've given up. They don't want nothing. And I go walking down the long path to pass the mosque.

It's prayer time. So there's thousands of prisoners around this mosque on their prayer mats doing their prayer. And I get brought to the process in barrack, which is deep in the prison. Second story. And it's empty, mostly empty. There's like a guy cleaning, maybe someone getting buckets. And there's like buckets of water and like clothes hanging up and everything else. And it's organized chaos.

Like there's no bed. It's all blankets and everything, rose on both sides. I'm fucking exhausted. I'm exhausted. I'm exhausted. I'm hungry. Guy brings me to the end of it. I'm like literally only there. I lay down on the blanket and I try to close my eyes.

I'm dead tired, but my mind won't shut off. You know when people are like in your bubble. So I hear a bunch of scooting feet. And then I open my eyes up. People are just sitting right there on the other bed looking right at me. Like it's not a bed, but it's a little raised. It's a little raised platform that they put all the blankets on and everything. And then someone says to me, American?

It's like, nope. Pakistan, born and raised. My whole life. Guy goes, no, you're the American. And then they show me the front page photo of meed with my arms around the fucking guards looking like a cock sucker. I'm like, that doesn't even look like me. Now I'm getting my ass handed to me. I'm tired. There's too many of them. I felt like the fucking Santa Claus and Gremlins. They're all over me.

I'm on the second balcony in this small little corridor and I'm like bashing my people off my back as I'm trying to get these guys out of me. It's like arms and heads and slaps all happening. People throwing shit from around. One asshole was on my back and I just I just grabbed him and got the bright idea to throw him off the balcony. Now there's a bunch of people down there. So he went crowd surfing. I didn't kill him. I threw him off the balcony and this is when the guards finally decided they got to get him. involved and they come in their baton charging everyone and everything else they're beating me with the batons and now i'm getting taken to cassori for the first fucking time causeori is the whole yeah and i would spend five days and my first five days in jail in cassori even though they would bring me out if the embassy came embassy came once again that dude who from the army was there with christie but this time he kept his fucking mouth shut didn't say hello didn't say nothing and this is where i found

out that my first day in court was going to be in two fucking weeks march second So how do you get money in? Right now you're basically just starving, surviving on the bread and tea they're giving you. Ovezal would end up giving me money. Azal's the interpreter? Yeah. Okay. But that would be money that my mom had sent from the embassy. So my mom, they would send money into accounts.

I don't remember if he gave me money there or not. And are you at this point, have you been charged yet? No. Okay. So you're waiting to go to court. Yes. My first day of court was March 2nd. Right.

So this was 15th,000 hours of rest, and 16, 70, 8th. So the 19th was now when I'm in the prison. And then two weeks after that, which would be March, March 2nd. That's what I remember. And then I put me back in the cassori for five days, and then they took me off of cassori and brought me to death row. And because, and the reason I was put on death row is because the rumor was going around that someone put a bounty on my head for $5,000 rupees.

And so the superintendent of time was like the safest place for me is on death row. So they put me on death row. I got my own cell on death row, but it was like a cage with like three other cages. So the other two cages had guys in it. They had three guys in it. These are little old men. One of them was a guy named Marod who would end up becoming my best friend. He knew a little English.

That's why he became the guy to come and talk to me. We played chess. He taught me poker. First time I ever played Texas hold of poker was on death row. And what was he on death row for? He was on death row for killing 11 of his wives family members. See, in Pakistan, everything's arranged marriages, and you're not allowed to marry who you want to marry.

You have to marry who your family says you have to marry. Him and his wife fell in love without their family's permissions. And so they went into hiding to be together. Literally, Romeo and Juliet. And while they were in hiding, their families were feuding. They were fighting. They were killing each other. What brought him out of hiding was his wife's family member.

had gang raped his mother and his sister and killed them by cutting off their breast. So then he set up a meeting and says, this has gotten out of hand. This needs to stop. Let's get together. And he ambushed his wife's family members, killing 11 of them. He did, in my eyes, what any man would have done. Right. And his mother being killed, his mother and his sister being killed by having the breast cut off,

it wasn't that legal? Or is that technically illegal under the laws of Pakistan, but legal under village law? That's what I don't understand. It's kind of unclear about... So people in Pakistan do whatever they want, honor killings and all that kind of stuff. They do whatever they want because they can, most of them govern themselves. Depends on where they're jurors and everything else. The details of that.

I mean, if it was the government wants to, I'm sure the government could have arrested if everyone who was involved had they known, but these people all cover for each other. I see. So it's still illegal honor killings and all this bar. is illegal in Pakistan. It's illegal, but they still do them. Honor killings are illegal here, but it happens all around us here in America.

I know that in Texas, a 400-acre Muslim facility just got approved, just got approved. And what's going to happen on that place? No one that's non-Muslim can go there. They're going to do honor killings there. They're going to do Sharia law there. And people think, oh, that's not how, yes, it's happening here. And there are places in America already

where they already practiced Shariah law. They don't care about the laws. They only care about their laws. I see. Okay. So, but when your friend killed all the, the rivals, family members, they went to the cops. It got out. I don't, he was arrested.

But it got out. Okay. Yeah. I see. I see. But we never really, like, how did he kill 11 people? He ambushed him. Shot him?

Yeah. Fuck. It's gangster shit. I would have done the same shit. I would have done it. I think any man would have. Yeah. To have his mother and his sister killed like that?

He would become my best friend on death row. And when I would later get off a death row, because he had influence, he did have influence because he had money. He would pay to have me come back as under the guy. When I was sentenced, I was a teacher. So you get a job in jail when you have a, you can be able to shock, you can be a number dart. I was a teacher.

And I was teaching people Urdu, teaching people French. I was teaching people how to type on the computer, just English in general. I was teaching a lot of people how to read their own language. And, but because he was, you know, because he had, you know, power, he would get me to come by once a week just to hang out, play chess under the guys that I was teaching him. Well, then one day, I got called over to his cell, and it was just random, like, early in the morning, and he had this big display of food for us. It was great. It was like chicken and sweet dishes and Pepsi and glob jamas, which are, like, sweet little donuts or whatever.

It was just so random. It wasn't a holiday. And there were holidays. There'd be all kinds of treats and stuff like that. But it wasn't a holiday. And nothing was spicy, which is very rare. He knew I hated spicy food. So it was like a mill for me.

And that day we played poker. Played chess. Talked about life, stupid shit. We watched TV. We hung out. Just hung out in his cell the whole fucking day. And then when I got called back to my cell, I said, I'll see you next week.

He said, inshallah. Inshallah is a common saying. And Urdu, it means. He's God willing. God willing. And he was hung the next day. So he had shared his last meal with me. I had it prepared so that I'd enjoy it.

And he didn't tell me. Are you not able to pay your way out of death row? You say he was a man of means, but apparently... I was... Well, yeah, but everyone's got their own problems, you know? No, but I mean, like, you're clearly... There's so much corruption in the Pakistan. legal system, people are able, drug traffickers are able to pay their way out, but are murderers

not able to... He was sentenced. So I was under trial, and I should never have been to death road because I was under trial, but the superintendent at the time figured that was the safest place for me, because it's the most guarded place. They couldn't put me in the barracks. I understand that. I'm asking for his sake, was he not able to pay the judge to get his sentence reduced? It's never it's up to the judge. It's up to the family members. That's Shariah Law. So the family members clearly didn't forgive him. So that's and that's codified into law in Pakistan. The family, if you're found guilty of murder, the family gets to decide your fate.

Yeah. Because under the laws of Allah, if the family forgives you, then all is forgiven. And they'll release you that day. I had seen people who were about to be hung have the news taken off their head because they pleaded so much with the people. But the truth is it's because the people wanted to see them suffer for as long as possible, full well knowing that they were. going to make a deal or that they had already accepted a deal to release the person. Wow. So they take it off.

He goes, all right, I forgive him. Fine. You watched that happen? Yeah. Yeah. I watched the put the mask on the dude. And he was like crying and screaming. And then all of a sudden they just took it off.

And then I was like, what happened? Okay, forgive him. Are the family members in the prison watching it? Yeah, they're down there in front row, seating. Okay, yeah. Describe an execution. Do the inmates go watch it, too? No.

How are you seeing this? Because I was in the hospital on the second floor, which you can see over the wall. Oh. So if you happen to be, if you happen to be at the hospital, you can watch from the second floor because it's tall enough to see over the wall. Wow. Yeah, but when you're on death row, too, you got a front row seat through the grates, even though it's like all chicken wire. Yeah. So you're still seeing it, even though it's just chicken wire.

And you saw people being hung before, like actually hanging from a noose? Well, never before I went to jail. Yeah. I know, yeah. Wow, it's like it's America in 1870. It's like a Wild West. Oh, no, it's barbaric over there for sure. That's just the way it is. That's just the way it is in Pakistan. They would put all the seats down in front of them. It was a platform and there was a hanging tower and a roof over the hanging tower. And it wasn't rickety either. It's not like he would see in the Wild West. It was like professionally built like it was built with a little effort.

Man, that's heavy. How often are they put people to death in that prison? Depended. It could be every week. A month? No, no. It would be, it'd just be sporadic. It'd be sporadic, you know, when people were getting it. Because it wasn't every week, but because the whole prison goes into lockdown, too, when they would do hangings in case something went off. They don't want any chance or nothing, so they would keep everyone locked up the entire day

when they did it. There'd be times when it didn't happen for weeks, but then, yeah, And you'd get like a lock up every other day. Wow. That's fascinating. It's terrible, but it's fascinating. There's also a courthouse inside the prison for the really, like, dangerous prisoners. People that they knew had family had powerful places, so they don't want to chance them being hijacked or rescued or whatever.

So they would have to bring the judges into the jail. There was someone somehow got a gun into the jail, and it took like 16 judges hostage, because they would bring a bunch of judges to the courts to do all the cases that together, because this wasn't that often. And we were in lockdown for three days while the Pakistani commander showed up and everything else. Holy shit. All the judges were killed, and all the guys who were involved in it were killed, too. Being once you're a prisoner, your allies change quite a bit.

So rather than being like, oh, that sucks to me. the judges. We were like, fuck those judges because they're all corrupt. So we don't feel bad for them at all. You start to like root for the prisoners. Yeah. Wow. Who took them hostage? Fucking prisoners took them hostage. But who were they? Do you know? No, no details. I don't remember. This is 25 years ago. Oh, wow, wow. I mean, there's

crazy shit happening in that jail all the time. So they sent the SWAT team, the commandos in and they had firefights. Yeah. Holy shit. Did you hear the gunshots? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And they would lock the rest of the prison down when shit like that would go down. And so, like for three days, we didn't get loud out of cells or nothing.

And then when there would be riots, though, all the guards would have a protocol where they all escape back to the front of the prison to restock and re-armor up. And the armor that they would put on would look like the armor from the movie No Escape, which is like bamboo armor. You know, they had the bamboo sticks and like all the bamboo like plates and everything else. And they had a helmet that would fit them. But it was just really barbaric. And then they would go in and start beating people or how do they get that?

the riot to squash. Did they have tear gas? They did. They had tear gas. They would go in. They would just beat the shit out. People just sheer numbers. They would march like, like, if you're watching not Braveheart, but like Troy, you know,

when those guys entered the beach, they would like, at the beginning of Troy, they would be side to side and go together with their shields and their helmets and their batons. Yeah. And they've just marched down the lane, beat the crap out of everyone once people were throwing shit. During the real, some of the riots. It's like when I got established at the prison, I would go to the front of the prison where there was the fountain, especially if it was during summer. And I'd just lay in the fountain. And then like other people who didn't want anything to do with the riots and go in and like put their feet in there and I'd have like sunscreen on my nose. And I would root for whoever was winning.

If the guards were winning, I'd root for them. And if the prisoners were winning, I'd root for them. And it was just, there was this, no, there was this guard named Akibila. He had this big fat guard and he had this really long mustache that he would twirl up. That was his thing. And we had her, we had our little fun relationship where I would see us. I hate Nikibula, he would be like, and I'd be like, yeah, just over the top reaction. That was his third thing.

It was just stupid, right? So I see Nikivila over there, just beating the crap out of someone when he's a big man, like a real big round man, you know? And I'm like, Nickybula, he looks over at me and goes, and I'm like, yeah. He goes back to beating the dude. It's fucking hysterical. Damn. The first year sucked for me and Joe, but the second two years was fun.

I had my own, like, I was, I had respect. I learned the language that the guards were leaving me alone. They were all working for me. The prisoners respect me. People stopped trying to kill me all the fucking time. Well, did you ever have to participate in a riot? I didn't know. I never had to.

Did you? Well, no, why? I was going to ask you that. Like, what are riots over? Do people get killed? Like riots in prison are? People get killed all the time. And riots, they start fires.

They burn all their shit. They try to settle old scores. That's when I would try to go back to the hijackers to, like, like so we can like watch each other's back. So I was trying to get over to one cell. And during one of the riots, like someone tried to firebomb myself one time, but there's two doors.

There's one inside and there's one outside. And there's this little area like an atrium that they could lock out. Like some prisoners, that's a privilege. They'll like open this door and lock this door. And come out here, you get another five square feet of exercise room.

Someone firebombed my cell one time. That's why I was like after that. I don't want to be a sitting duck here because the guards are gone. No one's here to try to, stop anything it's shit goes down. And that's why I would always try to find the hijackers and hunker down with them until things calmed down. Yeah. And during one of the riots, I had to kill three men. That's okay. Do you have a knife on you? No, just my hands. Just my fucking hands.

Had you already killed that first guy that had attacked you at the point? Okay. What happened? It was like everyone against everyone. And then it was a, there was a hit on me. I had a bunch of knives in me. Had the guy underneath me and killed him. Hijacker threw one of the other guys off of me. You killed him like you smashed him in the face or you stomped on his neck? No, no, no, no. I snapped his neck. And the other guy behind me while the hijackers had surrounded me.

And what kind of knives? I mean, like, you know, an American prison shank is... Now, these guys, like, anything that's metal can be a knife. They like to get cigarette lighters and melt the plastic. around metal. And then, because that was the handle. And then they would sharpen anything, anything that's metal. Right.

So nails obviously can be used. You can buy real knives in jail from the canteen. Like, I would buy real knives from the canteen, but I use it to cut potatoes and tomatoes and all that. Okay. So you could get a knife that could kill somebody. You can get anything into that jail. You can get weapons.

The guy got a gun into the fucking prison. If I wanted to, I could have easily gotten a gun into that jail. I don't doubt that whatsoever. You can get, when I started learning how to work the system, the things that I would get into prison were VCDs, video CDs, food, cell phones, books, things to help your time go by. I had a PlayStation 2 in my cell. By the time I left that prison, it was like my cell was a dorm room.

I never dealt with drugs, alcohol, or women, or weapons. I dealt with things to help my time go by. like I would get garden tools because I was always working on my my garden. I would get plants and I would I grew a lawn. I would, you know, made my ugly yard look pretty and people enjoyed it. Was your mom and your mom still sending you money? That's how you're getting. Yeah.

Well, at first, she was sending me money and I would get it smuggled in through a religious teacher because I couldn't do through the Ovzell anymore. That's why I didn't like him anymore because the embassy before I was convicted would have to come at least once a month once every other week. And then out of nowhere, they just kind of stopped showing up. It didn't make sense. It was just sort of sporadic. And I was like, why have you guys not been showing up?

And it was because when the embassy was busy, they would just send Alvzal by himself. So instead of coming to the prison with my money by himself, he would go do whatever and keep the money. So he stopped bringing my money unless he was with a consular, an American consular, then he would show up and give me my money. I found that I figured this out later because it was like I felt like a neighbor's dog who wasn't getting fed And when I figured this out I started getting money in because of the hijackers the hijackers had a in and that was through a religious teacher and so if the religious teacher would bring whatever amount I want and then he would keep 500 rupees himself which is 10 bucks that's a lot of money for right and you smuggle the money in because it's not electronic like in America this is dude this is it's Pakistan so it's not like you You got some shit in an escrow account like you do in America. I was, no, I'm on with Western Union it. Right.

To him, he had to go wait in line and then come and bring it in. Now, if he had fucked me over, then we would let the other prisoners know, so he had a good hustle. So he was doing it not just for me and the hijacker. He's doing it for however many. They don't search the religious teachers. They got a lot of respect. Right. It's a perfect cover.

Very good. He had a good hustle. Right. That guy was making crazy money, plus 500 rupees, you know, every month is great money. Right. So I would get $400 a month. And like I said, if you can get $50 into that jail a month, you can live like a king.

$400, I was making deals happen all the time. I was the first person that I know of to get a cell phone into that prison because a cell phone cost $12,000, roughly $200. And there was no guarantee that it was going to work, you know, because the reception and all that stuff isn't the way it used to be, or isn't the way it is now. Back then, it was a real touch and go, you know, Russian roulette, whether it was going to work or not.

So it was a $12,000 rupee gamble. It's fucking a lot of money. So I got, I was the first time to get a cell phone. And once I got a cell phone under that jail, I would rent the cell phone out to other people. So now I had money coming in. And then people started realizing that, okay, well, I was using the hijackers to get the stuff in. Because I didn't trust the guards yet, you know, because the guards were notorious for doing something for you. And then going and get money back for ratting you out for the stuff that they brought you.

But the hijackers have been in that prison. since 86, so they had respect. They grew up with these guards. The guards would come and eat with them, like breakfast, lunch, and dinner. So I would use the hijackers' relationships to get things in, and it was the cell phone. And then once that started happening,

we were getting cell phones in for everyone else in the jail. And we were making crazy money there. And I started hosting poker tournaments in prison because of what Marad had taught me. And then I got it to where there was like a couple mats, and then I'd get all the cards and the chips, I was the tournament director, and then we had like a couple dozen mats, and all the prisoners were coming to set two classes, sitting on my lawn and my, my,

my garden that I'd been out there, and I was running tournaments. One dude got bluffed really bad and stabbed somebody at the tournament, and so the guards beat his ass. He killed the guy at my tournament. And then, I don't remember how long later, but he tried to buy back into a tournament. Man, get the fuck out of here, dude. You're not allowed to play. I swear I won't stab anyone ever again.

Yeah, you're not, because you're not playing. And I was, it was hysterical because of me banning this guy from the tournament, everyone else was like on their best fucking behavior because this is like to keep the, you know, this is the way they did to kill time and whatnot. And so I was a tournament director in jail. Wow. It was, there's so much crazy shit happened in prison. Like it wasn't, it was, it was nuts. And it depended, we had so many superintendents come in that prison that when a new superintendent would come into the jail, they would like offer like some new thing, like some new idea. one tournament got the one superintendent got the idea that we should have a boxing tournament

and uh maraud and i had just gotten in a lot of trouble for beating the crap out of these rapists who had gone come into prison and they were they thought they were celebrities it was the guys who remember i told you about the 12 year old kid and then 29 year old woman so four of the five guys they had caught and brought into jail who were part of that and they thought they were celebrities because they were in the newspaper and everything else. And they were raping the 12-year-old boy. And the 18-year-old sister. Right.

Right. Because he was with somebody from a higher class. Correct. So the only reason that this got a bunch of attention was because that woman somehow got the attention of a humanitarian group and they put a lot of influence on the government to do something about it. Otherwise, they normally want to do anything. Right.

So these guys were in jail thinking they're celebrities because in the newspaper and these are just uneducated people from like little. outskirts and the little enclaves, you know? Well, Maraud, absolutely hated rapist. He's like, I want to fucking kill these guys. I'm like, yeah, let's do. I'm thinking we're going to beat their ass. That's it. You know, in jail, you want

to hurt people who do shit like this and people who hurt children or women. It's just the way it is. It's in prison all over the place. Yeah, but that's like the culture. It is. So, so why do you have the right, well, they have the right to like treat that as it's like something bad when it's so entrenched. It's not my culture. It's not Maraud's culture. Or not,

Avzal's culture, Fahad's culture. And so he invited these dudes over for lunch. Gar brought him in for lunch. And then I was like, something we're going to beat these guys' ass. He locks the cell, comes over, and they were sitting around on the floor. He just sitting on the floor

when you were about to eat the rotis and everything else. And he took a skillet that had all this grease in it, and he poured it on the head of one of the dudes. Dude's face melted. It looked like a fucking candle. I'm thinking, oh, my God, he's really trying to kill the dudes. And then he smashed the other dude with the skillet.

And I'm like, shit, well, so we're beating these guys ass and everything else in the cell. Guard's like, yeah, I don't know, how about that? You know, because the guards realize what's going on. Well, Fahad, just, he didn't stop until he was done. He didn't, we didn't kill none of these guys. We just beat the fucking crap out of him and melted that dude's face. Fahad's like, comes out, unlocks it. We go.

We get to the fucking Kassari. You know, we're getting manhandle, but we're not getting beat. Because Fahad, I'm with Fahad. Fahad had already planned us to be in Kassari, so he had already bribed the guard. and everything else. So they had candles waiting for us. We didn't get tortured that week. And we spent five days. Yeah, we spent five days in Kasori for that. But we weren't tortured because Fahad had already set it all up. And we had food and candles and books. So a new superintendent came in and wanted to do a boxing tournament. And because of what Fahad and I

did, someone put us on the cards, you know, because they were only allowing 128 prisoners to be on it. It was supposed to be several days. I think it was seven days. And it was going to be two rounds, two minute tournaments. That was it. And so everyone wanted the American on it. They wanted Fahad on it. Fahat's like, I'm not fucking doing that shit. Fahah didn't do it, even though they put him on the car. And it was Pakistani judges.

So the first day, there was these three Nigerian dudes, and one Nigerian dudes, one of the Nigerian dude's nickname was Afro. It looked like a little Mike Tyson. He was like five foot eight, but he had these huge bowling ball arms. And he was just massive bodybuilder and this one tall Nigerian guy who had he could fight, he could box. And so when this dude was in the ring,

he was just putting it on a show, pop, pop, pop, pop, dancing around, pop, pop, pop, pop, just picking his shots on the guy. You know, he was doing like that pop-eye thing. And like, it was hysterical. I swear, I don't even think he got hit, not once. And then when the two rounds, two minutes were up, the Pakistani that was in the ring with them

who got the shit beat out of him got the win. And then me and there, The whole crowd was like, what the? Like, there were some questionable shit happening before that. But that was where it became ridiculously obvious that if you were Pakistani and you lasted two rounds, two minutes against the foreigner, you were being advanced. So I'm sitting with Afro and I'm like, I think we got to knock our opponents out. He goes, think you're right, America. Day two, strategy completely changed.

Pakistanis are running around the ring just trying to survive. Foreigners are trying to go after them. Right. there was this Afghani guy I nicknamed him M.B. for masturbated because he was always borrowing these people magazines and like Time magazines

that the embassy would give me if you see a little ankle or a little wrist that's porn, that's hardcore porn in Pakistan. So his name was I think I want to say it was Thespula or something. He was an Afghan but he was a pretty good fighter. And I would call him M.B. Now M.B. He was like the

Afghan people's champion. He was fucking good. The Pakistan guys had They had a good fighter on their side. He was pretty fucking good, this guy. I can't remember his name. But he got put in Afro's bracket, and I was thankful for that. I got, like, the Pakistani started to fall off pretty quick. I mean, they advanced hard, but they started to fall off pretty quick.

So we're in the semis, and I get put up against MB. And MB was good, but I ended up knocking him out, and he didn't want it anymore. Well, Afro got put up against the Pakistan. People's Champion. And this dude was milking the count. Like every time he got knocked down, he'd get up real slow. And the ref was a little Pakistani old man. Could have been in his 50s, but he looked like he was like 80 because they age very poorly over there.

And he'd be like, heck, dull. And Afro's like, fucking count faster, you know? So this dude's using the ropes. And then Afra comes over and just starts pounding the crap. Afro's trying to hold the dude up while he's beating him up. The guy would go back to the ground. The slow count. guy makes it through the round.

Then Afro just beat the fuck out of this dude. Like beat the crap out of him, but the guy makes it through the second round. Afro straight walks over to the judges. If I lose, I kill you. And then he walks over, it just looks at the little, a little ref. And I, like, we are all holding our breath,

watching, waiting to happen. Afro's, we just see him up there. Afro just looking at the ref. Second the ref went to have raised, the, Afro already sent the rest. after the rings. It looked like a Mike Tyson moment. The guards are in there.

Afro's fighting all the fucking courts. He's just going off on everybody. The whole crowd is loving it. The people are sitting on the roads on all the mosque and everything. Or all the barracks around the mosque. I'm sure they're betting too. 100%. Oh, yeah.

So the next day, I'm fighting the dude that Afro just completely tenderized. That dude doesn't even make it past the first round because he's so fucked up from Afro. Yeah. Do you knock him out? Oh, yeah. God was fucking wrecked. So then I see Afro

finally out of Cassari however long late I'm like, hey Afro, thanks for the assist. He's like, fuck you, America. This is so fucking terrible. Afro would have 100% won it if he'd been in my rank. So who won the whole thing? Me? You won the whole tournament?

Won the whole tournament. It was because of Afro fucking taking out the other dude. I got putting an easier bracket. This is such a movie. crazy. Like I said, the first, like I said, the first years sucked. The second two years were great.

So let me talk about your case. So your, like you said at the beginning, it would have been easier if you were guilty. Yeah. Because you could have got the rings of bribery and corruption. You could have got that in motion early. If I was guilty, it would have worked 100% of my favor. I wouldn't have cared if I was guilty. I would have been like, I did a bad thing.

You would have pled guilty, paid the judge, paid the prosecutor. I would have gone home. would have gone home in like a year and four months. So explain that, like, how much does it cost? How much would that process of cost? Well, because they wanted a lot. Originally, the judge wanted $125,000. Right.

Because they were like, delaying my case, delaying my case. And after 11.5 months, they finally came down with, all right, $1,000, which was typical for a foreigner. It's less for, it's less for anyone else. He's going to give me two years. I'd already been there almost a year. And with good behaviors and remissions and some more bribes, I'll get out in like four months.

So two years isn't two years. Two years is like really a year and four months. Right. I got to pay the prosecutor. are off a couple hundred bucks, which is a couple thousand rupees. It's nothing. But I have to plead guilty. And I refuse to plead guilty for a crime and I didn't commit.

That's why the embassy is like, Eric, what do you care? What's worth more to you? You're prior to your freedom. And the guy's like, it's Pakistan. Like the embassy was mad at me for refusing to plead guilty. And they're calling me a punk. So had I been guilty, it would have been so much easier because I wouldn't have lost everything.

And people also to this day who still doubt me. But even though it's been over 20 years since I've been out of jail and I've never been in trouble again, there's still people out there who's like, oh, I don't know. I think you did it. Because it's easier to assume. that I deserved all the bad shit that happened to me if I deserved it rather than actually agreeing, knowing that I'm innocent. It's just easier to stomach, knowing that someone goes through something as bad as I went through had I deserved it and not deserved it.

Of course. Of course. So the death row part, the death penalty, that really was never a real threat. No, it's a threat. It depends on the mood of the judge. Right. But if he's been bribed already, though, then. Which, well, we didn't bribe him, though. That's the bribe he wanted. He wanted $1,000. But I was fine with paying him $1,000 for a two-year prison sentence, but I wasn't okay with pleading guilty. So the bribe wasn't going to happen unless I pled guilty.

I got you, you were originally facing the death penalty. Yes. And that got knocked down. Why? If you refused to plead guilty. No, it didn't get, it's because it's up to the judge. It's up to the discretion of the judge. Now, it's a big window.

It's a one-year. sentence or death sentence. It's up to the judge. It's up to the corruption. That's why the lower courts are so corrupt. The higher courts are where the real cases land, but they just take forever to get to that. So did yours ever get to the high court? Yes.

Remember I said that I went, that lawyer flew back from Lahore to, Raoul, to Islamabad, and with said my client's happy with a seven-year three-month prison sentence, I withdraw my pill. At the time, that cost me my one chance at a high court. That was because I had my mom involved. When I wrote to the embassy, I said, hey, take my mom off anything. She's not allowed to know anything that's happening to me anymore. So that lawyer that my mom had gotten, flew back from Lahore back to Islamabad,

withdrew my pill, which cost me my one chance in high court. Now, because I'm under trial, the embassy isn't going to go out of the way to help me get a lawyer because you're already sentenced. They only have to do it if you're pretrial, but now once you're a convict, they're not going to do it. So I'm trying to get another lawyer, but I'm also taking correspondence courses through the AIOU, the Alama Iqbal Open University, which is, it's a school there to become a lawyer. And I'm doing this all in Urdu, but you can do everything with bribes. Like literally, I was doing open book test with the council right here,

and I just have to pay him some money to look the other way while I'm doing everything, you know, copying for the test. And all the other Pakistanis that were trying the test, too, are copying off of me. I pass, I become a lawyer. So I'm a lawyer in Pakistan. And while I'm working on my case, I'm also working in other foreigners cases and just putting paperwork forward. granted, I wish we had something called chat GPT back in the day.

That would have made life so much easier. But I'm literally going on old case law and applying it to people. And it's just really just being able to bullshit a scenario. Like I got caught with this much. And so I start comparing like if you got caught with 5KG, I would go and find all the other people who were sentenced with 5KG for the lowest amount of times. So I would say this person, this person, this person, this person were convicted or had 5KG of this exact substance.

And they only got served, you know, two years, three years. years so that, so they can go and try to get their sentences reduced to that much. So rather than, I'm not, I'm innocent for them because most of these people weren't innocent. In fact, I don't think any of them were. I dated a girl out who had a passport violation because she had a Thai passport, but also an American passport. That would help me. And the reason that would help me is because she had an American passport, the American embassy had to come and visit her. So they figured they'd knock out two birds with one stone.

This is all in my book, by the way. My book's called Three Years in Pakistan, which it's on Amazon. but it's also an audiobook format on most audio book platforms. I narrate my own story because my friends can't read. And literally, like, my friends would be like, I'd be like, hey, after six months, what did you guys think of the book? I'm like, oh, man, some big words in there.

On page three, fucking douchebags. That's why I did an audiobook. But anyways, this Thai woman had a dual passport, but she was hysterical. She was in her 60s. And the embassy would come and see her and knock out two birds and see me. Well, the funny thing is when the embassy was there,

they gave her a list. They did the same shit with me when I first got there. That girl, Christy's long gone. She was only there a couple months, and she got transferred to another embassy. So I was constantly seeing new consular. Well, the list that they gave this girl had names of a bunch of different lawyers. They're not giving her any information whatsoever. Like, you just got to pick a lawyer off this list.

She doesn't know what this fucking list is. Now I've been in this jail now almost two years. I'm like, let me see that list. And I'm looking at the list as they brought me up because we're sitting in a circle with them. They're telling me don't meddle. And I'm like, this guy sucks. This guy sucks. this dude's dead, you know.

So I'm making fun of the embassy in front of this woman. Then they tell me to shut up. I'm meddling, to go out because they don't want us to be seen together now because I'm meddling. So I'm like, fuck it. I'm going to go. And as I'm leaving, the girls over here like, tell me what to do. And I'm like, all right, I come back and I give her a name of a lawyer.

I said, call this lawyer here. When he gets here, make sure you call me up and I'll come over and help out, all right? But make sure you call me up to the front. Now, the lawyer that I had recommended to her was recommended to me. made by the hijackers. This particular lawyer had worked on the hijackers case the entire time. And even though they were responsible for 23 deaths, he got all their sentences instead of concurrent to be served at the same time.

So all cases, instead of it being like one after another, after another, were put on top of each other. So life in prison is actually 25 years. So if you serve 25 years, you're out. So they were serving their 25 years. and their lawyer had only charged them $400 for those cases. Total. So one day that by this time I'd become really good friends with like all the superintendents

and this one superintendent who was in charge of the foreigners, his name was Mr. I. U. Mr. I. U. was a character, okay? He could speak English, but he didn't really understand it. So he loved talking to me because he wanted to learn slang and everything else. Let's rule, let's bounce, you know. And I was learning or due, so I was able to communicate with them a lot better. And he just liked hearing all my stories.

he liked, he had a crush on this tie woman, even though she was in her 60s, he was like in his late 40s, early 50s. So he didn't care. He was a dog. And he wanted me up there to, you know, kind of like be a wingman and everything and talk him up. So I go to his cell, or not his cell, his office, which is up at the front of the prison, and which I'd been up to many times just because of the conversations and whatnot.

And there's this guy there just talking and we're speaking or doing everything else. And he's dressed up nice. He's in a suit. And out of nowhere, he assumes that I'm like from Amnesty International, like an outside, because I'm dressed fine, I'm healthy, I'm at this time, and I don't act like a prisoner. And just by talking, like after like a couple minutes, we finally realized, wait a minute, you're the lawyer that, oh my God, this was the lawyer that I had told her to call up and make sure that I was called up too. Now, she didn't call me up, but I, you called me up because IU wanted me to be a wingman for him when he talked to that girl.

and just by serendipity, I'm now talking to the lawyer that I needed to help me with my appeals. Even though I was doing all my own stuff, like I didn't need him to argue my stuff. I just needed him to put my papers across the right table so that I could come and argue my own case. So this is what he goes, all right, what's my fee? I said, I'll pay $300 up front, $100 when the case is done because you don't ever put all your money up front. Otherwise, they're just going to take off or try to get more money. He said, deal, we shook on it. And now I'm stoked because like this, the girl comes up, I talk up by you, I tell her you're in good hands.

Now this guy's going to represent this girl's case. We talked about her case because how it was a passport violation and what to do. And your plan is for your case. Yeah. I don't care about the Thai woman. Your case is you want to go to trial. Of course. You want to go.

Do they have jury trials or just arguing to the judge? No. Well, first off, I didn't want to go to trial yet because now that one lawyer had withdrew my. a pill. Right. So my high court case was completely killed supposedly, but I wanted to go back to high court and I wanted to say, hey, I never gave this guy permission to withdraw my pill. So I told this guy, this is what I need. I need to make sure that I get another chance at high court to represent myself to explain exactly what happened, how this guy tried to extort money out of my mother. He says, all right, well, I need to get paid first. All right, cool. So this is,

this is four to seven months, man, I had to go look back at my book. Everything was more fresh there. Because my, so four months after I was sentenced, that guy withdrew my pill. And now a couple months have gone by and I've seen this other guy. So much time has gone by. So I think this is around seven months. And this guy's like, all right, I'll start tomorrow. I'll file the papers. But you, I said, cool, go to the embassy and ask for the money. I want them to pay 18,000. And I write to the embassy and I tell him this. I want to pay this guy 18,000. Okay, sure, no problem. Now I never see him again. Not in the prison. Or I see him when I go to court. I never see him in the prison. but I would never hear anything that happened.

I was like, what's going on? Why is nothing happening? Embassy kept coming back all the time to visit with the Thai girl. They weren't coming because she's under trial. They didn't have to come back and see me. She's hysterical. She needs water. She needs medicines.

And they're constantly coming back to see here because she's not doing well in prison whatsoever. And I keep asking, what's going on with my case? Why is this guy not done anything? After several months, and I remember, it was like four months. I'm like, Oazzo, what is going on with my case, man? This guy said that he was going to put my, he goes, your lawyer hasn't done anything. I go, what do you mean? He hasn't done anything?

he was going to go put the applications in the next day. You know, that was forever ago. He goes, well, he hasn't been paid yet. I go, Al-Zo, what do you mean? He hasn't been paid yet. He goes, your accounts have been empty. Now, Azzell could have told me this for months, had my accounts been empty. My accounts weren't empty.

Avzell had emptied my accounts. All the money that was coming in from my mom, then my mom stopped because Avzell had been keeping all my money. So that's why she started sending the money to me through the religious teacher. Avzal had emptied my accounts, but also Avzal wanted to keep me in jail. This is the Pakistani interpreter. This is the guy who's our embassy

is put in charge of me and whoever else might happen to be American in this situation. Robin, you blind. Because he's a fucking Pakistani. And I knew that he didn't fucking me this whole time. So I was pissed when I did. I threw the chair across the room.

I was cussing Avzal out. Guards like, oh, I don't relax, you know. I didn't go to my cell. I went straight to the one cell to have lunch with the, with the hijackers, Khalil. Halil had the thickest accent of all the hijackers.

When I told him what happened, he goes, I thought the American embassy was supposed to help you. This motherfucker. Fahad's like, how much money do you have? I said, I have like $8,000. $8,000 is a lot of money in jail. But I need $18,000. The hijackers took up a collection on my part

from prisoners and everything else. and they got the other 10,000 rupees. And then another prisoner that wasn't too set with me, who was there for a knap case, like corruption, we gave him 18,000 rupees because he was going to court. He could smuggle the money out. Obviously with, if this doesn't make it to where he needs to go, you're a dead man.

You have to give those threats, unfortunately. You don't want to have to do it. He's like, shut up, I understand. That night, that very next day, the guy goes out. The very next day after lockup, that guy's Mashakati comes over and brings me a letter. It was from my lawyer. He says, I got the money.

I'll proceed this week. He immediately went into the high court and got me a day to go there and appeal, the withdrawal of my pill. And when that date was set, I showed up, and that dude from Lahore flew in to represent himself. And when I told the judges exactly what it had happened, it was so comical what was happening because when people swear on the Quran, they actually tell the truth in Pakistan.

man. Because this guy kind of lied the whole time. They were like, how much did you were asking you? Like, you can ask for whatever. I was like, this guy was trying to siphany money off my mom. He'd already gotten a couple thousand. He wanted $25,000 more. The judges were laughing. One judge was like, he's like, when he's trying to retire off this guy? And the other judges, like, his whole family was trying to retire off.

So they're laughing. I'm over here standing with chains on laughing too because it's comical, but it's still my life. This guy's like, I can charge whatever I want. And so I asked the question, what's the most you've ever made on any case? And this guy says, one lack. One lack was $100,000 less than $2,000. I said, and what kind of case was that? It was a death, a Marnet case, which means that he had represented someone who had committed murder.

The most, this dude admitted, the most he had ever made was less than $2,000. But here he was over here admitting that he was charging me $25,000 and that I never gave him permission to withdraw my pills. I never gave him permission to withdraw my pill. He was taking advantage of my scenario. He was taking advantage of my mother. He had already gotten paid and he wanted more money to continue on with my case. So he withdrew my pill, cost me my one chance in high court. I just won a fighting chance.

And his judges gave me another day. I was the only person at the time that I'd heard of that had ever been given a second chance at high court. Unfortunately, my paper went to the bottom of the pile. But at least it was in the pile. So now you've got to wait. Correct. Okay. And it would be almost, it would be December, December 16th, 2004, when I would get my second chance at the high court.

2004. 2004, yes. Yes, thank you. Okay, so now you're in prison at this point, oh my gosh, almost three years. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Wow.

And so by this time, I'd already organized soccer matches against the guards. I'd won the boxing tournament. I'd run poker games in jail. I'd gotten... Killed four men. Yep. And I had all the superintendents for my friends. I was hosting dinner parties for the future president and the future prime minister of Pakistan.

They were in the prison? Yeah. Yeah. As political prisoners? Yep. Holy shit. Yeah. Now, I was watching movies in jail.

I was playing video games. I was writing... Hustling cell phones? That's right. I was having a good life. So you had a ton of cash at that point. You were... Oh, yeah.

If you needed protection in jail, you came to me. If you needed something in that prison, you came to me. Where would you keep all that money? Did you... Well, I know. My cell was off limits now. So what changed everything? And then I'll tell this last story.

and then you guys got to watch the documentaries of the book. What changed everything was just after I've been sentenced the first time. There was this asshole guard named Goldleaf. That was his nickname. Goldleaf was the name of an expensive brand of cigarettes in Pakistan. It was roughly 40 rupees for one pack of cigarettes. Granted at the time, a guard's only making 100 rupees a day, you know. So 40% of your salary for a pack of cigarettes is unheard of.

Now, a regular pack of cigarettes is six, seven rupees, you know. But gold leaf cigarettes were fancy cigarettes. And this guy, Goldleaf, was nicknamed that because he was famous for having prisoners beat until they agreed to buy on Goldleaf cigarettes. That was just his preference of cigarette. But he was even more famous for having had hundreds of prisoners beat to death who either refused to buy on these cigarettes or just couldn't afford to. He never did the work himself. And he tried to. He was such a skinny old man, but he would have the number dards and the other guards do the work.

And he would just, I watched this man piss on a guy who was unconscious and then later died. He got put in charge of my cell block. I was dealing with these terrible ear rakes. Like I was just so bad. I couldn't even concentrate. All I did was workout. You can't read. You just felt like you just walk back and forth and just hope that you get tired to go.

Earaches are some of the worst things you can have. And the reason I had earaches is because of monsoon season sleeping in the water and the bad conditions. And my ear drums are being popped by the Pakistani doctors who came trying to clean them out. They popped both my air drums. I got very weak ear drums now. And I get earaches all the time. But in jail, man, whenever I thought of suicide, it was because of my ear aches. And he sees me working out.

He's talking all this shit. I'm ignoring him, you know, but I can understand the language now. He's just talking all this crap. We've got war drums happening to Iraq. So this is early 2003. Yeah, early 2003 when this shit's happening. And he goes, calls all Americans dogs. And then he says, give me 500 rupees.

And I'm like, hey, we may all be dogs, but you're a little bitch. And I'm saying this in our due. And this guy goes and fumbles with that. I should have kept my mouth shut. Dude fumbles with his keys, comes in the cell to come and hit me with the Tom, but I didn't let him do that. I caught him. I started punching him with his own hand,

and then I just lost it. It lost my cool. And I'm beating the crap out of goalie for myself. Two other guards come in to try to help them. They don't have a chance. One of them gets away, and I'm like, fuck. You could fuck with the guards, but don't fuck with goalies. I drag these guards out of my cell.

I take the lock from my inner cell, and I lock my outer gate, you know? All the locks are different, and keys are different. I go in my room that do two things. Prepare and pray. Okay, I go in my cell, and I start putting on all my sweaters and everything else. I put on my beanie.

I'm putting tissue paper up on my gums. I'm thinking like, holy shit, I'm actually going to be the hurricane. Denzel Washington. This sucks. And I figured that today I was going to die. You know, my ears, but I'm okay with it because my ears are so bad. I'm like, I don't want to kill myself. I want to make these guys earn it.

And I'm asking God, I'm like, hey, if you can get me out of this right now, that'd be really cool. But if not, just give me the strength to take as many of these motherfuckers out with me as you can. And I'm thankful this is happening to me, not my brother or someone else that I encouraged this trip to. And when the guards came back, they came back in force. They threw a canister in. I threw canister out. No one wanted to come in that room by themselves because it wasn't going to be fun for them.

I was landing. I was breaking fingers. I was cracking these guys. At one point, I had a helmet on and one of their shields, and I had one of them hostage in my room. Like, I was a motherfucker, but I was having a good time. And when they finally ripped me out of that room, I couldn't even scream or cry.

I was so tired. And they just stomped me forever. And it just went on forever. and they broke all the fingers in my right hand one by one. And they started on my left hand. And I remember thinking, just let it end already. That's all I kept thinking about. Just let it end.

And I finally heard the superintendent. And he was, like, demanding what was going on. And he's speaking in Urdu. And Goldiech says that they found drugs on me that I attacked him. I'm on the floor. I'm like, he's lying. Bojuta. And he comes over, he goes, you could speak Urdu.

I was like, yeah, so they lift me up. And he kind of, like, tells him to relax because they had their hands on me. And I told him what happened. I go, Gold Leaf came to my room. He wanted 500 rupees. I told him to go to hell. He came in my room and attacked me. And he goes, I believe you.

And he turned around and he fired Gold Leaf right there on the spot. And then he asked me, who else had caused me problems? And I pulled out six guards out of that crowd by reading their name tags. All in Urdu. And that day, seven guards got fired. But it wasn't the seven. It was the one. When I woke up in the hospital the next day, there was sweet dishes, there was cards, there was chicken.

The whole prison had heard what had happened. And they were thankful and grateful. because I had gotten rid of a monster that had been terrorizing everyone in that prison. Gold leaf. That's what changed everything. And that was right at the beginning of the second, the end of the end of the first year that I'd done there. So after that, people were given, no one was trying to kill me anymore. People were calling me brother.

People were giving me hugs. It took forever from my right hand to hill. But I learned to do everything with my left hand. And in my book, it's all in there. I know I just gave you the cracker jack version of everything. Well, moving ahead to 2004, where you've won your appeal against this crooked lawyer, and now your case is back in high court. How does that conclude? See, that's where you've got to read the book now.

I know you're going to hate that. I just can't let my driver hang any longer, unfortunately. But what happens is I was able to successfully prove myself that they believed that I was innocent. I used everything that they had done by putting all my stuff in that suitcase against them. I said, why would I put a DVD player into my suitcase that's going underneath the plane? The whole point of having that was to watch movies and make a long flight more entertaining. This is before that there was headrest with TVs. I said, why would I put my cell phone in there?

What if somebody calls me? Why would I put my wallet in there? That's my ID. How am I going to get through anything? Obviously, I was set up that suitcase was never mine. It was all the truth. The suitcase wasn't mine. but they didn't need in those specifics that I was there hired to transport that suitcase.

I was always innocent, and they believed that I was innocent. They said, we can't say that we kept an American in jail for three years. It makes us look back because it's all about image to them. So they gave me time served, and I was like, I can handle that. And you walked out? Not that day, no. They had to make their decision. They didn't make their decision there.

They made their decision a week later. You say they. Was it multiple judges? Two. Oh, that's right, because they put two judges to try to keep them from corrupt, getting corruption. Right. And so for a week, I waited for them to make the decision. And the cool thing about it was when the decision finally came, it was December 23, 2004.

It was after lockup. And it was always in the newspaper. The decisions come in the decision is coming soon. Well, one guard came over, say, embassy. And they're there maybe, and they're like, they do what that meant. So the guard started praying for me. And he opened the gate. And then as I walked out, I saw all the other prisoners praying for me.

It was kind of cool. It was like dusk, you know. The sun wasn't out, but you can still see light out. And when I came around the corner outside of two cell, one of the superintendents, a two-star who I was teaching French to, nice guy. We had food and everything else. He had a bunch of number dards with them. And I had fought every single one of those fucking number dards at one point in that prison. And he knew it was my day.

And so he started praying for me. All the number darts were praying for me. As I walked up to the front of the prison, all the gardeners, all the prisoners. Everyone was praying for me to go home. So when I came in that prison, I came in swinging. But when I was leaving that prison, everyone was praying for me. You know, like I didn't change. They all changed.

They saw me as a human. They saw me as a friend. They saw me as a teacher. And when I finally got into the big cell door and I came walking around the corner, I kept thinking to myself, what if? And I was preparing myself for the worst. I was like, if you get, they could have extended it.

And I was thinking like, they're not going to extend it. And maybe they don't get me anything else. But then I was like, what if? And I was always preparing myself. If I have to serve the whole time, I can do it. Well, that's what I want to know is what was your maximum you were facing? He could have changed it. They could have put me back on death row.

Right. I didn't see that happening. though, because I had won these guys over. I had done everything for them. Like, they could have been sadistic or would massacist it or whatever. It was always up to them. It's always up to them. To the judges.

Correct. But you hadn't actually paid them any bribes. Never. Yeah. And you would kind of prove, too, that you were telling the truth with that scummy lawyer. Yeah. Like, you had ingratiated yourself to where they, I think they believed you. I mean, I obviously believed it.

Well, yeah. Well, I didn't get those two same judges for the lawyer because I got two random judges who oversaw my other case when I went back to High Court. It wasn't the same judges. Those same judges allowed me to have a second chance at High Court. Okay. But then I got two new judges. So yeah, there is a slight possibility that they could just throw the book at you. Had you seen any drug dealers be executed or heard of any of them getting executed since you're? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah. But they're like big, big drug dealers. You know, guys are like tons and stuff like that. Pakistanis or foreigners? Afghans, Africans, foreigners, yeah. Wow. And it's heroin mostly coming out of there.

Not always. Hasheesh. Tons of hashish. Wow. Do they have hashish production in Pakistan? Yes. Yes. Opium, hashish, heroin. They got other things, too. And they just weren't able to pay the right people? I don't know everyone else's scenario. I just know my own.

And even then, I forget. But it just sounds like this system is so random. Because, like, as you said at the beginning of the episode, these foreigners, these Nigerians, know how to fleece the system. They go back in multiple times and they'll only do a couple of years. Well, Tupac, who is a South African. Right. I've been there three times.

By the time I was there multiple people, like he was the only one that I saw there three times. Most of the other people have been there twice. Right. You know, because they know how to gain the system. If you're guilty, you want to go to jail in Pakistan. But regardless, I've been out since December 23rd. Yeah, I got out December 23rd, 2004. So they let you out that day after?

No, no, no, no, no. No, they didn't. That was when I got released. Oh, God. And because they had to get my visa, there was a bunch of other things because I'm a foreigner. Had I been a local, I could have gone out that night. I see.

But because I'm a foreigner, you have to still play the game. You've got to get a visa because my visa had expired. It takes some time for that. Then you've got to bribe some other people to get out. I had to bribe some jail officials. I bribed them with, like, video games and some money and other things that I had in my cell. You know, then I went and sold everything in my cell.

I sold my TV to one of the hijackers I gave. I kept my cell phone, but I sold cell phones to other people. I sold my video games to, and the only reason I sold stuff is because I needed money so I could like pay the right people to still get out. Just because you are now allowed to leave, you don't get to leave yet.

You still have to play the game. Even though you were legally supposed to get out, you still have to bribe your way out. Yeah. Because no, I.U. I mean, that's in my book, but I, you would, like, there was a guy there who was only supposed to be there for,

there's a guy there who got out who was supposed to be released, and then he'd go to the front. And then I was like, where's my sub-a-child, which the, you know, means his bribes. He wants his drimana.

And then he's like, what you mean? He's like, hey, the family's right there. I can see him. I want you to go home, but you don't have anything for me? All right. Well, your paperwork hasn't come through yet. You have to go back to your cell. And he would send people back into their cell and tell the family, yeah, guys, sorry, I really wanted to be released, but you know, I don't know how I'm not so but you. Now, there's scumbags over there. Wow. That's why it's so profitable to be in prison, working as like a warden or a guard. It's just the way it is, dude. So you get released December, almost Christmas time. I got released December 23rd. Did you make it home by Christmas? I got strip searched at O'Hare Airport in Chicago Christmas Day because I was the only white person getting off a plane full of Muslims. Yeah. It was hysterical. Dude, talking about the irony.

Reverse. It was reverse racism. Yeah, yeah. But the greatest thing about it was I had sex on the plane from Amsterdam to O'Hare. Get the fuck out of here. Because the girls that sat with me had known all about me. And the girls like, you haven't, you haven't had sex with a. in three years and I was like, no, the woman.

They loved my sense of humor, but they were great. So I was making out with two Pakistani girls on the plane to Manchester. And then one of the girls continued on the flight to O'Hare, because she was studying, I think, in Toronto. And then, yeah, I hooked up with her in the Maha High Club. You smashed in the bathroom? Yeah, well, not in the fucking seat. But yeah, in the bathroom, I joined the Maha High Club. That must have been the quickest nut.

It was awkward. Yeah, for sure. It's not as great as you think it's going to be in a small bathroom. It doesn't sound great. I'm in airport, Marin Airplane bathrooms all the time. They're tiny and disgusting. I was happy regardless. And then that day, Christmas Day, 2004, when I should have been in LAX, I missed my connecting flight.

And the news story kicked me to the back because 300,000 people got killed that day with the Southeast Asia tsunami. I remember that. Yeah. That's crazy. So I got, I was just to be like on Good Morning America the next day and everyone wanted to do my stories. But then I, no one cared because there's, I decided to do it in disaster. So this is the question on everybody's mind is what the fuck happened to Ray, the guy that set you up, whose name isn't even Ray. His name was Razbek Manassi.

So he made a deal. He wasn't the top guy at the totem pole. Okay. Yeah, real quick, because I know. you got to get out of here. The DEA, at what point in your incarceration in Pakistan, did the DEA go arrest Rosman? The number of all six months there in jail. They showed me they had arrested him, so I guess in six months. And they only because of the Swedish girl. And then her story matched mine. He got bail, but my mom's investigator said this is the same guy. And so they re-arrested him,

denied him bail. Well, while he was in jail, he was giving up everyone. His information led to the biggest drug bust in Glendale history. Like 19 Armenian, Armenian, Iranian drug smugglers and people. So they nabbed. They gave up all kinds of people. Because of that, he would only serve four and a half years in jail. His record was expunged. He was never punished for what he did to me because of all the information he gave.

I won a $20.4 million civil suit against him, and every 10 years I have to renew. Unfortunately, his name is like a John Smith in the Armenian community. So finding Erasmic Manassian is not easy. There's so many of them. and I'll keep renewing it in case something happens. He wins a lottery. He buys a bunch of Bitcoin, something, just so he doesn't ever get off.

But every 10 years, I have to renew it. What do you mean renew? Renew that judgment that I have against him. Okay, so they found him and brought him to trial. No, he was in jail when I wanted, he was still in jail for four and a half years. So I won my civil suit judgment against him while he was still in jail. Okay, so you just can't get any money out of him because he hides it.

Because they don't know which one's him. So when I've had investigators trying to find out who's who, they come up with a bunch of Rasmuch Manassians, but they don't know which one is him. So it's like a John Smith. Yeah. Yeah. Fuck. That's so fucked up. Yeah. What would you mean you can't find who the right one is?

I guess they can't force him. But, you know, you can't send sheriffs to like, you know, dig into his records, I guess. So real quick, I end on this. I did find him. It's in my book. I found him on Facebook. He thought he was meeting a girl that was completely. out of his fucking league for a coffee date.

And it beat the shit out of him in our house parking lot in Northridge. This asshole went straight, because I was trying to find like a wallet on him so I could have his address. He didn't have a wallet on him, so I never got his address. People saw a white guy beating the crap out of an Armenian, so all these Asian people were calling the cops to me. I looked like a fucking monster. I broke his thumb.

He was screaming. I wanted to break all his fingers because I got all my fingers broken. But I didn't have enough anger in me to go on with it. Cops showed up. He was crying underneath the car, and I left. I was pissed. I never had his address. About a month later,

detective calls me and says, this is Detective Webb from the Devonshire Police Department, maybe Sheriff Station. There was an incident we need you to come in and give us a report so we can clear your name.

I was like, clear my name. That's nice of you guys. You guys are clearing names now? He said, what do you mean? I was like, is the Easter Bunny going to be there? Santa Claus going to be there?

I was like, you know, I could clear my name, you're going to arrest me. He's like, well, you can come to us or we can come to you. I'm not going to make this arrest easy. Go fuck your stuff.

I hung up. So I was playing a poker and running games at the time. And one of my buddies was a couple poker players who were lawyers and then, you know, one of them was an entertainment lawyer so he couldn't do shit, but he had a friend he recommended me to. And I told him the story. And he goes, what did you tell the cops? Told him go fuck himself. He goes, oh, God, this is terrible. But he goes, if you admit anything else, like, no, it goes, well, that's the only good news. He contacts the detective on my, on my behalf. And the detective says that supposedly Ray went to him said some crazy white guy, he's never met before, says he put him on death row, attacked him, it was unwarranted, and he goes, that's weird because my guy has a judgment against him.

And the detective goes, yeah, he failed to mention that. So when they sent the judgment to him, the guy's exact words were $20 million, and they go, there's a little bit more of the store than that guy's telling you. So then my lawyer says, you're just going to go to the sheriff station and talk to him. I don't want to go to the sheriff's station, they're going to arrest me. He goes, no, they're not, but you have to go talk to him. him. So I show up to the sheriff's station. I mean, like a room, little half this size, wall-to-wall, like cops, a little table. I'm the guy who told

to go fuck himself. Hey, how you doing? And I proceed to tell him a very quick 40-minute crackerjack version of what happened, basically this story that I told you, but a lot more rushed, a lot more pain. One of the guards, one of the cops goes, and you didn't fucking kill this guy? For sure. This guy goes, so we have you for impersonating someone, luring someone there, assault, that carries 12 to 15 years in jail. Sounds like this guy got a little street corner justice. Never do it again. And I'm sitting in this fucking room thinking, wow, this piece of shit had me on death row.

And he tried to put me back in jail again. And all I did was break his fucking thumb. And so I'm sitting across from these cops. I'm like, yeah, okay. So that was my only little bit of street corner justice payback that I got. Well, at least you got that. I mean, of course the guy went to the cops. total scumbag. He ratted on everybody. He knowingly set you up to be, I mean, look, he may have

purposely been the one to set you up. He may have coordinated with the Pakistanis to say, okay, you know what? It's his, it's just starting to get arrested and we're going to send through, you know, five other people. I don't think he did, but I think someone else there did. Right. Because they're going to say, hey, we sold him 20 kage of heroin. Right. When it was only 3.6 KG of opium, which is not as expensive as the other stuff. So they're getting paid for the drugs that they supposedly gave. And also, by making me the rabbit, you say, chasing the rabbit, it opens the floodgates for all the other people to get through.

So not that Razan is not a scumbag, but it's Razman is not a scumbag. But he might not have been the one. He wasn't even the highest guy on the totem pole. So he might not have even been the one to have set you up. So maybe. He's the one that hired me. He knew that all was doing. He definitely knew it.

He's in the same thing to the Swedish chick. Right. He's in the wrong. And those are just theories whether or not maybe the cop was a good cop and did his job and caught me. Maybe I was only there for 3.6. But I doubt it. I think that they set me up to be the fall guy so that they can get more drugs through. Well, that's it.

That goes back to my question at the beginning. Who's smuggling opium? Yeah. That's the cheap version. That was to get you cops so they could send through the heroin. That's what I think. That's what it is. That was everyone's reaction.

in jail too. Like all the Nigerians like, why? Opium? Because I don't do it. Yeah, and it's because they don't mind losing the opium. That's the cheap stuff. Anyways, well, can I plug my book? Of course, man. Plug your book. I just want to point out, like, you've gotten your life back. You're constantly working in movies and TV and you own businesses and you've, I don't know if you. I own a bar in Georgia called Audey's Ice Cream.

I own two bars in Sherman Oaks. One's called Tipsy Cowell, one's called La Bouvet, which is like a wine bar with, like, charcuttery. No Armenians allowed, though. I mean, if you want, if you want them to pay with stolen credit cards, you know, it just seems to be the trend. I don't know. I'm opening up a taco spot called Sophie's Tacos in Greenville, and I'm also opening up a speakeasy cigar lounge, also where I live in Greenville.

My book is called Three Years in Pakistan, The Eric I Day Story. I narrate the whole thing. You can get it on most audiobook platforms. There's two documentaries. One's called Locked Up Abroad. I'm the only idiot to play themselves. I don't recommend that one. But there's also the other one's called

Three Years in Pakistan. I think you can get it on Amazon. It's eventually going to be called The Price of Pride. It's getting a name change just so it's getting a fresh look. I'm still working in Hollywood. I'm stunt coordinating. I'm doing stunts.

I'm married. I got a wonderful wife. And I got nine dogs and five cats. And I've got a good life. And I just, I definitely, you know, I'm a lot more cautious when I meet people. I'll look both ways down to one way because that's how much little faith I have in humanity. But I still try to leave this place a little bit better. I tell people that no matter how bad it gets, it could always be worse.

And, you know, when, like you said, you're kind of a daddy's boy, you got daddy issues, and you don't think you're tough you are, but we're built to adjust. If you were thrown into the deep end of the pool, you'd find the will to swim. So don't ever And always talk I tell people Always talk kindly to yourself You gotta be your biggest supporter

You know Stop thinking negative You know Could always be worse Even in jail I would told myself How lucky I was I didn't sit in a corner

And feel bad for myself I would tell myself Hey at least I'm big enough To defend myself At least I got people On the outside Who care about me At least I'm smart enough

To adjust to the situation So there's always There's always light Yeah You can always choose You always have a choice. You can always choose how to react to your situation. Through every bad day, there's a bright, shoddy day after that.

So no matter how hard it gets, you just stick your chest out, keep your head up, and you handle it. Unless that's your day to be hung. You know what? I would even play that the notion that if I were ever to have been hung, I still would have given the crowd a just flip the noose man and nickel and gone down with both thumbs up because fuck them. Did you, would you think about that?

Like, man, the worst case scenario? Oh, yeah. I was not going to go down crying. I was going to go down rocking. I wanted to make people laugh if I was my last day on earth. I thought I was going to make him laugh. One of my heroes, I'm leaving after this, one of my heroes was Davy Crockett. You know, Davey Crockett knew he was going to die, so he went out with a joke and asked the whole Mexican army to surrender to him.

Died like a G. No, he really did. Yes, he did. Eric, man, thank you so much. Go get his book. We're going to link to in the description and push that. Go get three years in Pakistan. What an amazing Odyssey.

I'm grateful for you. And I'm inspired by you. I really am. Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it. And I hope I didn't offend too many people. I'm sorry, I'm the way I am. But the way I am has got me through a lot of bad time.

Absolutely. Yeah. Okay, you guys. Thanks a lot. And go get three years in Pakistan. Take care.