Nigel Brennan

So I'm now standing there.

Pretty much arms are pulled down by my sides.

Feels like there's about five or six of them in the room and

I'm like, I'm pretty sure I'm about to get punched in the solar plexus.

And sure enough, as I brace, just get smacked straight just below the ribs, which I managed to sort of deflect.

It was like, I think they're going to realize what I've done and braced again and then got punched again straight in the same spot.

And then what I wasn't ready for was the next thing, which was the knee straight between the legs.

and just went straight down on my knees you know onto the cold tiles um naked to then feel an ak-47 put to the back of my head and cocked and the trigger pulled and abdullah right next to my ear said if you run again we'll kill you

Look, from that point on, you know, for the next 11 months, it was just, it was a battle, like a real battle.

That's, you know, I embarrassed, we had basically completely embarrassed our captors in front of, I guess, their community.

by escaping and they had lost face and they were embarrassed i'm guessing so they were going to get their pound of flesh for it so you know i can remember even the next few weeks it was just intense like being woken up in the middle of the night with a torch and five ak-47s like literally in my face and i'm just like what's going on and then they would just walk out

Oh, yeah.

It's just like I don't want to sleep.

Like I'm scared to sleep.

So I used to spend more time awake at night and then trying to sleep during the day because it felt safer.

But like I didn't get to see Amanda at all apart from when we were transported and she was –

pretty much in the back seat and I was in the back of a like the Toyota Land Cruiser but that was the only time I really got to see Amanda and from then you know the simple privileges that I took for granted like fresh clean water you know I was now getting water with mosquito larvae swimming around in it it's just like this is gonna make me sick I know it is and getting a toothbrush and just squashing them on the side to try and kill them

And I can remember we went to one house in...

And I was sort of pleading with them to have my Qur'an back and they said no, it got lost at the mosque.

Because for me it was like, I don't know, for me it gave me some sort of comfort.