Original subtitles

But I'll do it once and just shows you that the smallest thing can change

everything I Couldn't have taken the torture that was to come I couldn't have

done it And they said Scott we're gonna hang you And that was it all of a

sudden it became very very real I was getting out of here

I was 19 years old and I was living with my father.

My father initially left us and moved out to Kuwait with a good job.

My parents' marriage was already disintegrating, really. So I was offered

to go to boarding school in Scotland or a motorcycle and stay with my dad.

So I chose the motorcycle and stayed with my dad.

Scotland was never for me.

In Kuwait, it's not a very pretty place. It's dusty.

I'd describe it probably, most people would have been there as an ugly place.

Growing up there, being English, a lot of us tended to think we were a little

bit immune to the laws of the land.

We always thought we could get out of what we got into.

Kuwait was, in theory, a dry country.

Muslims were not allowed to drink.

Not that they didn't, but they're not allowed to.

in public.

It attempted to present itself as a strict conservative society.

I have to say, to this day, I've never lived in a country that has such a great

social scene and party scene as Kuwait had at that time.

You get people that you feel comfortable around and you recognize, want to be

part of your social scene for all that it represents.

You had American, English, Canadian, all that stuff.

My partner in crime, slick dick, tall, handsome, Hawaiian shirt.

Just a happy -go -lucky individual at that time, very similar to me.

Jenny was a pretty young woman. She had a lot to put up with in coping with us a

lot.

Some great parties happened at Jenny's house, yeah, I'd say that.

Lisa was the love of my life.

A stunningly beautiful girl who I'd got together with.

She's English, but she looked Lebanese or Cypriot.

Always been my preference.

My closest friends.

And we were all part of a very tight group of people who understood each

I think we were a little bit too far out for even the liberal Arabs.

Friends of mine met a Saudi guy called Ali.

Ali was to become a very good friend of mine.

And he was the person who I first found out could actually get hashish on a

regular basis.

I was aware that drugs were not allowed.

Alcohol was not allowed.

Drugs was definitely not allowed, yes.

But I hadn't looked into it. I wasn't going to get caught. I wasn't doing

anything wrong.

My philosophy in life was I lived for the moment. I was totally free and

enjoying every second of my life.

Talal appeared out of nowhere, out of nowhere.

None of us knew him that well.

Not a figment of your imagination, but he'd been introduced by somebody who was

a good friend of mine.

I'm at a friend's house. I'm having a smoke with him. He introduces me to a

called Talal. He's a creepy sort of bloke, a lechie.

We just stare at the woman.

make everybody feel generally uncomfortable.

He was an outsider who I should never, ever, ever have entertained.

He told me, Scott, do you know where to get some hash?

He wanted one case, which was approximately 250 grams.

It was a significant amount.

It was probably the equivalent of something like £1 ,000, $2 ,000,

like that.

I told him, I don't want to do this.

He said, I'll bug me and bug me and bug me.

He called me, Scott, can you do this? Scott, can you do that?

Even my dad, a few days before everything went wrong, he would say,

this guy on the phone?

What's he calling about?

He was bugging me, bugging me, bugging me. I decided, OK, I'll do it and try

make some money.

Lisa, my girlfriend at the time, was living in Cyprus.

But she intended to come and see me at Christmas time.

The extra money I had from this particular deal was probably going to

towards that goal.

I foolishly said yes.

It was as simple as that.

Do you know what I mean? That's all. I thought I'd do it once.

This was my first ever deal. I'd been pushed into doing it. I'd been pestered.

I was nervous, but I was also just... You know, I put those things to the back

of my mind.

Based on the fact that he'd smoked with me, based on the fact that I'd been

introduced to him through a friend, based on the fact that I hadn't asked

he'd asked me.

Those were the things that put my mind at rest that I was going to get away

this.

to get the money, because I didn't have that sort of money.

So I went to his house, and his house was in a typical Arab suburb.

Don't see many people when you walk in. I didn't see anybody when I walked in

there at all.

All downstairs was all closed, and I walked up the side of the house and up

stairs and went into his room.

It wasn't the environment I liked being in. It was all starting

to feel...

Eerie. We've got this cold house.

I've never been to his house. I have no desire to go to his house at all for

anything else.

I ignored all of my intuition, I think, and just let things take its course.

I just knew that I didn't want to do it again.

I didn't want to do it again.

I told him that I'd never do it again.

And that this was the last time.

He gave me the money. I do believe it probably was crisp new notes. I'd simply

been to the bank.

When are we going to meet? When are we going to meet?

When can you get it for me?

I said later on.

There was an American school somewhere near where we were partying later.

I said I'd meet you there. The American school, OK?

Okay, thanks.

Glad that's over. You know, the whole thing was suddenly coming to a climax.

The whole scenario of getting the money I was having to meet, it was all

becoming very, very real.

I went to Jenny to meet Ali. He brought along with him what I'd ordered, which

was one keg, 250, 300 grams of footage.

I gave Ali...

The money that I'd received from Talal in payment for the hash that he was now

giving me. The largest lump I'd ever seen, yeah.

Yeah.

Click, click. No, it didn't click.

I wanted the evening to be further on. I wanted it over and done with. I was...

anxious, you know, I realised what I was doing maybe and I wanted to be back.

Met, swapped, given the hashish to Talal and back at the party,

ready to carry on partying.

Going on a drug deal when you've had a smoke is not a good place to be.

No, not at all.

Just wanted over and done quickly.

I thought I'd park up next to him.

Do like I done with Andy. Doop, doop. Thank you. Bye.

But what actually happened was we parked outside the nearby American school.

We arrived there till our car was there.

He came over to talk to us.

By this time, yes, I was nervous. By this time, it was all seeming serious.

By this time, I was anxious.

I showed him this rather pancake -like looking thing that I'd brought along.

I asked him, I said, can I have a little bit?

He explained that it didn't seem very big.

I was no drug dealer, you know. I had no experience in this sort of thing.

I said, well, you know how it is.

And he said, okay, let me in your car.

So he...

Got in the back of my car.

And we were talking to him in the back of the car. He was asking if he could

come to the party, this, that and the other.

Nick was having a look around and, you know, probably a bit pissed off about

fact that I'd included him in this.

And during that process, Nick had spotted somebody.

I looked in the mirror and seen a guy walking past.

behind the back of the car and seen the guy staring at us.

And Nick had thought that was odd because he wasn't just a look. He'd gone

and he'd walked by. So it was one of those things that raised the tension.

He gave me a little bit.

We told Talal that he couldn't come with us.

So Talal got out of the car.

He asked for a cigarette.

We gave it to him.

He smoked it, like a joint.

I thought, why are you smoking it like that?

And then he proceeded to flip the cigarette over the top of the car.

Everything seemed so eerie.

All of a sudden it seemed, fuck, let's go.

And we did.

We left the scene, turned left, turned right, boom, boom, boom, and arrived

at the party.

And when we closed the door, that was like everything was locked out and we

inside.

Everything would be fine.

I was really glad that it was over.

To me, it was over.

Drinks had been poured, a bit of smoking had taken place, and we hear a knock at

the door.

Hello!

Who is it?

Hello.

Oh, ice ran through me, I tell you.

Why the fuck was Talal at my door, at this door?

Why was he here?

He didn't know where I was supposed to be. Why he followed me here? Why was

Talal at my door?

Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

And I knew it right away.

I didn't know what to do. I was like a rabbit in the headlights. I started

walking towards the door. Hang on, hang on a minute.

Boom.

That moment changed my life forever.

The door came flying open. They came through with guns drawn, eight of them.

Those guns were definitely pointed at me.

And that was it.

A huge bloke grabbed me with another bloke and frog -marked me straight out

the front room and straight into the bedroom and said to me, Scott, where did

you get the hashish?

I was a bit wrecked. I said, well,

I've never actually met the guy.

What I actually do is I call him and we've got a prearranged place in the

and I drive out there and I leave the money there and he comes later on in the

evening and says, Scott, where did you get the hashish?

I said, well, I'm trying to tell you. I fell on the bed.

They brought Ali into the room and they said, this man has the marked money.

Why does Ali have the marked money?

I was scared shitless.

To his credit, Ali thought and didn't make me say it.

He said I gave it to him.

I told him that she's... So I thank God that I had Ali with me because

I couldn't have taken the torture that was to come. I couldn't have done it. I

would have spoken when I know it. And I was so relieved, in a way, that Ali was

busted with me.

They moved me out of the bedroom.

And they moved me out with everybody else.

They'd all been sat down on the floor.

The police had also discovered the brewery room. The cops were probably

glad they waited because they discovered alcohol as well.

They went everywhere.

They were having the time of their lives.

They took the sombreros off the wall that Jenny had and started dancing

So you've got the CID with a sabre on his head with his gun in his hand and

they're all really happy, you know.

They don't give a shit about what's happening to us whatsoever.

They just busted nine Western people and they probably felt like we deserved it

all.

They were definitely having a good time.

Everything drops on a dime, doesn't it? Your life can change at the drop of a

hat, just like that, at any time, be it cancer, be it an event like this, just

like that.

And it's how you deal with it.

Can you come out the other side?

Will it break you?

And they took us outside.

They

drove

us, so it took about 45 minutes to get from the house.

And I said to him, I said, where are you taking me?

And they said, Scott, we're going to hang you.

This had real relevance for me because a good friend of mine had been found

hanging three or four years previously in very suspicious circumstances.

We never really understood quite what had happened.

And I was really nervous then.

It was one of the scariest moments of my life, without a doubt.

It would scare anybody, wouldn't it?

I was taken up into the top part of the building and handcuffed in the captain's

office.

Typical bleak, bland room with, you know, no decoration, with a picture of

ruler of the country behind the desk, which is obligatory.

Not a place you want to be, really.

It was getting really serious.

Scott, you're facing 25 years.

And I believed them when they fed 25 years. It was drugs. It was Q8. You've

the cops there telling you this. They should know it. They know the judicial

system.

Because when you're that age, that amount of time, it's just the most

thing.

They've got to get ready. We're going to your house.

Didn't even cross my mind that we were going to my house. Why the fuck would we

have to go to my house?

And that meant meeting my dad.

We drove up to my house.

I'll never forget that.

And there I was with four huge men with guns around me.

I asked if I could stay in the car. They wouldn't let me.

My dad came out from the kitchen and he'd been drying dishes.

As they opened the door, they pushed me straight past him and took me into my

bedroom, which was a bar, which they quite liked.

All I heard in the next room was my father going, oh my God, oh my God.

They confiscated loads of stuff.

And then we went outside, and one of the only times in my life my father hugged

me.

He said, Scott, I'm so sorry.

I looked at him and said, Dad, no, I'm the one who's sorry now.

I'm the one who's sorry.

And I got in the car.

as they were driving me away.

Seeing my dad, it was the shame I felt with it all.

I wasn't going off to university or anything, was I?

Here I was, with four armed men at my door, taking them into my dad's house so

they could search his house.

Everything was overwhelming.

I was facing 25 years in jail in my head at this time. I'd been told they were

going to hang me.

I looked back and I just think, how could you have been so stupid? But I

and I paid a heavy price.

I was moved to the cells downstairs in the bowels of the jail.

And I was kept down there while they tortured Ali.

They want to find the source, like every police department.

Where's it coming from? Who's the main dealer? Who's the wholesaler?

Get on the phone, Ali.

Set up the guy you get it from.

And do it now.

Otherwise, we'll do more of this.

I was downstairs when they did it. Everybody in the jail heard it. It was

horrific.

The screams, they tortured them.

I had tears in my eyes. I just couldn't believe it. I was so ashamed that I had

caused all of this.

The fact that Ali had been caught with me.

I mean, obviously there wasn't much need to torture me.

But they did mentally.

They take you into a room and they lie you down.

And they kneel on your chest.

And they lift your legs up.

And then they have a collection of bamboo canes in the corner.

Called it back like that. And then all started laughing.

It scares the living shit out of you. It really does.

When you've got four men of another nationality, big men, leaning on you and

kneeling on you and lifting your legs and then laughing at you, you're a sad

bastard.

Unnecessary. But you get thick, pathetic human beings who get some sort of

gratification out of doing that to other human beings. I'm not one of them.

One of the strange things that happened during the time in the police station

was Talal walked in like he owned it a couple of days after I'd arrived there.

He'd come to explain his action and that he wasn't a snitch and that he had

been caught smoking.

He wanted my understanding of what he'd done.

They told me that when I went to his house, that there had been police

in the next room.

When he'd asked me for the cigarette, and he'd smoked it like a joint, and

thrown it over the back of the car, that was the signal for them to arrest us.

But they didn't. They wanted to come to the house.

And this man that we'd seen there was actually one of the cops that proceeded

kick the door down 20 minutes later.

But he said he'd been tortured for days and he'd been made to set me up.

I'm on my own at this stage, you know, and I don't know what to believe.

My instinct tells me he's lying through his teeth. He's walking fine.

My God, if they'd beaten him like Ali, he wouldn't be able to walk for a week.

You know, nothing made any sense.

In the end, he was a snitch through and through. Without a doubt, he was a

coward and a snitch.

You know, worthless.

I felt like I'd been stitched up, that's for sure.

Who wouldn't?

There was no getting out of it.

I was going to go down.

My main objective was getting my friends out.

I was royally stitched.

There was nothing I could do.

I confessed to everything.

I told them that everything in the house was mine.

Everyone else denied everything.

And they decided that they would let everybody out, apart from me and Ali.

I was taken on the loneliest bus ride of my life.

It was very quiet on that bus ride to the central jail.

I knew my friends were out.

I had Ali, thank God.

I was on my own.

It's a very lonely place to be.

I was terrified. I was walking into a really... This was Kuwait's central

We were taken in and there was a captain who was probably a couple of years

older than me sitting behind the desk.

They removed all of our personal effects. They had my sort of engagement

Lisa that... We called it our engagement ring anyway. And all of my personal

belongings.

taken away in my clothes, and we were issued with prison guards.

Five minutes after that, I went through probably, I mean, the scariest moment of

my life, and that was being taken into the jail block.

This was where the murderers and the rapists and the terrorists and everybody

was kept, and I was heading for the big time.

Now that's a very difficult moment.

They open the block of the block and you get this big block with all these

cells.

Fear, fear, fear for how much you're going to have to deal with and how

different your life now is going to be.

Turks, to Lebanese, to Iraqis, to Iranians, oh, a whole bunch of people.

I mean, a lot of Iraqis, because they'd been smuggling guns or alcohol across

from Iraq, which wasn't a dry country.

My time was spent almost exclusively in myself.

If anyone were to say to me what's the difficult thing about doing time, I'm

talking about Kuwait specific here, I would say the heat.

The unbelievable heat.

It is 100 % humidity, 128 degrees centigrade.

In our cell, we were given a little desktop fan, and that was our

whole cooling system.

You'd look up and wait for the fan to come in your direction, and close your

eyes for a couple of seconds.

Then the farm would go away, and you'd wait, and you'd count, and you'd count,

and it would come back, and then it would go away.

I didn't get sentenced, actually, in court.

Then I was just in my cell about six months after I'd been in jail, and the

just comes up to the door of my cell, Mr Abia, Mr White.

Five years, Mr. White.

So I was just told in my block as he walked by, you know, it wasn't 25 years,

I'll give you that, but even five years seems like a very, very long time.

20 years old, it's a quarter of your life that I was going to have to serve.

Not months, not days, years.

It's a really difficult concept.

Everything was ruined. I had lost everything.

I lost my job. I had to leave Kuwait when I got out. I had no career. I had

education. I had nothing. I had one, one thing, and that was Lisa.

I mean, I'd never been as close to any human being in my life as I was to her

that time in my life.

And she kept me going. She kept my dream about getting out.

because I found sanctuary in her.

After six months or so in jail, she flew out to Kuwait to visit me occasionally.

Seeing her for the first time was a... was a strange experience.

I felt so guilty for what I'd done.

I was so ashamed.

It's very frustrating to have a very beautiful woman sitting opposite you.

Yes, I just find that very difficult.

Seeing a woman you love and that you had a relationship with and that you fancy

beyond anything else sitting opposite you and not being able to touch her is

really difficult.

It's really difficult.

I never gave up hope.

My hope was that Lisa would wait for me and that I would get out of jail and

meet her at the airport and our lives would start all over again and we'd be

able to start off where we'd left off.

And that's, you know, the one thing that I had hoped and thought about that kept

me going through the first year of my sentence.

One and a half years into my sentence, I found out she wasn't waiting for me.

And I guess that, I mean, of all the days in all of my life, that was

the hardest day of my life, was to lose the only thing I had left.

I lost the only thing I had.

And it led me to the most intensely painful period of my life.

I went back to my cell after I found out.

I wanted to check myself into solitary.

I was probably the lowest I've ever been in my life.

I mean, I never really thought about suicide and things a lot.

I probably did think about it a little bit then.

I was really down and out.

I got up and I went to the toilet.

And I cried a river.

And I couldn't stop myself.

I had hysteria.

I let Lisa go.

I let everything go in my life.

I didn't care about anything anymore. I felt such a freedom.

I felt hope that I was going to survive, that I wasn't going to be broken, and

that I could feel okay and I could be happy.

I didn't just want to change. I did change.

And I was born again, in a way, and I became a survivor.

The tension between Iraq and Kuwait is at its highest for several weeks after

talks on defusing an explosive crisis in the Persian Gulf... We had started to

hear things.

Iraq was accusing Kuwait of stealing its oil and drilling underneath the

borders. We were definitely aware that Saddam was dumping his feet.

We weren't convinced, however, that he was as serious as he was.

If he does come...

What's it going to mean for me was a very real subject in my mind. I mean, I

used to think, maybe it'll be worth, you know, if Saddam comes and the Iraqis

take control of this jail.

Definitely the tension was building.

I actually went to bed and I listened to the news report that had said that they

were at the border and there were no unusual troop movements.

That's how I went to bed on the night of the 1st of August.

When I woke up on the 2nd of August, I saw all my friends, you know, Ali and

everybody, you know, listening to something. I said, what's up?

And they said, we think you'd come.

It's precisely 2 o 'clock this morning, 100 ,000 Iraqi troops have crossed the

border.

Bing. Gee whiz.

I've never been woken up to the path of my life.

The road that they were coming down was less than half a mile from the jail, the

main invasion route.

Any minute now, that door could burst open and it could be Iraqi troops coming

through the door.

We're looking out with our mirrors trying to see, you know, who is it,

Iraqi, Kuwaiti, Iraqi.

The Kuwaitis were panicking.

The tension in the jail began to rise and began to rise. We wanted answers.

What were they going to do? They'd lost their country. Why were they keeping us

in jail? Why didn't they let us go?

Surely they should let us go. They weren't going to let us stay here and be

taken by the Iraqis. Why do that?

What have we done to deserve that?

Open the doors and let us go. Your country is under attack.

No such thing.

The tension started to build and started to build.

You know, there's no water, there's no ice.

People are frustrated. The tension is building and building.

There were three of us upstairs running forward to kick the door one tooth. We

couldn't even make it move.

You know, on our ankles, after two hits, our ankles... The

guy downstairs was a huge Syrian. He had

legs like tree trunks.

And he literally kicked the lock of the door in the cell with his legs on his

own. And he kicked straight through, and then he used the lock of the door from

cell three to let the rest of us out.

The riot started in our block.

We got out before anybody else in the block.

We were in charge of the inside of the jail.

All the blocks were being let out. The file room was on fire and smoke coming

out down the hallway.

I mean, it was... I remember standing outside

our block and I just heard, this is a... Young men, young men, the police have

gone.

And so that's how we knew that it was safe now to leave.

And that was it.

That was it. That was when all of a sudden it became very, very real. I was

getting out of here.

And I was going to do it right this fucking second.

I didn't go back to my cell. I didn't want to do anything. I wanted to run.

And just as I was walking down the hallway towards the front of the jail,

somebody came up to me and said, Scott, Scott, you've got to help out. It was a

little Chinese murderer built like Mr. T, built like a brick shithouse.

They asked, they said, Scott, can you sort him out? Can you help him?

I liked them very much and I said, of course, no problem, I'll take you.

I knew Kuwait like the back of my hand.

So we head up to the front of the jail and there's a hole in the front of the

jail. And to be honest with you, I can't remember what the hole looked like or

anything. I was just so excited.

I was leaving now.

I got through the hole at the front of the jail with my Chinese murderer beside

me and Ali and headed out to basically open desert and sunlight.

Why'd they run away from the jail?

Are they going to sue us? What's going to happen?

I was heading to that road over there. That's where we're going. Now, quick.

Hey, there's a guy in a wheelchair.

Oh, he's getting free too. And somebody's pushing him. I'm glad I'm not

him. I'm running as fast as I can.

Probably within 10 minutes of the gentleman saying, hundreds of prisoners

running across the desert, going in all directions.

I didn't know what to skip, jump, laugh, cry.

It was fantastic.

You know, it was just fantastic.

It was such a strange feeling.

I mean, you can hear aircraft and you can hear artillery from miles away.

And so you can hear all of this going on as well as the stuff that was going on

in the jail. It wasn't only the guns from the jail that we heard. It was the

guns from the invasion.

It's mainly sounds when you're in a war zone. It's mainly sounds unless you're

extremely close.

We crossed over the main invasion route, which is the main road from Basra to

Kuwait City.

And we decided that it was time to split up.

I think goodbye to Ali was a very difficult moment.

But at the same time, it was something that was in the background.

First thing, let's get out of here, let's get to sanctuary, let's get to

I was out, but I had this permanent fear that the invasion would end and that I

would have to walk myself back.

I decided that the best thing I could do was start hitchhiking, because that's

how I used to get around all the time before I had my car life.

A Sudanese family pulled over in an old Toyota Crown or something like that.

I sat in the back and they had this little black kid in the back and I put

on my lap.

That's when I felt free for the first time.

And I was going along and I was going along, and about a mile later, we come

to an Iraqi police check.

And that's when my heart, my heart began, oh my God, oh my God.

We look like convicts.

Would they care?

I just stroked this kid's hair with my two fingers and prayed.

I mean, it was only a couple of weeks later they made all the English people

report to hotels to become human hostages and the human shield, you know,

could be taken as a pawn as loads of other people were done.

That was the scariest. That was more scary than going to jail.

It was a very tense, tense situation.

They looked in the window, and they looked in the window.

And I said, come on, come on.

And that was it.

You can go.

I said, what?

They said, you can go.

Couldn't give two monkeys.

There was a Chinese murderer, a strange -looking white guy, in the back of this

car, which was two of these people in a...

This was an adventure that was going to end in something good for me, not in

something bad for me.

Westerners were still escaping from Kuwait into Saudi Arabia at the weekend

despite the dangers of the desert crossing.

Several Britons arriving in London this morning told how they got out and of the

dangers involved.

Dr. White's son was perhaps the only Briton to benefit from the crisis.

He was being held in a Kuwaiti jail on a minor drugs charge.

By Kuwaitis, not by Arabis. They shot it, OK?

So how did you get out?

Well, we were all... The guy downstairs had big legs. He kicked through the

downstairs door and they all broke the doors open with part of the lock of

another door.

I believe I'm wiser from my experience and the way I looked at it and the way I

learned from it and through the people that I met.

Happier, no.

Wiser, yes. I wish I hadn't gone through it. I wish I hadn't lost Lisa. I wish I

hadn't felt all those terrible things that I felt and all the loneliness I had

to go through and the fear.

But, you know, take that against the actual getting out of jail because

Hussein invades Kuwait. Yeah, there's definitely a trade -off. I got something

back.

So whatever happened to that girl, Lisa?

I'm now married to her, and I have two beautiful children, Megan and Zach.

We live in Surrey.

And life's good.

So you got the girl?

Yeah, yeah, I thought that, but I got her, yeah.

Banged Up Abroad is back next week at the same time.

On Friday at 10, the new series of Law & Order Special Victims Unit continues.

And when two children are found abandoned in their home, the police are

their mother has been abducted by a ruthless gang.