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 the calm. I couldn't

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.

My father was a libertarian.

Parenting wasn't his forte.

I was allowed to do what I wanted whenever I wanted, really. It was a

exciting childhood.

Wait, it's not a very pretty place. It's just the... I describe it as being

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.

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 Americans, English, Canadians, all that stuff.

My partner in crime flicked it.

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 beautiful girl who I got together with.

She's English, but she looks 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 other.

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

Friends of mine, I 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 were just there at the women.

make everybody feel generally uncomfortable.

We were having too much fun to put up with people we didn't like, and Talal

definitely one of those people that he wasn't liked.

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

He said to 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 a thousand pounds.

Two thousand dollars, something like that.

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

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

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

Even my dad, a few days before everything went wrong, would say, who's

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.

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

was one case, 250, 300 grams of hashish.

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 asked my dear friend Jenny if I could hide it in her underwear drawer.

She was anxious and I said, don't worry, if anything goes wrong, I promise you I

will own up to it.

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

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

Met.

What?

Given the hashish to live 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.

I took Slick Nick with me and I told him that I wanted to check some noise out

on my brakes.

I told him that I was taking him on a drug deal.

I guess I took Nick there, you know, so I had some, I was scared,

you know, undoubtedly.

Just went over and done quickly.

I thought I'd park up next to him.

Do like I've done with Ali.

Thank you. Bye.

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

We arrived there.

Talal's 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 of the 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'd come

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.

Looked in the mirror and seen a guy walking back 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 said, 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, that all of a sudden they think, let's go.

And we did.

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

at the party.

When we closed the door, it was like everything was locked out and we were

inside.

Everything would be fine.

I was really glad that it was over.

To me, it was over.

Let's drink.

Let's party.

I wasn't thinking about another deal. I didn't ever want to see Talal again as

long as I lived.

I was a relieved, relieved individual by that.

I was back with my friends, my closest friends.

And I was back in my comfort zone.

Drinks had been poured.

A bit of smoking had taken place.

And we hear a knock on the door.

Who is it?

Talal.

Oh, ice ran through me, I tell you.

Why 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.

That moment changed my life forever. It was to change my whole life forever, not

just for the time I went to jail. It changed me.

For a person who had a very optimistic, casual, easygoing look at life, I was to

be hit with a sledgehammer. It was really hard for a man of my age. You

wasn't a bad person.

I wasn't selling drugs.

I wasn't... I was just, come on, let's have some fun. That's all I was. Nothing

else.

And that was it.

Huge bloke grabbed me.

with another bloke, and frog -marked me straight out of the front room, 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

desert, and I drive out there, and I leave the money there, and he comes

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

I said, well, I'm trying to tell you.

And then he hit me.

And 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.

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

He said I gave it to him.

I told him that she... 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 and 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

You've got the CID with his gun in his hand, and they're all really happy.

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.

You know, 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.

picture of the 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 said 25 years. It was drugs, it was QA. 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 is just the most daunting

thing.

I said, Scott, get ready, we're going to your house.

Didn't even cross my mind that we were going to my house. Why the f*** do we

have to go to my house?

And that meant meeting my dad.

And we drove up to my house.

And 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.

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 from 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, Dad.

I'm the one who's sorry.

And I got in the car as they were driving me away.

Seeing my dad, it was a shame I felt weird.

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 the town.

Everything was overwhelming.

I was facing 25 years of jail in my head at this time. I mean, I'd been told

they were going to hang me.

And I look back and I think, how could you have been so stupid? But I was, and

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 selection of bamboo canes in the corner.

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

It scares the living.

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 sad.

Unnecessary. But you get sick, 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 actions 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, thrown

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.

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

I mean, 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?

They ordered us all outside.

They'd made a display.

stand like an exhibition stand of all of the gear that they'd and they made us

all stand line up behind it for our family photo so that they could um

it throughout the country there's no getting out of it i

was gonna go down

My main objective was getting my friends out.

I was royally stiff. 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 this captain who was probably a couple of

older than me sitting behind the desk.

They removed all of our personal effects. I 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.

That's a very difficult moment.

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

sounds.

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 Iraqi, to Iranian, 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 my cell.

If anyone was 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 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

for a couple of seconds.

And the time will go away, and you wait until you count, until you count, and it

will come back when it will 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 cop just comes up to the door

of my cell.

Mr. Abiyad, Mr. White.

Mr. Abiyad, Kamsatana 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.

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

at 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, though, in jail, she flew out to Kuwait to visit me

occasionally.

Seeing her for the first time was a...

It 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 up with you.

Yes, I just find that very difficult.

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

beyond anything else, you know, sitting opposite you and not being able to touch

it, 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, 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 and 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, but 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 in the cell.

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, and I felt such a freedom.

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

and that I could feel okay and I could be happy.

When I had the hysteria, I had a mental change.

You get a clarity of mind.

I went to the hole, it was called the hole, to study. And I started studying

Islam and I just read some of the surahs and the Quran and I listened to some of

the hadith, what the Prophet Muhammad taught.

He helped me deal with my situation.

by understanding the bigger concepts of life, rather than just Scott White was

lying in this cell doing five years.

It was like nature taking care of me.

To come through and out the other side of that, and to come out smiling, I was

given help. I felt 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 stomping 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 worse, 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've come.

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

border.

Bing. Gee whiz.

And they've 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? Kuwaiti -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's under attack.

in the building.

There were three of us up there running forward to kick the door. One, two. We

couldn't even make it, like, move.

We were on our ankles after two hits. Our ankles were on our own.

The guy downstairs was a huge Syrian. He had legs like tree trunks.

And he, uh, literally kicked the door on himself with his leg on his own. He

kicked straight through and then he used the door from Cell 3 to let the rest of

us in.

Riot started in our block.

We got out before anybody else in the block.

So 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, there was anarchy.

I remember standing outside our block and I just heard...

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 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. He's a

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

I said, Scott, can you sort him out? Can you help him?

I liked him very much, and I said, of course, no problem. I'll tell 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. 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 shoot 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 ten 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

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'd crossed over the main invasion route, which was the main road from

Kuwait City.

And we decided that it was time to split up.

Saying goodbye to Ali was a very difficult moment, you know, but we'd

through so much together. I owed him so much and I felt so bad for what I'd done

to him in my stupidity. And he'd never once blamed me or never once said a

negative word against me.

So saying goodbye to Ali was a moving experience, 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.

So I decided that the best thing I could do was to start hitchhiking, because

that's how I used to get around all the time before I had my car license.

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.

I was going along, and I was going along. About a mile later, we come up to

Iraqi police check.

And that's when my heart, my heartbeat...

We look like convicts. Would they care?

And 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 people report to

hotels become human hostages and the human shield, you know, so I could be

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.

Come on, come on.

And that was it.

You can go.

I said, what?

He said, you can go.

I couldn't give two monkeys that there was a Chinese murderer, a strange

-looking white guy in the back of this car with two of these people, and I

it looked normal to them.

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

something bad for me.

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.

This is a prayer that I kept when I was locked up.

God, don't let me feel arrogant when I succeed, and don't let me feel hopeless

when I fail, but remind me always that failing precedes success.

Thank you.

God teaches me that forgiving is the highest level of strength and taking

revenge is the first sign of weakness.

I don't know why I find it difficult.

Probably because it just takes me back a bit much.

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 now, 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

and the fear.

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

Hussein invades Kuwait. Yeah, there's a different sort of 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.

Her life's good.

So you got the girl?

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