Original subtitles

This programme contains some strong language and scenes which some viewers may find upsetting

I don't know if you guys are allowed to give me any news about...

..ourselves and our situation.

We don't have...anything, anything, anything,

but we're just basically dying every day,

people just dying in prison.

We're just sitting there, waiting for...waiting for death.

Hamza Parvez from West London is currently being held in prison

in Syria on suspicion of being an enemy combatant.

He has had his UK citizenship revoked.

My whole life was around Holland Park,

High Street Kensington, Shepherd's Bush.

I used to work part-time in a hotel,

go to Westfield, have a good time.

Life was good.

In 2012, a number of Hamza's London friends,

radicalised by extremist preachers in Britain,

travel to take part in a so-called religious war in Syria and Iraq.

A lot of people make quick decisions.

If it's not going to be me that sacrifices,

not going be me that helps, who's going to do it?

There were friends that I knew that had gone to Syria before.

Most people are going, they're not looking back.

They're actually looking for death, they're looking to die.

They're looking for martyrdom.

- ON VIDEO: - Yes, my feeling is great,

and, Alhamdulillah, I'm happy that I'm here.

And I'm here to please Allah, Subhanallah,

and I'm not here to please anyone else but Allah, Subhanallah.

These foreign fighters are the new phenomena

that British photographer John Cantlie was investigating

when he and his friend James Foley

were taken by masked men at gunpoint.

- JOHN CANTLIE: - A relatively large number of these jihadists

were either English-speaking or English.

Disenchanted young men from the UK

now unified under this jihadist banner.

- HAMZA: - This is the golden era of jihad.

- NEWSREADER: - Islamic State is now at war with the West.

- BARACK OBAMA: - One thing we can all agree on

is that a group like Isil has no place in the 21st century.

John went into the hornet's nest.

He wanted a proper story.

He went looking for British jihadis in dangerous environments.

Was he on the verge of an amazing story?

Journalists have become targets.

Scores of journalists are believed to have been kidnapped.

John Cantlie, being held by extremists from Islamic State.

We just were desperate for information.

It was a mission to find missing persons.

Another barbaric beheading, another unwatchable video.

It became apparent that he hadn't been beheaded.

Hello, my name is John Cantlie,

and the media hasn't had a story as big as this

for a very long time indeed.

Why not kill him like the rest?

People began to take the view that he was a turned Islamic State asset.

What really did happen to John Cantlie?

Well, Thanksgiving Day is always a special gathering with our family.

LAUGHTER

Jim has four younger siblings, married with children.

And my husband has a large family.

And actually Jim was in frequent touch.

He emailed or called weekly,

and particularly on special days - anybody's birthday, any holiday.

And that's what made us pause, Thanksgiving Day of 2012.

I remember coming home from our family gathering

and thinking, "How odd, we just didn't hear from Jim," you know,

but trying not to think much of it.

So it was really the next morning,

my husband and I were having our morning coffee,

and then we got a call.

Their driver had said that Jim and John had been kidnapped.

No-one had any idea who had kidnapped him.

We were devastated,

but the advice from the FBI was to keep totally quiet about it.

We were told not to tell anybody about John and Jim's kidnapping.

"Jump on a plane and join us in Antakya.

"In the next few days, it'd be good to have you along to keep me sane.

"Best, JC."

And that was the last email I got before then his beacon went off.

I think it would have been in the early hours of the morning...

No, early 22nd of November, I think...

There was no worse place to be than where he went.

He went into the hornet's nest.

He was entering a world, he had no idea -

because he was naive and a maverick.

Yeah, he didn't know what was coming, and by God, it was coming.

Yeah.

Everybody was panicked.

There was lots of communication between the family, me, his friends,

his close friends, trying to figure out what the next plan was.

We contacted the Foreign Office and normal diplomatic channels.

I was on the full-time hostage and crisis negotiation unit

at New Scotland Yard and my boss said,

"John Cantlie's been kidnapped again."

At first, it was like, "What? Why would he go back?"

You know, why would anybody go back?

Gosh, that's unheard of.

I can't think of anybody in the history that I've been working

in negotiation where somebody has been kidnapped twice.

My boss asked me to go and spend some time with John's family,

next of kin, just to support them.

I got the impression that they just thought,

"Oh, this is typical of John,"

and I remembered them thinking it will be over quite quickly

John would probably escape pretty soon.

We really did not have any idea if Jim and John were dead or alive,

so I was frantic to find out more.

Jim was a freelancer.

One of the outlets had some kidnap insurance

and, with that, was able to enlist a security professional

to help look for Jim.

INTERVIEWER: Is it a dangerous job?

Well, I mean, it depends on the circumstances.

You could say that my threshold of safety was different.

So as a private actor, you are much less constrained

in what you can do.

Kidnap investigator Jens arrives in Turkey.

John and James have now been missing for 48 hours.

Ahead of him is a live and deadly conflict.

I picked up my bag at the luggage carousel.

There were lots of Europeans.

They were all like, "Hey, are you going?

"Are you coming in with us? Are you going to join the fight?"

And I was like, "No, I'm here on another issue,"

but I was very well aware that, you know, I should keep a low profile.

Antakya is a very, very small city right on the border...

..and it was completely congested with foreign fighters.

I always use the reference to Star Wars, Tatooine.

They were not openly carrying weapons,

but they were carrying their fatigues and desert boots,

and they all looked very paramilitary,

waiting eagerly to go in and join the fight.

I knew exactly where they were taken.

We knew that they were apprehended together,

and we had to assume that they were kept together.

So I went to interview Mustafa Karali, the fixer.

Mustafa was actually the only one who really knew what transpired

when they were apprehended.

He was the key witness.

I was blaming myself.

I thought like, "Maybe in the same day or the day after,

"they will release, they will be with me."

So I go back to my uncle.

I was angry and shouting and also crying

and, "Please, I need, like, my friends."

I told him when we got kidnapped, there were, like, six, seven people.

They have a different accent and they're, like, hiding their IDs.

When I describe them to him, he says they are Jabhat al-Nusra,

the jihadist group.

Jabhat al-Nusra is one of the most aggressive rebel groups

on the ground, fighting against President Assad's regime.

Al-Nusra is part of Al-Qaeda,

and it's run by a man called Abu Mohammed al-Jolani,

who has recently been released from a US prison in Iraq.

Years later, he would become the leader of the new Syria

and welcomed by heads of states.

Jolani was a senior-level Al-Qaeda operative.

It's difficult to see how the kidnap of two foreigners,

an American and a Brit,

wouldn't have at some stage involved the direct knowledge of Jolani.

Jolani was the one in charge.

He was the most powerful guy in that entire region.

So I started looking everywhere for Jolani.

Jens tracks down al-Jolani through his contacts

and is hoping to negotiate a quick release of John and James.

We had Jolani interviewed several times about this issue.

He knew about it, he had the power to search,

go bang on all doors.

And I remember we had several meetings

with some high-ranking people.

And at the end, they just came around and said,

"Listen, if you ask us this question one more time,

"we're going to do something bad to you."

I mean, basically, they became annoyed by us.

They have only one answer to say - "They are Kuffar."

"They are not with us and we don't know anything about them,

"but even if we know, we are not going to give you."

And they said, "If we had them,

"we would say it and we would come with a demand."

Things were changing on the ground and I did not feel safe.

- NEWS ARCHIVE: - As the Syrian struggle intensifies,

the battle to remove the Assad regime

is pulling in volunteer fighters from across the Arab world.

A new group is emerging...

..and there are rumours they are interested in high value prisoners.

Coming from Iraq and calling itself the Islamic State,

this group is highly organised, violent

and intent on taking hostages.

Its leader is a man called Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,

who has also been released from a US prison in Iraq.

Al-Baghdadi plans to take over Syria and Iraq

and - one day - the whole world.

The schism happens between those who wanted to declare their allegiance

to Baghdadi, Islamic State chief,

and those who want to stay with Jolani, who was Syrian

and he wasn't quite as extreme

as Baghdadi or his Islamic State group,

nor did he want to be deferential. So you get the two falling apart.

Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State then fight each other.

Someone from Jabhat al-Nusra told me that James and John,

they were the big deal.

Isis and Jabhat Al-Nusra, they are ready to leave all the heavy weapons

just to take the two journalists, the foreign journalists.

I must have interviewed close to a thousand people

about the James and John case.

Endless interrogations,

questionings,

smoking a gazillion cigarettes,

drinking 6,000 cups of coffee.

I would pick up somebody, drive in the car

and basically have the chat on the move.

I was sucked into this surreal world

where my borders for safety would slip.

Every stone was turned - and there was nothing.

Whoever took John and James did not want them to be found

and took great effort to hide them.

There was this feeling of incredible worry.

We were quiet for the six weeks or month,

did our best to listen to the advice of the FBI.

But it was hard not to tell our closest friends.

It was horrifying, it felt very isolating.

I felt strongly that I needed to do my part.

I was desperate.

And so we felt the only way to get some light on it

was to ask for help.

We're gravely concerned

about Jimmy's health and welfare and safety.

We miss him terribly.

He's in our thoughts and our prayers every day.

We're committed to do everything within our ability

to secure his safe release.

And this is our only priority.

Part of the need to be public,

since Jim was a journalist and I knew he had journalist friends,

perhaps some of his colleagues might have an idea of what was happening.

Once it was public, angels have surrounded us.

As time went by, Syria became really, really dangerous

for us Western journalists.

But a Syrian revolution was a really big story,

so we were all drawn to Syria.

A war that had already been super violent and chaotic

was getting beyond difficult.

The violence had become so widespread

and the risks had so multiplied.

Feral, feral times.

So John and James were the first ones that I heard about

who disappeared, and that's how it started.

And then you get to hear on that very internal journalist grapevine,

"Hey, so-and-so's gone missing.

"There's two other journalists gone missing."

A lot of people going missing.

Five months into the Foley-Cantlie case,

I get a phone call about a super young photographer

that had been kidnapped, also in northern Syria.

On the 17th of May 2013,

24-year-old Danish photographer Daniel Rye is kidnapped.

Jens is deployed to search for him.

He was very green,

but he had also really tried to do the best he could

to prepare himself for that trip.

But I was worried, because - knowing what I knew about Syria -

I just had a bad hunch about it.

So, Jens was looking for Jim, but he was also helping Daniel's family.

So, he was working both cases,

but they felt they knew where Daniel was.

In Daniel's case, I knew exactly what building he went into.

We quite quickly established direct communication.

And then they stopped replying.

They said, "This issue has now been passed on to others.

"He's been transitioned," not specified.

And we lost the track of anyone holding Daniel.

So this whole transitioning, what we know now

is that was basically the start of the Islamic State.

RAPID GUNFIRE

Islamic State has become the strongest jihadist group in Syria

and is seizing hostages from other armed groups.

What's beginning to emerge

is a systematic taking of people as prisoners.

The honour of the Ummah is jihad...

All my brothers, come to jihad and feel the honour we are feeling,

feel the happiness that we are feeling.

I took a very strong view

that the Prime Minister should always know

whenever a hostage was taken.

I would then, you know, ask for Cobra,

the emergency committee meeting, to take place

so that I could ask the heads of special forces,

the heads of the intelligence agencies,

"What do we know about this hostage? Where do we think they are?

"Is there a chance of a rescue?"

Now, as part of that, I felt it was incumbent on us

to make sure the families were kept up-to-date

with anything that was happening.

They had police liaison officers and other support officers.

And I was very happy to meet with the families -

if they wanted to meet.

You know, obviously, they want their loved one brought home,

I want to make sure their loved one is brought home,

but sometimes you can't say everything about what's being done.

John has now been missing for almost six months,

and only a handful of friends and relatives

know that he's been taken.

At the request of the government,

the press avoid reporting on John's kidnapping.

When things like this happen, kidnappings,

there is a great deal of secrecy around it

because there are so many dynamics,

and as soon as things start hitting the news,

the dynamics around it changes.

The key objective when someone is kidnapped,

I mean, obviously, it's the life at stake that matters the most.

You must do everything you can do

to prevent that case from scaling out of control.

So the secretiveness around it is often founded in the fact

that what matters the most is saving that life.

When he got kidnapped the second time,

it felt like, "This is getting ridiculous."

I remember just feeling... Partly feeling not surprised, you know?

I thought, "That's really not a surprise,

"that he's got himself into the soup."

He definitely seemed to be deeply affected by the story,

and he was bombarding me with photographs he'd taken in Syria.

A lot of the images, though, were of rebels - very gung ho, front line.

It was all men.

And I remember thinking, "That's really strange.

"You've gone to Syria and you've just taken photos of guys."

But what was clear was that he felt like he was making a difference

and he wanted to keep going back.

John Cantlie had been capturing the rapidly changing conflict

in Syria when he was taken.

But there was a new and deeply unsettling twist

coming out of the war.

Photographers don't often bring in amazing stories.

It just doesn't happen like that.

But was he on the verge of an amazing story?

Was he on the verge of the scoop of his life

that would have transformed his career?

- Hold like the way I told you to. - Hold it like a man!

There you go.

- You guys ready? - Ready.

- You sure you are recording me? - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Little Chinese man, little black man.

The Islamic State group is proving more popular with young Brits...

GUNSHOT ..than any other group in Syria...

- LAUGHTER - Look! - That's how we do it over here!

GUN COCKS, GUNFIRE

LAUGHTER

- He's happy. - Yeah, boy!

..and they're starting to film their lives on the front lines...

Say cheese for us to the camera...

..part diary videos, part propaganda.

INDISTINCT CHATTER

Right now, it's just Friday afternoon

and we're just chilling here on the battlefield.

In a little while, we'll be doing an attack.

There's been a lot of talk about this so-called five-star jihad.

Here, Alhamdulillah, this is where most of the media work happens,

on this little desk here.

Their videos are spreading across the internet,

attracting more recruits,

including 21-year-old Hamza Parvez from West London.

We got taken to desert.

I brought boots and stuff and jackets...

I already had some stuff - some Primark, H&M.

It's the first time I saw a Kalashnikov.

I didn't know a word of Arabic. I didn't know nothing.

They did, like, classes about military tactics.

I'm not saying that I went out and I was a fighter and I fought,

but you have to have a weapon to protect yourself.

When I first got my first weapon, it was a Kalashnikov,

I put the magazine in...

..clock it back, take a shot.

- INTERVIEWER: How did it feel? - It was very scary.

It's a weapon

that kills human beings.

This is the golden era of jihad.

What are we doing sitting in the UK,

sitting in the al-Kuffar, the land which kills Muslims...

At the time that I recorded the video,

I was very like, you know, charged up.

Everything was happening.

I was in the desert.

So it was a call for the guys, whoever wants to come, to come.

INTERVIEWER: Do you regret that video?

Yeah, yeah, it was stupid. It was stupid.

As we approach October,

this is close to a year since they were kidnapped.

That's when I get the breakthrough.

- NEWS ARCHIVE: - An 18-year-old from Belgium recently returned from Syria

and has been detained on suspicion of being

a member of a terrorist group - something he denies.

A Belgian guy had hooked up with Islamic State,

then he'd fallen foul of Islamic State,

who chucked him in prison.

Finally, he's released. He goes back to Brussels,

where he's promptly detained by Belgian authorities.

So I went to Belgium to meet this jihadi.

He was in a maximum security prison.

There was no allowed access to the jail.

Basically, I bullshit myself all the way into that prison

by saying I was his uncle.

Let me ask, it's going to be audio-only, right?

During his debrief, he said,

"Oh, yeah, funny thing - I was in this prison in Aleppo."

You never know, are you the one next being killed or not?

Even though I was innocent, they interrogated me.

I was in prison with two people. I didn't know who they were.

"There were two men in the cell with me..."

And their names were James and John.

One was John Cantlie and one was James Foley.

That is the first time that word comes out of John and James

since their abduction.

I had some proof of life questions

that were impossible to know unless you had spoken to him.

They started to become friends.

They told what their hobbies were, what drinks we had.

It all checked out.

So it was 100% sure that they were alive when he met them.

They got tortured really bad

and they still had the scars on their ankles.

And then you start to have conversations like,

"If I get out, I'm going to contact your family."

It was the fall of 2013, when we were desperate for information.

A parent of a young Belgian jihadist reached out to me

and said, "My son has seen Jim, he's alive,"

and that Jim was not alone. He was, in fact, with other Westerners.

He was being held with Daniel Rye.

And that was the first hope we had.

I was incredibly grateful.

When I was put into the same room with James and John,

it was quite crazy to see them,

because they were kidnapped half a year before me.

So they had been hostages for a long time

when I saw them the first time.

And they have been through things that you cannot imagine.

They were very skinny, but they didn't seem very scared.

They seemed like they had adapted quite well.

We just smiled and said hello.

They were like this old couple who have been married forever.

Daniel Rye is placed in a makeshift cell with John and James

several months after he was taken,

first meeting them here,

in the notorious basement of an Aleppo hospital.

Because of the hard treatment that I have had in the beginning,

where I was heavily tortured and beaten up,

I looked like a skeleton.

Some of the other guys didn't want to get too close to me,

but not John.

I really hated myself, and I didn't have any self-respect left.

And when I spoke to John, he got so angry at me,

and he started to tell me all the reasons I had

to not be angry at myself.

I was like, "Wow, I'm not weak.

"I'm probably actually strong, even though I don't see that right now."

That was the beginning of a new way of looking at myself.

That's something I really learned from John.

So he is and was a very, very strong character.

The weird thing was, I would drive in Aleppo past the teaching hospital

in which John and James were being held...

..without realising they were there.

The rules were, when you drove past that hospital,

don't look over to look at it.

Just drive past, just don't do anything.

At that stage, the fighting between the Islamic State

and all these other groups all piling into Islamic State,

it was a huge fight -

as well as the fight that's going on against Assad in that city.

So Islamic State decided to remove their high value prisoners,

which include the Western hostages, from that hospital

and driven to Raqqa.

We were chained to each other, two and two, we were put into a truck.

Suddenly, I woke up during the night like, "Whoa, where are we?"

So some of the other guys was like,

"I think we're sitting on top of eight tonnes of IEDs" -

improvised explosive device.

It was like, "OK, if something goes wrong, we will fucking blow up."

Relocated to a new hidden site...

..the Islamic State group are consolidating

their most valuable hostages.

Among them is veteran Spanish correspondent Javier Espinosa.

Assembling all the foreigners in the same place,

that kind of situation, you feel comforted in a way

because, well, we are a lot.

You know, it's not going to be just me along with all these crazy guys.

INTERVIEWER: You were given a number. Can you tell me about that?

I'm number 43, and everybody has a number - 43, 45, 47.

You cannot answer, "I'm Javier."

It's diminishing your human entity, you know?

You are not any more a human, you're a number in a system.

And then suddenly, I heard them the first time.

They knocked on the door, like a big iron door...

KNOCKING ON DOOR

..and I remember it because when they opened the door,

all the heat we created as a group just kind of went out.

They call them "the Brits".

And they yelled, "Hands to the wall."

And they came in, and the first they did was to beat up the Americans.

Everybody that they enter in the room, you have to move

and you have to face the wall.

But you could hear the noise of the beating, one after another.

Bam, bam, bam, bam!

It was with the - I mean, kicks, actually, you know...

You heard it. It's a close room, so you heard a lot.

I think that was the same day, almost, that John Cantlie said,

"We need to be able to refer to them as something.

"Hey, let's call them The Beatles - John, Ringo and George."

The so-called Beatles,

a semi-criminalised group of three young guys,

they had become subsumed

with this new Islamic movement they found there.

They'd assumed these new identities too -

big deal, part of Islamic State.

Obviously, that kind of stuff is very, very secretive.

No-one knows about it.

No-one knows where the hostages were taken from,

no-one knows where they're kept. No-one knows what the situation is.

All that stuff, it's with the security services

of the Islamic State.

These guys doesn't feel they have any purpose in England.

And suddenly, they have a purpose in life,

which is to create huge Islamic State.

And especially, they are given power -

to be somebody who can decide, "Now you die, now you live."

That's enormous power for them.

I mean, many times, they put their knives on your throat

and say, "You're going to be killed and blah-blah-blah."

John was very brave. He wasn't afraid of anything.

He was like this cat just standing and looking at this dog,

being like, "What the fuck do you think you are?",

and the dog just stops barking and walks away, you know?

I think that was what John kind of did to them,

and they was like, "OK."

So I think they respected him - somehow.

They saw his humour.

Isis, they used to use him to imitate popular guys from the BBC.

They were laughing - "A-ha-ha!

"You should have done this as a job."

Welcome to Phoenix, Arizona.

Johnny Cantlie, this man was born on a bike!

Why do we still need a piece of old dead cow?

It is the ultimate in motorcycling...

John had a ruthless energy.

He would act out - with great enthusiasm -

his endeavours and his missions.

- TYRES SCREECH - He started out with motorbikes...

LAUGHTER

..screeching around, acting like a lunatic.

Mikey, how do you respond to people that say

that what you were just doing is just bloody irresponsible

and - quite honestly - putting other people's lives in danger?

And then he suddenly turned up on the scene

as this freelance photojournalist,

going around, looking down the barrels of tanks.

I think people thought he was full of shit, but he wasn't.

And I think this hindered his credibility as a good journalist.

Because he'd never really been trained by, say, the military,

his energetic, maverick mentality

meant that, very often, he would overextend -

which is why he always got himself in trouble.

SINGING IN ARABIC

Islamic State started setting up their own Sharia courts,

formalising local power.

They spoke of themselves as a new nation,

and now they just need money.

- NEWS ARCHIVE: - Isis is taking over ever more

of rebel-held northern Syria.

- NEWS ARCHIVE: - They've now got, it's thought, at least 20 hostages.

It's a pretty big business.

INTERVIEWER: When did you realise that these people want money,

they want political leverage?

Since the very beginning, for all of us.

They came in and took a few pictures,

and I had to pose with a letter

where there was written "Two million euros."

That's a lot of money.

Like, two million euros,

that's completely insane.

And my family don't have that kind of money,

so my head couldn't understand, "How can I get back from this?"

In my case, it was to the important people of Spain

and the leadership of the country -

"Please do what these people want to do,

"because if not, they will kill me."

Javier and Ricardo are not your enemy.

Islamic State group make their first direct contact

with Javier's wife Monica, reaching her by email.

And next, the ransom demands come through

for John and James's families.

They had an encrypted email that our FBI couldn't penetrate.

Know that we are many, and we are many in numbers...

We had a feeling they might be British

because of some of the wording in the emails.

And know that you cannot harm us in the least...

The early one was really rather cordial.

I think there was a tiny window there.

But that tone changed over time.

And know that the ground that we sit on

is the ground that we will bury you in!

And the terrorists wanted to directly negotiate

with our government.

They wanted more than 100 million euro for the release of Jim.

The ransom prices for John and James -

as British and American citizens - are astronomical.

They were asking millions and millions of dollars.

We had a very clear policy,

which is to say that we would do everything we could

to try and get hostages home,

but we would not pay ransoms to terrorist kidnappers

for the very clear reason that if we did,

they would kidnap more British citizens.

It was, I accept, a tough policy.

I took it to the G8, and I looked all of the other countries

in the eye - the French, the Italians, all of them -

and said, "Let's all sign up."

So, nominally, other countries in the world

had signed up to this policy.

Our government did not negotiate with terrorists -

and they made that clear.

But the government, meanwhile, was telling me

that Jim was their highest priority over and over and over.

So, as a mom, I wanted to hear that -

that, yes, my government may say publicly

they won't negotiate with terrorists,

but that privately, my government's telling me

that Jim's their highest priority.

I understand from a political perspective

why states shouldn't pay.

But I also understand that any family should be allowed the right

to do what they deem necessary.

Had it been my kid, I would have said,

"Well, eff you, I will do it myself, then."

We met with the highest level at the White House that I had to date.

They were very kind, they listened.

We went to FBI.

And what was horrific was, that is when we were told for the first time

that, as American citizens,

we would be prosecuted if we dared to raise ransom.

We certainly would have risked prosecution,

but I know I wanted to believe that our government would privately

find a way to do something to bring our son home.

The British and Americans, they were much more depressed,

and there were more anxiety among them because they knew

that their governments were not going to speak with these people.

John also told me, "It's not fair that we are being forgotten here."

We knew that people will be killed soon.

They started to torture us again,

like, quite heavy, three, four times a day.

They stripped us for food and blankets.

James was one of the main targets of the Beatles.

They saw a picture of him dressed in uniform,

so they were convinced that he was an army guy.

He was being beaten really badly by them.

But he handled that.

He was really, really strong, very, very strong.

The victimhood, it was not his style.

If somebody was beaten, James was the one who was consoling him

and telling him, "Yeah, that's going to pass."

He was the ones who shared food with the rest of the people.

If there are two tomatoes, James took the smallest one

and gave you the bigger one.

I don't remember one selfish moment from him.

The evenings, they were very difficult.

We would sit in completely darkness all by ourselves

and our own thoughts.

And that was tough...

..and very lonely.

I remember what moved me the most was John Cantlie.

The way he could tell stories, like, fucking amazing.

It's like you have hidden that story until the right moment.

Sometimes I remember when we were all most scared and tired

and hungry and beaten up, he made his lecture

about riding more than a million miles on a motorbike.

And we were sitting on our small motorbikes,

using our water bottles as the handle bar.

And...

..I remember him talking about

the path only two metres wide in the Himalayas.

And he's just describing, of course, the mountains,

but this river right next to us, like 100 metres down.

All of us were sitting on a motorbike in a line,

trying to stay on the path.

So that was thrilling, exciting and beautiful.

That moved me a lot.

That was his own life he spoke about, his old life.

I think that John knew that he had burned all his matches.

There was a part of him that really, really, really regretted

that he went back to Syria.

There was part of him that hated himself.

He was really tough on himself.

If they got their freedom again, John and James wanted to change.

You know, "Don't go back and try to be a hero.

"Just go back and be humble

"and be happy that you have your freedom.

"Don't take that for granted."

Jens has returned to Syria,

13 months after Daniel was kidnapped,

and he's about to have an encounter

with the men holding Daniel, James and John.

Everybody is super nervous.

You get total paranoia when you're in that phase of the operation,

because even the smallest thing can go wrong.

What would prevent them from just taking the money, taking me,

knowing that there's a lonely guy sitting in the middle of nowhere

with two million euros?

I mean, that would be the easiest heist ever, right?

A little past eight o'clock, all of a sudden, a motorcycle comes.

It slows down, drives past and stops right behind the car.

There are two people, both wearing black fatigues.

I walked towards them with open hands.

We had agreed on a code name.

I had to place the money in a bag.

He didn't even open it, he just weighs it.

And then I said to him, "We have a deal," stretched out my hand,

then he gave me a handshake.

He knew English. I mean, it could have been one of them.

I don't know which of them.

And then he just spun around and got on the bike.

And then he disappeared across the border to the south.

This transaction lasted less than two minutes

and it felt like two hours.

And then there was a very long waiting game.

The three Beatles came into the room, threw a blanket over my head,

dragged me to the door,

and two days later, I crossed the border...

..and came into freedom.

And there he stood, Jens...

..with a new pair of glasses for me.

We hugged, and it was very emotional.

And it was difficult for him to let go.

He had been looking for me for 13 months,

blaming me for destroying his sleep.

This tremendous relief at that time, it was very moving.

We celebrated his freedom,

and the day after, we flew back home to Denmark.

It was full of emotions.

I was super, super excited, excited, excited until I saw him.

And once I saw him, he was OK, something unbelievable.

I didn't want to see anyone, just to be with him. It's like...

..I don't need anybody else.

It really wasn't until after the Spanish came out,

the French came out, then the Italian...

..then it became clearer and clearer to me that,

"Wait a minute, our government's not negotiating."

The Europeans are, and that's why they are coming out.

I was so shocked. I was so...

So disappointed.

People who'd taken time to meet with me

had listened and then chosen not to help -

and had not been truthful till the very end,

when it was much too late for us as citizens to raise a ransom.

In June 2014, the Islamic State group has reached its peak,

seizing Mosul, Iraq's second city.

It now controls the largest amount of territory

ever held by an extremist organisation.

- NEWS ARCHIVE: - The Sunni militant group Isis proclaimed its leader,

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as the leader of all Muslims.

SHOUTING

GUNFIRE, HORNS HONK

- NEWS ARCHIVE: - Iraq's second city, Mosul, is still emptying out

as the country risks breaking apart.

These are just some of the huge numbers fleeing

as the Islamic militants of Isis notch up their gains.

To see Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, after killing people and bombing

and cutting the heads, and he's like saying,

"I am the Khalifa"...

- NEWS ARCHIVE: - A terrified man is led away to be killed.

..are you crazy? Like, after all these crimes?

This is not Islam.

All of a sudden, they control a city like Mosul

with, what, 2.5 million people?

This is now more than a regional threat.

These guys are serious, This is going to be a big, big, big problem.

What was different about Isil State was, for the first time,

here was an Islamist,

extremist, violent organisation that had money,

oil, weapons and, effectively, a country.

And so we had to act as urgently as we could.

- BARACK OBAMA: - Today, I authorised two operations in Iraq -

targeted air strikes to protect our American personnel

and a humanitarian effort to help save thousands of Iraqi civilians.

I mean, it was bound to happen

that they would have massive retaliation against Islamic State.

We intend to stay vigilant

and take action if these terrorist forces threaten our personnel

or facilities anywhere in Iraq.

And I knew that environment would make it almost impossible

to conduct...not only negotiations,

but also trying to send people in and out.

Tonight, we give thanks to our men and women in uniform.

God bless the United States of America.

By the summer of 2014,

only the British and American prisoners are left.

The start of the bombing had inevitable consequences

for the fate and treatment

of the remaining British and American hostages.

In July of 2014, I was about to come back to the States

when my husband told me that they'd received the email

announcing that Jim was going to be killed.

But the email was quite graphic.

They were planning to very brutally kill Jim

if we, our family, did not stop the bombing.

The terrorists were going through us

for things they knew we couldn't do anything about.

When it became obvious to the captors

that our government was not engaging, they just made a decision.

"That's OK, we won't try and get money for the Americans and British.

"We're going to use them in a different way."

The Beatles are still holding Americans Steven Sotloff,

Peter Kassig, Kayla Mueller and James Foley

and the British - David Haines, Alan Henning and John Cantlie.

The UK and US are running out of time,

and with the announcement of the caliphate, it's time to respond.

I was absolutely clear that we had to find these hostages,

we had to find the people responsible

and that we had to defeat Isil in Syria.

I approached this from a soldier's mentality.

There is no negotiation.

We come through the fucking door, kill you all and get everyone out.

That was my only belief.

I had quite a lot of conversations directly with President Obama

about, "What assets do we have to try and find out where they are?"

It's an incredibly difficult thing to do,

but it is always right to try.

There was one attempt in July 2014.

Unfortunately, that had to be handed over to the Americans

because we couldn't build an air bridge

and American special forces executed that mission.

They put in incredible work to try and rescue John and James.

We thought we knew where they were.

The Americans put quite a large number of people on the ground.

Huge, huge resources went into trying to rescue them.

People went into harm's way, bravely.

But unfortunately it all failed, because they'd been moved.

Before I was released, the Beatles said,

"Take a good look...

"..because you will be the last one to see them alive."

So that was the last picture I had of James and Steven and Peter,

Alan, David and John.

Jim knew he wasn't coming back home.

But he wanted to reach out to us.

And so he sent the letter to us through Daniel.

To recite that letter to us, Daniel had memorised Jim's words.

The words in that letter were Jim.

It was just such a gift.

What he did was little anecdotes,

little lines to different members of our family,

to help each of us know that he remembered his last moments with us.

I remembered most vividly what he said about my mom,

that he was going to need her strength to reclaim his life,

I think he said.

It was very much Jim saying his goodbye to us.

John is held in captivity

and watches as all of his fellow captives are murdered.

This is James Wright Foley.

I'd encourage everyone to put themselves in John's shoes

and say, "What would I do to survive?"

Hello, my name is John Cantlie.

I'm going to show you the truth behind the systems

and motivation of the Islamic State.

He finds himself very quickly as their little media guru.

Hello, I'm John Cantlie...

Some people said, "Maybe he has become part of the enemy."

This is Mosul. It's been a while since I've ridden a motorcycle,

so excuse me if I wobble around a bit, but...

He had found a way to survive,

and I don't want to judge him in any way.

You know, who knows what any of us would do in those circumstances?

There are two sides to every story.

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