Brits taken Hostage by Iran - In their own words

Linda Davies, The Telegraph:

A year ago, my husband and I and our three young children - aged one, five and seven - left London to live in Dubai. Life here is good. The heat is seductive, the crime-free streets a wondrous relief and the sea, just five minutes from our door, is a new playground for us to explore.

This is the perfect place to learn to sail, we said to ourselves - no cutting north wind and driving rain. This is the perfect place for an adventure.

And so we bought a boat, a 38ft catamaran, and named it Sinbad. Like the prudent people we think ourselves to be, we decided to take her for an overnight sea trial before we took the children on any outings. Being novice sailors, we also took along the man who had just sold us the boat - a charming Aussie with 20 years of sailing experience and a reassuring manner.

My husband picked out an island, 60 miles off the coast. "It's military," he said. "But it says here" - and he quoted from the guidebook - "that you can moor up perfectly safely as long as you don't try to go ashore."

The idea was that we would enjoy a day's sail, moor up overnight by this tranquil island, drink a few whiskies, play a few rounds of cards and gaze at the stars as our boat bobbed gently at its moorings off a deserted beach.

Our friend checked out the island with four "experienced" local sailors, who all claimed to have sailed around it and moored off its coast. It was a great place, they all said. Within 24 hours, we were damning those people to hell. READ MORE

We set sail an hour early on a perfect Dubai morning: the searing heat of summer was abating and there was a promising breeze.

The boat moved like a dream and we soon left the coast far behind. Once in the open sea, we found ourselves in the midst of international shipping lanes. Great behemoths powered past us carrying oil, building materials, foodstuffs.

We negotiated them all and by 3.40pm, we were approaching Abu Musa island. My husband took out his binoculars. "Bloody hell!" he exclaimed. "This place is seriously tooled up. I can see three gun emplacements just from here." Now, that should have told us to get the hell out and run as though we had the devil himself on our tails.

But I didn't think like that two weeks ago. I was well aware that the world was far from perfect. I'd been mugged in front of my then four-year-old son in broad daylight outside the back door to my house in Notting Hill. But, like most people, I believed that nothing truly bad could ever happen to me. It took just moments to prove me wrong.

Suddenly, two gunboats came screaming out of the harbour. I hurriedly covered up, throwing a T-shirt and sarong over my bikini.

Seconds later, at least 10 men, many of them armed, swarmed on to our boat. I sat there in astonished, terrified silence. This was the sort of thing that happened only in movies.

I tried to stay calm as the men herded us together and searched our boat, their jackboots trampling over our shining decks. As I looked at those black boots and black guns and remorseless faces, I decided that I had to try to engage with these people as soon as possible. So I spoke to them, forcing myself to smile.

By then, they were examining my old camera, gesturing at it and shooting questions at me in Farsi.

Thinking it would help, I took out the film and gave it to them. This was, I later discovered, a huge mistake. In every subsequent interrogation, I was asked: "Why did you deliberately expose the film? What were you covering up?"

We were interrogated until darkness fell by several men who spoke limited English. Then our cat was escorted out to a marker buoy 1,000 yards from shore. At this point, we felt it was equally likely that they would release us or shoot us. There was much arguing among the 20 or so Iranian Navy officers.

Then, abruptly, we were ordered to turn around and sail into port. We moored up alongside a pontoon, flanked by the gunboats and guards.

None of us slept. The next morning, we emerged in time to see a military plane roar over us and land on the island. Soon afterwards, a jeep pulled up and two Navy officers were ushered on board. They spoke English and seemed civilised. We didn't know it then but they were to become our friends. But not just then.

First, they interrogated us on the boat. Next, they did it all over again and filmed it. After disappearing, they returned a few hours later to tell us they would probably soon be sending us on our way. But then, in one of the sudden reversals that was to become common over the next two weeks, we were told that, no, we could not go.

Higher authorities had decreed that we must board a military plane and fly to Bandar Abbas for further interrogation.

"What about your promise to release us?" I asked. They smiled and apologised. "We cannot make those decisions," they answered. "We are just following orders."

Before letting me off the boat, they gave me a chador and a headscarf. I soon grew to loathe wearing them.

We boarded the decrepit military plane and I thought to myself: how will anyone ever be able to explain to my children that I threw my life away? I had, in my blithe ignorance, threatened their future.

We landed and for the first time in my life, I was met by a car at the foot of the steps which descended from the aircraft. Revolutionary guards patrolled the airport, resplendently sinister in their green uniforms. In the days to come, I realised that they are the ones you should truly fear.

Some time ago, I lived for while in Peru. I have also worked in the Eastern bloc countries, so I am used to seeing extreme poverty and the mindless ugliness of socialist economies. Here, though, just 30 minutes from the wealth of the United Arab Emirates, was a brutal poverty and ugliness which - in a country that produces three-and-a-half million barrels of oil a day - was obscene.

On the terrifying drive from the airport, I was thinking: intellectualise, distance yourself. Be the Oxford economist, not the prisoner.

We were deposited in a safe house on a naval compound. The doors were locked, the windows barred, and a guard shadowed us everywhere.

We had set sail on Friday and arrived at the interrogation house on Saturday. This was to be our home for the next eight days.

Each day, we were questioned - sometimes together, sometimes separately. Our story was simple: we were not spies or terrorists. We were videoed and photographed, we signed statements saying that we had not been ill-treated, and we were promised, almost daily, that we would soon be released.

These broken promises were far harder to deal with than the interrogation, which was quite civilised. I did learn, however, from a charming and erudite admiral, that if we had sailed up to the island in the dark, we would have been shot.

Our interrogators never shook hands with me and scarcely made eye contact. I was at once grateful for and resentful of the dictates of a religion which forbids a man from touching another women unless she is his wife.

Some of the men professed sympathy with my plight as a mother separated from her children. They allowed me almost daily telephone contact with my brood - a gift and an ordeal. To hear the voices of my children was a kind of sublime torture. But all requests for contact with the British embassy were denied.

We soon came to realise that unless the embassy knew where we were, we were invisible. Fortunately, we have a switched-on nanny, who managed to interpret the subtle hints I was able to give while surrounded by Navy and Intelligence personnel.

I had been told to say we had technical difficulties with our boat and would be delayed for a few days - nothing more. But, after a few days, I realised that we probably had nothing to lose and blurted out our location - much to the consternation of the guards. Our nanny contacted the embassy. Suddenly, after eight days of incarceration, we were told we were being "expelled".

We were driven down a dirt track to a rundown building which looked, to my novelist's mind, like an execution chamber. Miraculously, inside we found men and woman from the British and Australian Embassies. I have rarely been so glad to see anyone.

After being sped off to the airport, we were marched through passport control - we were being expelled, with the full force of the Islamic Republic of Iran behind us. But, sod's law, the plane was full.

"Pull people off," I said -autocracy can be contagious. Sadly, they could not and did not and we were sent, glumly, to a hotel in Bandar Abbas.

The next morning, when we tried to leave, plain-clothes men appeared from nowhere and tried to stop us. Our embassy personnel resisted.

They got us into taxis. At the airport we checked in, whereupon a large man from "the Judiciary" appeared and said that we were now prohibited from leaving. He held out a scrap of paper to that effect. The British and the Australian diplomats argued; he threatened them with arrest. He called in scores of policemen, who strutted around. He pushed around the diplomats. And he was insistent: we had to fly to Teheran. The diplomats, however, could not fly with us.

Again, the flight was full. So we whiled away a day in the airport, smoking and playing Boggle. Never, as an adult, had I been so powerless.

Before we were separated from our embassy officials, we were told that the British ambassador and his wife would meet us at Teheran airport. Alternately confident and fearful, we flew off.

When we arrived at Teheran, we were ushered down the steps into a minibus. Once inside, we heard the doors being ostentatiously locked. The windows were curtained, and all attempts to discover where we were being taken were vigorously rebuffed. The driver sped off at breakneck speed, only to slam on the brakes theatrically five minutes later.

We were then frogmarched into the cold Teheran air and ordered into another minibus. Again, the curtains were pulled. But not completely: a crack enabled me to see the rain sluicing down the windows, the razor wire that flanked the quiet road. I did think then that I was on the way to my own execution.

On and on went the nightmare journey as rain froze to snow. After 50 minutes, we turned and slowed. The doors were thrown open and the first thing I saw was expensive topiary. My hopes soared. We were led into a five-star hotel, bustled past reception, past the International Mining Conference, past the Delegation of Pakistan, into the lifts and up to our rooms.

"Hey," I felt like shouting. "I'm being held hostage here by the government. Tell our embassies!" But who would believe this raving woman in a chador and veil, blue eyes flashing with desperation?

The next four days were spent incarcerated in the hotel. We were questioned again; but by then, even the interrogators seemed bored. We had recited our story perhaps 40 times. In between interrogations, we played more Boggle and bridge.

After two weeks, we were freed. We arrived home at 4am yesterday. I woke my sleeping sons and squeezed them hard. Then I crept into my baby's room, woke her and wept.

I had always been blasé about freedom and democracy.

No more: what I have taken for granted, I now treasure. Amnesty International has a new donor.