Scott Taylor Taken Hostage in Iraq

'My five days in hell' Reporter beaten, chained, threatened with death

The Ottawa Citizen - Monday, September 13, 2004

by Bruce Garvey

Veteran Canadian war correspondent, author and magazine publisher Scott Taylor has survived a horror-filled, brush-with-death kidnapping in Iraq by Islamist terrorists who came within a hair of beheading him.

Mr. Taylor, a frequent contributor to the Citizen from war zones such as the Middle East and the Balkans, was badly beaten, chained, blindfolded and handcuffed during his ordeal and repeatedly threatened with beheading by masked and hooded Turkmen and al-Qaeda terrorists who accused him of being an Israeli spy.

Last night, Mr. Taylor had safely crossed the Iraqi border into Turkey and was in touch with Canadian diplomats there who were "providing him with consular assistance."

In a telephone interview from a police station on the Turkish-Iraqi border, he told the Citizen: "Five days in hell, but now the nightmare is over.

"Six times in those five days I was convinced I was going to die right there on the spot. I can barely walk from the beatings I got, but it was the mental torture of thinking six times you're about to die that's tough."

Mr. Taylor said he was originally detained by Turkmen terrorists before being handed over to a non-Iraqi Arab group affiliated with al-Qaeda who dealt out the worst of the beatings he endured.

"Turkish intelligence people say I'm the only westerner ever released by the al-Qaeda group and they can't understand why," he said.

In Ottawa, Department of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Kimberly Phillips said the government was "aware of the situation" and had been in contact with Mr. Taylor, although details of his ordeal remained "sketchy." She said consular assistance would be provided to him and his family. The Turkish Embassy in Ottawa did not return calls.

Steve Pike, a press officer for the U.S. Department of State, said he hadn't heard about Mr. Taylor's case, but added: "We deplore hostage-taking and do not believe concessions should be made to terrorists."

Mr. Taylor's nightmare began last Wednesday when he travelled from Turkey into northern Iraq, accompanied by a Turkish reporter acting as his translator.

Mr. Taylor had travelled to Turkey to deliver the manuscript of a book he had written on the Turkmen of Iraq to a Turkish publisher. The Turkmen are one of the ethnic and religious factions that make up the mosaic of Iraq.

They have formed a coalition of Turkish groups known as the Iraqi Turkmen Front, which is demanding a major role in the future governance of the oil-rich northern region of Kirkuk, which it claims as the Turkmen capital.

While in Mosul, a Canadian aid worker contact tipped him that U.S. forces were planning a major push into Tal Afar, 50 kilometres away and about 60 kilometres from the Turkish border. It's one of the insurrection hot spots, such as Fallujah, that have become extremist-controlled no-go areas for American and Iraqi forces.

"It was dusk, almost dark, when we got there," Mr. Taylor said. "The road was crowded with people fleeing and we asked at a local police post how we could find a prominent politician I knew there, and they directed us to get into a cab."