A life helping OTHERS

How did Kiwi Red Cross nurse Louisa Akavi come to be kidnapped by the brutal Isis regime in Syria six years ago? David Fisher reports

For six years, a cone of silence protected the life of a New Zealander held hostage by a brutal regime.

Media across New Zealand held back — as did outlets around the world — after the family of Louisa Akavi received a chilling email from inside Islamic State. Akavi’s terrorist kidnappers told her Porirua family she would be killed if her 2013 capture was made public.

Akavi had dedicated her life to the needs of the world’s most vulnerable. She set out as a young nurse in the mid-1980s, disenchanted with medical bureaucracy, in search of places where red tape didn’t get in the way of helping people.

First came Malaysia and refugee camps set up for those known as the “Vietnamese boat people”. Reunified Vietnam created a flood of need from 1978 through the next two decades as three million people fled in often decrepit vessels to seek life abroad.

This was Akavi’s introduction to the humanitarian work which would guide her life, working for the International Committee of the Red Cross. When she arrived in Malaysia in 1987, thousands of people had landed by boat across Southeast Asia. They had survived war, Vietnam’s “education camps” and a sea voyage which claimed thousands of others.

From Malaysia, Akavi went to Somalia amid the chaos of a collapsing government and an international effort to maintain peace. She moved on to Bosnia, telling the

Kapiti Observer in 2010 of driving into the city of Tuzla as it was bombarded, with a stream of men, women and children fleeing in the other direction.

“It’s winter, it’s snowing, it’s cold,” she recalled. “And I see on the road a child’s doll, and then I see some shoes, and then I see all of these families, women and children with their heads covered and vests . . . wearing boots and no gloves, their hands are bare, carrying everything they own.”

In Chechnya in December 1996, Akavi survived a brush with death. Men armed with silenced weapons entered the hospital as she and other Red Cross health workers slept.

Akavi survived but fellow New Zealand nurse Sheryl Thayer was among the six who were shot dead.

Ethiopia came next, and then this century’s disasters and wars. In 2003 she went into Iraq, restocking medical supplies and travelling under the protection of armed guards.

Afghanistan followed, with Akavi working to promote health and hygiene among local women.

Other missions saw her working in refugee camps in Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Iran, and amidst those in poverty or prison in the Solomon Islands and the Philippines.

“It does become a little bit hard, but it is the small things,” she told the

Kapiti Observer in 2010. “It’s working with the national staff who do the best they can. I don’t know why I still do it. It’s something I do well.

“I know that I can make a difference, a small difference.”

By August 2013, she was listed as working in Damascus, Syria. It was the world’s latest hell-hole and like so many places before, Akavi was there.

On October 10 she went into northwest Syria with a team of others to assess the need in the area and deliver medical supplies. It was known to be dangerous — armed guards escorted the health workers.

At that stage, the conflict in Syria had spun out of control. It was a multisided struggle defeating any of the attempts by combatants or major powers in the region to contend with the rise of Isis (Islamic State) militants.

On October 13, Akavi’s group was returning to Damascus when it was intercepted and fired upon. She and five Red Cross colleagues, plus a Red Crescent worker, were kidnapped.

Three of the aid workers were released the next day. The others have not been heard of publicly since.

In Akavi’s case, at least, there was a reason for that silence. In her case, it emerged, her life depended on it.

It is unknown exactly who took the group. Syria had descended into true chaos with myriad actors, shifting allegiances and converts from neighbouring and distant countries flocking to Isis.

But it is believed she was held for a time by Mohammed Emwazi, the British citizen and Isis extremist known as Jihadi John. He was one of the cluster of foreign Isis fighters called “the Beatles” by captives because of their English accents.

He was more notoriously behind the beheading of several hostages and other captives of Isis.

A highly placed source who has seen intelligence briefings relating to the hostages, said in 2015: “She was being held . . . is being held by the same people who have been responsible for the executions.”

Akavi’s situation was described as “pretty grim” and her chance of release “slim”.

It is understood one of the first interactions between the New Zealand woman and her Isis captors was to obtain an email address through which contact was made with her family.

The Herald has been told her captors made contact with Akavi’s family in New Zealand through the email address demanding a ransom and warning that media coverage of her situation would lead to her death.

Her family reached out to the Government, and as a result her situation became a closely held secret. Even her nationality was withheld.

It didn’t stop word leaking out, in New Zealand media circles or in foreign diplomatic and media circles focused on the ongoing crisis in Syria.

When media contacted officials for comment on Akavi, then-Foreign Minister Murray McCully worked fast to speak with senior editorial staff and spell out the potentially fatal consequences publication could have for the nurse.

There were cases where overseas media, unaware of the threat faced by Akavi, published her name and nationality.

Such was the Government’s focus on her wellbeing, Five Eyes partners were ready to respond to any publication and to seek co-operation. One such episode saw the New

York Times publish Akavi’s name in an online display showing how many hostages had been taken. In that case, the Herald has been told, her name was picked up by a United States intelligence agency which alerted New Zealand. McCully, with support from US intelligence, was able to convince the newspaper to remove her name from its website.

The US had intelligence Akavi was being held with other high-value hostages, including British journalist John Cantlie, US journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, US aid workers Kayla Mueller and Peter Kassig, and British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning.

An assault authorised by then-US President Barack Obama came too late. The special forces units found their holding place in a disused refinery abandoned, engaging in a fierce firefight against militants as they searched the empty facility.

Between August and October 2014, an opportunity for escape presented itself. Mueller had by then been taken under the control of senior leader Abu Sayyaf, who subjected her to

It’s winter, it’s snowing, it’s cold. And I see on the road a child’s doll, and then I see some shoes, and then I see all of these families, women and children with their heads covered and vests... wearing boots and no gloves, their hands are bare, carrying everything they own. Louisa Akavi (inset) in 2010

repeated rapes. Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was also named as being present and as having raped Mueller.

A fellow captive was a teenage girl from Iraq’s Yazidi religious minority, a community on which Isis had preyed and forced into sex slavery.

The girl of 13 or 14 saw the chance to escape, urging Mueller to come with her. She later told America’s ABC News Mueller replied: “No, because I am American. If I escape with you, they will do everything to find us again. It is better for you to escape alone. I will stay here.”

The teenager found her way to a Special Operations headquarters in Iraqi Kurdistan where she was repeatedly quizzed by intelligence officers. Information she relayed was passed to New Zealand and was compelling.

Mueller was killed in February 2015.

By the end of 2015, Akavi’s captivity is believed to have taken on a new dimension after the wounding of al-Baghdadi in an air strike. It was this attack — or complications from the injuries of this attack — which intelligence officials believed may have led to militants using Akavi for Baghdadi’s medical care. It is unclear when that care — if intelligence assessments are accurate — began.

New Zealand’s efforts to find Akavi happened under the codename Operation Rocks. The Herald has chosen to withhold detailed operational information relating to intelligence about Akavi and about the New Zealand recovery effort.

Sources who provided the information were always concerned it could affect Akavi’s safety, and wanted no detail public until she was confirmed alive or dead.

It is possible to say Akavi’s plight was a constant concern at the highest levels of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Mfat), the Defence Force, the intelligence agencies and the Office of the Prime Minister. When former Prime Minister Sir John Key considered sending troops to Iraq for training, part of the consideration was whether it could lead to reprisals against Akavi. In the end, he decided her plight could not dictate or affect New Zealand’s response.

And when Jacinda Ardern took over as Prime Minister, one of the first top-secret briefings she received was a rundown on Akavi’s captivity and the latest intelligence on where and how she was being held. Ardern was first formally briefed on the situation on November 3, 2017.

A possible rescue mission was discussed in early 2017 when Akavi’s location was identified but it never went ahead. The reasons are unknown but may have included the expectation it had a low chance of success and a high chance of casualties.

The collapse of the Isis caliphate led to an increased focus by those involved in Operation Rocks. The ongoing disintegration of the Islamic group created greater risk and increased opportunity.

It included consideration of a payment to secure Akavi’s release through a third party. Such a move needed careful legal consideration, with New Zealand law and international policy forbidding payments to terrorists. The entire New Zealand operation had been framed and supported by constant legal advice from the Defence Force and Mfat. The work of the Kiwi team inside Iraq — and, on occasion, in Syria — led to improved intelligence on Akavi’s whereabouts and a greater appreciation of ways of securing her safety.

The Operation Rocks team worked to find advantage in any opportunity. When so-called Kiwi Jihadi Mark Taylor was captured, he was visited and interviewed in the Kurdish jail in which he was held. There was no direct information about Akavi.

By early February 2019, the coalition fighting Islamic State had all but destroyed the geographical caliphate, reducing its territory from spanning two nations and 10 million people to a town called Baghouz (Baghuz) which sat in a crook of the Euphrates River on the border of Iraq and Syria.

That month, word was passed from inside the town that highranking members of Islamic State wanted out. They hoped to trade their way to freedom by trading three named hostages.

One was Cantlie, the British journalist held since November 2012. There was Jesuit priest Paolo Dall’Oglio, and they said, there was Akavi. She, too, would be freed.

Those involved in attempting to recover Akavi believe it was highly likely to have been real at the time it was made, even if it wasn’t repeated in the month since.

Baghouz fell in March, but for a strip of cliffs riddled with caves along the Euphrates.

In all the chaos, even as the dust settled, there was no sign of Akavi.

Possibilities included that she was still being held and had been spirited away elsewhere in Syria, or to Iraq or Turkey.

The worst scenario was that she had been killed in that final onslaught on Baghouz. One source said the identification of the dead was “haphazard” in the aftermath of that battle and sometimes there could be few remains to work from.

The Red Cross and the Government both talked to Akavi’s family to advise them her story was set to become public. That took place in Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ office last week.

The Operation Rocks team remains silent.

Said one source involved: “We want her to see her family again.”