Kiwi captive’s guardian angel
Tracy Watkins’ exclusive interview with the parents of killed American aid worker Kayla Mueller
We know it was early in her captivity that New Zealand nurse Louisa Akavi made the journey from her Islamic State prison cell to write a letter as proof of life for her family as the start of ransom negotiations.
We also know she would have seen other hostages make the same journey – some of them subsequently freed, others before being led to their deaths as a very public display of the extreme brutality of Isis.
But Akavi was very sick at that time. One account suggests she needed help to walk and was too shaky to write the letter unassisted. The young woman believed to have helped Akavi finish the letter was an American humanitarian, Kayla Mueller.
Part of the high-profile group of hostages brutalised by the infamous Isis executioner Jihadi John, Kayla and Akavi shared a cell in a makeshift prison at an old oil refinery in Raqqa, the capital of the self-proclaimed Isis caliphate.
Some of what we know of Akavi’s time there has been pieced together by Kayla’s parents, Carl and Marsha, who have been desperately seeking answers since their daughter’s reported death in 2015.
It has been difficult to verify every detail because of the circumstances. But Stuff has confirmed many details through government sources, including the fact that Kayla and Akavi shared a cell and were with other Western hostages, including those who were later beheaded. We have confirmed that Akavi was there during the reign of horror by Jihadi John and his fellow sadists, who became known as The Beatles. We were also told that Akavi’s employer – the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) – was sent proof of life from Isis, and that Akavi was at one time gravely ill.
The ICRC has in recent days confirmed that Akavi was still alive in 2014, and it was in active communication with the group. But it could not persuade it to release her.
The Muellers say they still don’t know what really happened to Kayla – and they had always hoped that one day Akavi might be freed and shed some light. And the more they learnt, the more they took comfort that Kayla and Akavi had each other to lean on through their darkest days.
Marsha says they were told that Kayla and Akavi shared a cell and, more than that, that they were close. They got some of their information via a young Yazidi girl who was also a prisoner there.
Speaking to Stuff in Prestcott, Arizona, Marsha says: ‘‘When I first heard that Kayla was with another woman, and she was a nurse, it was such a relief to me because I just felt like a nurse would help Kayla, and I’m a nurse … and I’m [about the same age]. That was so touching to me that it was almost like ‘Mom is with Kayla’. That was what was really special to me. Because of that, I have a really special feeling for Louisa.’’
Of their time in captivity
together, Marsha says she has only fragments of information. ‘‘We do know that it sounds like Kayla tried to help Louisa. Kayla had been trying to learn Arabic, so she was able to help more with the language, I think. It sounds like Louisa was hurt and Kayla was trying to help her in that way. It sounds like they protected each other, to me, kept each other strong. Sounds like Louisa was a very strong woman. I think they were good for each other.’’
Torture, confinement, rape Our interview with Carl and Marsha was in April 2017, when there was still no way of knowing if Akavi would make it out of Syria alive. She had been a prisoner of Isis since 2013, captured on a medical run in northern Syria while working for the International Red Cross.
Colleagues taken hostage in the same armed ambush were freed soon after but, despite appeals, Akavi remained in captivity. It is unclear why she was held while the others were released.
But we know for certain that she ended up with other Western hostages whose names became synonymous with the horror that was Isis – James Foley, Steven Sotloff, David Haines and others.
Reports from hostages who were ransomed out paint a harrowing picture of their life in captivity.
Kayla Mueller appears to have been singled out for particularly brutal treatment – tortured, held for weeks in solitary confinement, and later raped repeatedly. Yet it seems Kayla never stopped thinking of those around her.
Marsha says they heard through others that Kayla was desperate to protect her older cellmate, Akavi, when their jailors came to separate them.
Stuff sought out the Muellers after reading reports that Kayla gave up her chance to escape to stay behind to protect a fellow hostage, an older woman who was sick. Our government at the time confirmed that it believed those reports were referring to Akavi, who at one stage was believed very ill and had suffered shrapnel injuries.
Marsha says she has never been able to verify that report. ‘‘As far as trying to escape, whether that had to do with Louisa [I don’t know]. As far as the Louisa part that we know, we were told that Kayla was going to be taken out of the prison, with the Yazidi girls, a couple of the others, and because they were younger they were going to be taken to Abu Sayyaf’s home.
‘‘And they were told that Kayla was to be given to Abu Bakr alBaghdadi ... what we were told from one of the Yazidi girls is that Kayla begged them to let Louisa go with them but they wouldn’t let her go.’’
Sayyaf was the Isis oil and gas emir, later killed by coalition forces. Al-Baghdadi is the Isis leader, who is believed still alive and in hiding.
Kayla was reported dead in 2015 by Isis, who said she was killed in a Jordanian air strike. The United States Government announced it had evidence she was dead. Photographs of her body were provided but her family believe there are still unanswered questions.
Could they have paid?
The fact that proof of life was provided for Akavi during the early period of her captivity has been confirmed to Stuff by informed sources. But we have been told by the same sources that negotiations never reached the stage of a ransom being asked for. It is unclear, however, whether any such demand was made direct to her employer, the ICRC.
Stuff has been told that the government was not directly involved in the negotiation process with Isis, despite Akavi being a New Zealand national. Any direct negotiations would have been with the ICRC.
The ICRC says it has a policy against paying ransoms. ‘‘We are a front-line organisation, with thousands of people who work in or very close to conflict zones, and we do not want to create a monetary incentive for kidnapping those staff members,’’ a spokesman told Stuff.
The issue of ransom for Isis hostages has been plagued with controversy.
Some Western hostages have been quietly freed, reportedly after their governments or corporations with kidnap insurance paid money to their captors. The sums of money seem to have been in the millions, making kidnapping a lucrative sideline for Isis.
The Muellers are frustrated that the US Government, like New Zealand, would not consider a ransom, given reports that other nationals whose governments paid were released.
‘‘We had many opportunities to get Kayla out of there,’’ says Carl. ‘‘They wanted to get rid of Kayla. [We got] 12 emails, you know, telling us that ‘this is what you need to do, this is how you need to do it, this is how much this government paid for their hostages, we don’t want to hear from you until you have a substantial amount of money towards this goal’.’’
One email warned that Kayla would be killed if they and their government didn’t meet Isis’ demands within 30 days.
‘‘We didn’t know, would they kill [Kayla], would they not kill her,’’ says Marsha. ‘‘That’s also when we realised about Louisa, because she would have been next. That was one of the things we had been told. That once Kayla was killed, then Louisa would have been next in line … then nothing came of it.’’
This seems to tally with information Stuff received around that time of rumours that an Isis video of Akavi was about to surface. It never happened.
‘A drop in the bucket’
Carl says there were missed opportunities to get their daughter home.
‘‘There was many opportunities to get Kayla out. But I blame it all on the [then] president [Barack Obama]. He knew Kayla was being tortured. He knew they’d pulled her fingernails out. He knew she was being kept in solitary confinement for weeks. He knew when she went to Abu Sayyaf’s home that she was being raped by al-Baghdadi. He knew these things but still did nothing.’’
Swift and decisive action to free the hostages should have been the first priority, he says. There were times when their location was known but that information was not acted on, Carl claims.
Alternatively, he says, the families of the American hostages should have been allowed to raise a ransom.
The Muellers did not have the money themselves – but believe they could have got enough money through supporters. They were warned, however, that it would be breaking anti-terrorism laws to do so.
‘‘We actually requested a letter to excuse people from giving us money to collect the ransom. They wouldn’t do it. Yes, we could have collected ransom, we probably could have collected enough ransom to get Kayla home, but they would not allow it,’’ says Carl.
Like New Zealand, the US Government believes that paying ransom puts all its nationals at risk by increasing the motivation to kidnap them. But Carl disagrees.
‘‘They’re going to kidnap Americans [regardless]. Look at what they did with all the Americans. They used them as political tools. They probably got more use out of them cutting their heads off publicly than the measly little $5 million, $6 million,
$20 million [ransom].
‘‘At that point in time, Isis was making hundreds of millions of dollars, if not daily, with the oil they were stealing and selling. These little ransoms were a drop in the bucket.’’
Marsha says Kayla probably wouldn’t have wanted them to pay ransom. ‘‘I don’t think Kayla would want us to help Isis. They were brutal to the Syrian people.’’
But there were other ways, she says. ‘‘You can negotiate without paying money. One thing that could have been [done] was that, in the very beginning, when Kayla was first taken, nothing was done then. They just sat back and waited and I think over there they thought well the great America will take care of it. And
we were even told by people over there that that’s basically what happened. Our government went over there and told them to stand down. ‘We are here. We will get Kayla back.’ ’’
Mental torture
Like with Akavi, Kayla’s captivity was kept a closely held secret for as long as possible.
‘‘Even in the very beginning, when Kayla was first taken, the NGOs told us not to talk, our government told us not to talk, Isis told us not to talk. No-one wanted us to talk. It was so confusing to me how all these groups, being against each other, all came up with the same solution. Don’t talk or we’ll kill her; don’t talk or they will kill her,’’ says Marsha.
Now she wonders if they would have been better to speak out. ‘‘But then some of the other families were up front and out there, and it didn’t do them any good. In our case, we knew that Isis, they didn’t want to keep Kayla. I really believe they were trying to give her back.’’
Before Kayla’s abduction, Carl and Marsha were self-confessed home bodies, their life revolving around family, church, work, and their local community of Prescott in Arizona. These days, they use the platform given to them by Kayla’s experience to raise awareness among their fellow Americans.
‘‘There’s a faction out there and they hate all of us infidels – and now we include New Zealand, all of the Western world – they hate us to the point where they enjoy torturing and killing us. They enjoyed torturing us,’’ says Carl. ‘‘They not only physically tortured Kayla they mentally tortured us. Can you imagine getting an email that says your daughter has 30 days to live? What would a family do? For the people out there that say you shouldn’t pay ransom, what if it was your daughter, what if it was your son? Your husband, your wife, your family member? You would have a different opinion.’’
As we end our interview, Marsha disappears into a room and returns with a plaster model of her daughter’s cupped hands.
‘‘You were asking about Kayla and her personality. Kayla came home at the end of May … it was a rough time for her ... One thing about Kayla, she was always so easy going and I was usually more uptight than Kayla. She would come up to me and I would have my hands like this,’’ says Marsha clasping her hands. ‘‘And she would unpeel every single one of my fingers. Standing in front of me, like ‘calm down, Mom’.
‘‘But, the night before she was leaving to go back to Turkey, we were sitting right here in this position and I was holding her hand and I said ‘oh Kayla I just don’t want to let go of your hand’. And we kept talking and the night came, we went to bed. The next day she came out, she had her big backpack all filled with gifts to take back to people. And she handed me that hand and said: ‘Mom, you will always have my hand.’ And that’s the last thing she gave me …’’