Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Mystery of TV presenter’s detention
Host Nick Bailey whisked from UK home soon after returning from South Africa
THE BBC TV presenter who filmed Rod and Rachel Saunders in the Drakensberg was detained by UK counter-terrorism police hours after the Cape Town-based British botanists were kidnapped by Islamic State suspects.
Award-winning BBC Gardeners’ World host Nick Bailey was whisked from his UK home soon after returning from South Africa and interrogated at an undisclosed London police station for five hours.
Bailey was then coached by hostage negotiators how to handle a possible Isis ransom demand for the Saunders couple before being released.
These dramatic developments unfolded just hours after Rod, 74, and Rachel, 63, were abducted from a remote KZN forest. Bailey sent an email, detailing these events, to a South African friend and colleague, Douglas McMurtry, who appeared as a guest in the Mpumulanga leg of his Gardeners’ World shoot.
“Nick’s email that Rod and Rachel had been kidnapped made my hair stand on end,” said McMurtry, a well-known orchid expert from Nelspruit whose friendship with the couple goes back to the 1960s when he studied horticulture with Rod.
“I couldn’t understand how Isis could be that clever. How did they link Nick Bailey with Rod and Rachel? That’s a big mystery to me.”
McMurtry is still in the dark as to why Bailey was questioned for so long. “I can’t believe Nick Bailey is Islamic State. I worked with him in South Africa for a year and got to know him well. He’s holidayed at my home three times. He cannot have IS links. He could not have tipped them off about Rod and Rachel.”
McMurtry also cannot understand why Bailey’s email contained a false reassurance. “At the end of his email he said, ‘don’t worry, Rod and Rachel have been rescued and are safe’. That’s very odd.”
Sources close to the South African investigation could not shed any light on the reason behind Bailey’s detention. But one possible explanation offered is that it was sparked by his selfie with the Saunders couple which he tweeted at 7.30pm on February 8.
“The amazing Rod and Rachel Saunders of Silverhill Seeds,” read the caption to the last photograph of the missing couple. “These guys know their South African native plants… and vitally where to find them. They sell an incredible range of seeds online.”
“This could have tipped off the kidnappers that they were holding hostages valued in the UK,” said a source.
“The UK cops would have also wanted to find out exactly who knew Bailey was filming the couple.”
On February 10 – a day after wrapping Bailey’s shoot – Rod and Rachel Saunders were kidnapped in Ngoye Forest Reserve near Mtunzini, 130km north of Durban. Despite intensive searches with tracker dogs and helicopters and a combined investigation involving the FBI and British police, they remain missing, feared dead.
Not even the quick arrest on February 15 of two prime IS-linked suspects Sayfydeen Aslam Del Vecchio, 38, and his wife, Fatima Patel, 27, has shed any light on the missing couple’s whereabouts. Neither has the arrest of a third suspect, Thembamandla Xulu, 19, for possession of the couple’s cellphones.
All three have since appeared twice in the Verulam Magistrate’s Court charged with the kidnapping, assault and robbery of the couple.
Del Vecchio and Patel also face charges under the Terrorism and Related Activities Act.
Damning evidence documented in an affidavit incriminates them in a R700 000 credit-card spending spree and an ATM ransack of Rachel’s FNB account.
Incriminating text messages also indicate that the couple were a target for an IS-motivated hunt, abduction and killing.
Investigators are hunting for a fourth suspect, Malawian Ahmad Jackson Mussa, aka Bazooka, who they believe is on the run in South Africa.
After the Saunders couple’s kidnapping, McMurtry says he battled to get information about developments, even from the botanists’ business partner at Silverhill Seeds in Kenilworth.