MY YEAR OF HELL AS JIHADI JOHN’S HOSTAGE

Captured by IS, brutalised by the British ‘Beatles’ ...a truly bone-chilling story of survival

Do you want to know a secret? You are to be next

DANISH photographer Daniel Rye was on the trail of missing journalist James Foley when, in 2013, he was seized in Syria. For 13 months he was tortured by British-born IS thugs. With him were hostages John Cantlie, Alan Henning and Foley himself. Rye, now 26, survived, and what follows is his account, the most intimately detailed ever from inside an IS jail, described in terrifying but utterly compelling terms by writer Puk Damsgård…

DO YOU know what you’re going to do?’ asked the Beatle ‘George’ from the driver’s seat. Daniel, who was blindfolded, and the four other hostages stayed silent. ‘You’re going to watch someone be executed,’ he said. The condemned man was a North African spy who worked for the West, hence his death sentence by an IS court. George – a Brit – began playing music, an IS Islamic hymn, and he chanted along as they drove out into the desert.

The vehicle stopped, a door opened and a hand gripped Daniel’s arm. George pushed the blindfold down around Daniel’s neck so that he could see a desert landscape with scattered tufts of grass – and a bulldozer.

He led Daniel and the others to the side of a hole, the size of an excavator shovel. A blindfolded middleaged man was on his knees next to the hole. His hands were tied together with a strip of fabric. It struck Daniel that the Beatles weren’t going to waste a pair of handcuffs on a dead man.

The hostages were asked to hold up A4 sheets of paper in front of them bearing the message: ‘I don’t want to end like him. Pay 2 M. Go to Danish Government.’

The man’s lips were moving in prayer. ‘John’ was standing behind him with a Glock pistol; ‘Ringo’ was filming from the other side of the grave; George was choreographing the entire scene. ‘Look into the camera and hold your pages towards the camera!’ shouted Ringo.

‘Don’t f**k up, Daniel, or we’ll shoot you!’ George chimed in.

John took a few steps back and shot the man in the back of the head, so that he toppled over, head first, then landed on his back with his legs against the wall of the grave.

John went over to the grave and sent eight more shots into the dead man’s chest. Ringo panned with his camera from the executed man up to the five hostages kneeling like sand sculptures by the hole.

Daniel stared at the body and felt relief that death happened quickly. The Beatles had talked so much about beheadings that it was a relief to see they could use a gun.

On their way back to the cell, Ringo leaned towards Daniel and whispered: ‘Want to hear a secret? You’re next.’

THE brutality had started early. Just two weeks after Daniel’s capture in May 2013, he was being held in a building in the city of Azaz. He was beaten and interrogated daily. One evening he was taken to a new room. ‘Hello Daniel. Are you ready for me now?’ This was Abu Hurraya, a tall, broad Syrian with long hair gathered in a ponytail, and he was the prison’s most brutal guard.

Daniel noticed a man lying motionless in the corner. ‘You’ll look like that in 24 hours,’ said Abu Hurraya. ‘Reach out your arms.’

He pulled down some chains from the ceiling and looped them around Daniel’s handcuffs. The chains were tightened and Daniel’s body was now completely extended, arms stretched towards the ceiling. The sharp iron dug into his wrists.

‘See you tomorrow,’ said Abu Hurraya cheerily. ‘You might be ready to talk by then.’

The feeling in Daniel’s hands and arms quickly disappeared, replaced by a constant pain throughout his body. He had been there for 24 hours when Abu Hurraya briefly returned and loosened the chain. Daniel crumpled to the floor like a rag.

When Abu Hurraya had left, Daniel climbed on to a table, wrapped the chain around his neck and jumped. He felt a violent jerk in his body and plaster from the ceiling rained down on him. There was a tightening sensation around his neck and everything went black…

Some people were holding him up, others fiddled with the chain. Someone threw cold water on his face. The guards broke out in cheers: their hostage was alive. They celebrated by beating him with a plastic tube and then left him tied to the radiator.

Daniel was standing in front of a mirror in the toilet. He was looking at himself for the first time since he had been kidnapped 24 days earlier. The skin around his eyes was black. Marks like a chain of oblong, grey beads around his neck testified to his suicide attempt. His cheeks were white and sunken. It was like looking at a dead man. When he went to wash the wounds on his wrists, he could see his bones and tendons.

BY OCTOBER, Daniel had been joined by more than a dozen other Western hostages in the basement of a torture centre in Aleppo. Among them was an American, James Foley, and an Englishman, John Cantlie.

One morning there was hammering at the cell door. ‘Hands on the wall!’ shouted a man with a British accent. The hostages were dragged out of the cell one at a time. Daniel was thrown to the floor of a room in front of a Brit sitting behind a table. He was one of three Brits.

‘Would you like to go home? Who can pay for you?’

‘My family doesn’t have any money, but they’ll do everything they can to pay a ransom,’ replied Daniel.

‘If nobody pays, we’ll shoot you,’ said the guard, sticking a pistol barrel into Daniel’s mouth. ‘Have you heard of Guantanamo?’ Daniel nodded. ‘This is our response to how the West is treating our brothers.’

From November, the hostages began to see these three British guards more frequently and nicknamed them the Beatles. They were always dressed in black hoods, desert boots and black or military green clothing.

George was the most violent and unpredictable. Ringo seemed to be reserved. John – later identified as the notorious executioner Jihadi John – was articulate. The forewarning of their arrival was always a strong waft of body odour. Every time the prisoners sensed a whiff of it, there was panic.

The Brits composed a verse to the melody of The Eagles’ hit Hotel California and ordered the hostages to learn the verses by heart, so that they could sing the chorus:

Welcome to Osama’s lovely hotel; Such a lovely place, such a lovely place. You will never leave Osama’s

lovely hotel; and if you try, you will die, Mr Bigley-style.

The last line was a reference to Kenneth Bigley, a British civil engineer who had been kidnapped in Baghdad in 2004. A video posted online showed his beheading.

THE Beatles entered the cell.

‘Squat in the middle of the floor,’ John ordered Daniel. John had brought a sabre, of the type that Muslim armies used in the Middle Ages. It was almost 3ft long with a silver handle.

‘Have you tried to escape?’ shouted John. Daniel explained he had simply been sitting on the windowsill. ‘Do you want to lose your head?’ ‘No.’ ‘You were very lucky,’ said John. In January 2014, the cell received its 19th hostage. British taxi driver Alan Henning, from Manchester, had been captured just after Christmas in the city of Adana when he was volunteering as an aid worker.

The hostages were moved to a new location south-east of Raqqa. One day the Beatles came for a quiet Russian hostage called Sergei.

He was going to be released, he was told, because the Russian authorities had paid a staggering ransom. The Beatles took him away. Nobody believed for a minute he was really going to be freed. The next time George entered the cell, he said: ‘I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?’

The good news was that Marc, another hostage, had been released. The bad news was he had gone back on an agreement not to speak to the press. This was why, George said, they had shot Sergei.

The British captors handed around a laptop. One by one the hostages were asked to describe what they saw on the screen.

‘It’s a picture of Sergei,’ said one of the captives. ‘He’s dead.’

‘Can you see where the bullet has hit him?’

They were forced to explain in minute detail how the bullet had gone through his eye, about the blood in his beard and the wrinkles in his forehead.

George gave them a speech about the type of ammunition that had been used: a dumdum bullet, which explodes when it hits the victim.

‘It gives a much better effect,’ explained George, holding the computer in front of Daniel’s face.

On Daniel’s 25th birthday, March 10, 2014, the Beatles thought the occasion should be celebrated.

‘We have a present for you from your parents,’ said Ringo, going over to Daniel, who was sitting with his head facing the wall. A searing pain rose from the pit of his stomach as Ringo slammed his boot into Daniel’s ribs.

‘Your parents think this is some kind of gymnastics camp you’re at, so they’ve asked us to wish you a happy birthday!’ he shouted.

The following day, Daniel’s family in Denmark received an email with an attachment – a picture of Sergei. The kidnappers wrote that he had ‘shared a cold cell with your son’ and invited them to make a higher ransom offer than they had previously made.

The family sent a new offer.

‘WHERE’S the Danish boy?’

The question echoed around the cell.

John was standing with a camera in his hands.

‘Are you ready to have your picture taken?’ he asked. Daniel felt that the British guard was staring at his body. ‘Have you been exercising?’ ‘A little,’ said Daniel. ‘Then we can box with you,’ suggested John, and began hitting him.

‘I’m not so good at boxing,’ Daniel said, trying to avoid being drawn in to the fight.

John and Ringo threw punches at his shoulders and ribs until Daniel lay on the floor in the foetal position.

‘You’re bad at boxing… would you rather dance?’ John took hold of Daniel’s clothes and pulled him to his feet. ‘Come on, let’s dance!’ he shouted.

Daniel felt John’s hand on the upper part of his back. He stood face to face with the hooded Brit. He was holding Daniel’s outstretched arm and forcing him over the floor in a stiff tango pose. The rest of the Beatles laughed. Each time they turned, the Brit exaggerated the movements before again flinging Daniel across the floor. Suddenly John stopped. ‘Look into the camera,’ he said, and gave Daniel a few slaps.

‘Look unhappy,’ he continued, while he took pictures.

‘Perfect, Daniel. That was well done.’

Suddenly, one of the Brits tackled Daniel from behind while another pushed him forwards, so he toppled to the floor.

‘Do you like my boot?’ said John, sticking the toe end of his boot into Daniel’s mouth. ‘Taste the earth.’

One of the other guards found a pair of pliers and, while holding his arms and legs against the floor, they clamped the pliers on Daniel’s nose, to their great amusement.

Then they pressed it on his fingers. ‘What do you think? Should we cut off his nose or his fingers?’ they teased. When the Beatles were finally done beating him up, Daniel sat back, bruised and bewildered.

On June 11, the Beatles pounded heavily on the cell door and the hostages turned towards the wall.

The British guards went round, hammering their fists into the hostages’ ribs, before George stopped at Daniel. While holding his nose, he asked, ‘Are you the Danish boy?’ ‘Yes, I am.’ ‘We have a question for you,’ continued George.

Daniel tensed. This was a proofof-life question – the answer to be delivered to Daniel’s parents before they finally handed over the ransom. ‘Who bought your old car?’

There was no question in the world he would rather answer. He had passed a code to his parents through a previously released hostage directing them to send his captors a question about something green if he was about to be released. The old car was apple-green. In asking the question, they were saying the deal was on. ‘My parents bought it.’

‘OK,’ said George. ‘Daniel, you are going home.’ DANIEL was driven in a series of cars to the Turkish border and handed over to soldiers. On June 20, 2014, he was flown back home to Denmark.

James Foley was beheaded by John – Mohammed Emwazi – in August 2014. On October 3, 2014, a video released by IS showed Emwazi beheading Alan Henning. John Cantlie is still in captivity. Emwazi was killed by a drone strike, his death confirmed by IS in January of this year. The fate of the other two Beatles is, at present, uncertain.

Isis Hostage: One Man’s True Story Of 13 Months In Captivity, by Puk Damsgård, is published by Atlantic Books at £9.99. To order a copy for £7.99, call 0844 571 0640 or visit www.mailbookshop.co.uk before August 7.

What do you think? Cut off his nose... or his fingers?