A British journalist taken hostage in Iraq says his captors staged terrifying mock executions, putting unloaded guns to his blindfolded head and pulling the trigger.
James Brandon, who was snatched from his hotel in Basra on Thursday, also told how he had managed to escape from his kidnappers -- only to be seized again. He was freed on Friday nursing a black eye and bruises.
Recounting the 20-hour ordeal in a front-page article for the Sunday Telegraph newspaper for which he worked, Brandon said he was snatched by gunmen.
Brandon, 23, was pistol-whipped, then driven around Basra for 10 minutes before the kidnappers carried out the first in a series of mock executions.
"All I could feel was the cold steel of the muzzle of one my abductors' pistols being pressed to my temple," he wrote.
He said he was dumped blindfolded in a kitchen with his hands and feet tied. However, he worked off the loose blindfold, cut himself free using a knife he found and in "an Indiana Jones moment" fled the house after threatening a woman guarding him.
However, his freedom was shortlived as his kidnappers soon recaptured him at a government building where he had fled.
Brandon's kidnapping had attracted the attention of Iraq's radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who ordered the Briton's release.
Hours later, sporting a badly-swollen eye and other bruises from beatings, he was handed over to Sadr's Basra office.
Brandon said he did not know who his kidnappers were but assumed they were Sadr supporters.
Recovering in Kuwait, Brandon said he wanted to return to Iraq.
"I have no desire to be the story again," he added.
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