‘If they haven’t killed us in the first 10 minutes, history says we’ll be right’

JOHN Feder’s account of his fateful decision to venture beyond the last British checkpoint before Basra in Iraq in 2003.

John Feder and journalist Peter Wilson under “Hotel Arrest” at the Palestine Meridien Hotel in Baghdad after being caught in Basra by the Iraqis.

WE made the fateful decision to venture beyond the last British checkpoint before Basra. One minute we were interviewing and photographing a local family and the next we had guns to our heads and were speeding away to what I thought would be our executions. I have a clear memory of floating above my body in the back of the car as if it were a dream. I said my goodbyes to family and loved ones and hoped for the best. I looked over at Peter Wilson for reassurance. When I saw how he was sweating and the blood had drained from his face, I knew we were in real trouble. Peter said something like, “if they haven’t killed us in the first 10 minutes, history says we should be right”.

We were interrogated at what looked like a police station, with Saddam portraits on the walls, by angry men with machine-guns who looked like they wanted to kill us.

Later we were taken to the Basra Hilton for more questions. It was the longest night, as a stream of secret police officers and armed men came through our room. Some wore scarfs to hide their faces; all had different stories about where and by whom we would be taken. The next day Peter and I were put in the back of a car while our translator Stewart Innes was loaded into our 4WD. We passed through many checkpoints on the way to Baghdad, with Saddam’s guards giving us death stares. At one stage a tank blew up to our left, hit by an unknown source. The blowback seconds later nearly knocked our car off the road.

After many hours we arrived in Baghdad to the sound of US bombers flying overhead. It was now 24 hours since we’d been arrested and we were eager to contact our families. To our great relief, we were taken to the media hotel in Baghdad, the Palestine, and placed under house arrest.

That night Peter and I snuck out of our room to try to find a phone to let family and work know we were still alive. Other journos in the hotel said we should go upstairs to the Reuters office as they had good comms and would let us use them. We arrived to find photographer Goran Tomasevic and cameraman Taras Protsyuk having a quiet whisky. Peter and I started gibbering about what had happened to us and the laconic Goran handed us each a large whisky with the simple instruction: “Drink”.

A few days later, as US tanks entered the city, there was a huge blast and the Palestine hotel shook. Peter and I put on our flak jackets and ran up to the Reuters room. It was a mess, blood was everywhere. Taras died on the way to hospital and a Spanish journalist one floor below was killed by the same US tank shell. Peter wrote the story on a borrowed laptop covered in blood.