Isis captured Kiwi nurse's plight: the story we couldn’t publish

Monday, 15 April 2019

In 2017, I was on the campaign trail when I took a call from overseas about a humanitarian worker whose Syrian middleman had information about a New Zealand nurse held hostage by Islamic State.

This wasn't the usual call from a contact tipping me off to a story. It was a request to pass on the information to someone in New Zealand who could negotiate her freedom.

At that time, the nurse, Louisa Akavi, had been a hostage of Isis militants for a staggering four years. She had been kept prisoner with other Western hostages, including James Foley, Steven Sotloff, David Haines and Peter Kassig, whose brutal executions had shocked the world. One of her cellmates was a young American aid worker Kayla Mueller, later reported dead by Isis.

I had been aware of Akavi's terrible plight for more than three of those years and at that point I had interviewed a number of people – in New Zealand and overseas – about her captivity. But it was a story I knew I would not be able to publish right away, as we had made a commitment from the start that we would not put her life at risk.

**READ MORE:

* Special feature - The Secret Hostage

* Islamic State's Kiwi hostage: Inside the top-secret rescue effort

* Louisa Akavi, the hardy nurse with the skills to survive

* Why we've waited five years to tell Louisa Akavi's story

* Why Islamic State takes hostages like Louisa Akavi

* How Islamic State rose to power, created a caliphate, and lost it

​* Islamic State's foreign hostages: Propaganda tools and bargaining chips**  

The call that someone wanted to trade information about Akavi was one of many trails I followed over the years. I knew the source of this information was very credible.

Still on the campaign trail, I phoned him in Europe and he suggested a secret meeting with our Government. His own Government could not find out, he insisted.

He stressed that he could not verify the reliability of the person claiming to know about Akavi, though he trusted the man who passed on the information to him – someone he described to me as a smuggler. He was someone he had used to help others held by Isis, he told me.

I phoned a senior Government minister and eventually passed on the details to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFAT).

It was not an unfamiliar story. As Isis was in retreat, soldiers desperate for safe passage would use any snippet of information or gossip for leverage. A Western hostage was currency.

I was later made aware that my call to MFAT had resulted in a meeting somewhere in Europe. But I was told that nothing ever came of it.

Rewind to September 4, 2014. It was another election campaign and I was in Christchurch, after a debate between then-prime minister John Key and Opposition leader David Cunliffe, when I got a call from two of our senior editors – Sinead Boucher (now Stuff's CEO) and Mark Stevens.

They asked me to find a quiet room, then told me about a tip off from Stuff's Australian arm. Its foreign correspondents were hearing stories about a New Zealander taken hostage by Isis.

It seemed incredible. The terrifying brutality of Isis had been dominating international headlines.

The world was horrified by the death of Foley, the American journalist filmed kneeling in an orange boiler suit before being beheaded in August 2014.

Almost coinciding with that election debate, there was news of another American journalist, Steven Sotloff, suffering the same gruesome death.

The implications of a Kiwi being held hostage were huge. Isis was publicly executing hostages whose governments refused to negotiate for their release.

I became aware later of crisis meetings involving senior government ministers and officials as the prospect of Akavi being publicly executed looked close.

New Zealand, like the US and Britain, had a firm policy against paying ransom. Like our allies, our government would be powerless to save her.

Key would have known this during the debate. He was on fire that night – energised, pumped, the declared winner.

There was no outward sign he was in the middle of a desperate, life and death crisis.

I left the meeting with Boucher and Stevens to phone a contact at MFAT. Aware of international sensitivity about any publicity, I reassured him that the question I was about to ask was an opening for further discussion, not a request for an official response. Then I asked him if what we had heard was true.

His initial silence told me everything I needed to know.

'That's a big question,' he finally responded. 'I'll need to get back to you.'

Keeping a state secret

Our answer was a request to meet then-foreign minister Murray McCully in Wellington.

There, McCully told myself and Boucher the background to Akavi's capture and captivity.

He told us we were the first media organisation to contact the Government for comment. He gave us a quick briefing. Then he had a request. Would we help the Government keep it secret?

McCully's reasons for asking us not to publish a story were three-fold.

Isis was known to have warned the hostages' families not to go to the news media, threatening to kill their loved ones if they did.

The Government was also worried about contradicting anything Akavi told her captors. She might have tried to draw a smaller target on herself by passing herself off as a Cook Islander, for instance (Isis had published threats against America and its allies and we were considering a deployment to Iraq at that time, a decision which weighed on the Government).

But mostly there was a fear of anything that might suddenly throw the spotlight on Akavi and bump her up the 'queue' of hostages awaiting execution.

That 'queue' was referred to often in my conversations with insiders over subsequent days. There was a sense of a rough sort of order to the executions; it wasn't Akavi's 'turn' yet, I was told often. But anything could change that delicate calculation.

In Akavi's case there was another reason for the story to be kept secret. Her elderly mother had not been told. She was already very frail, and the family was worried sick about the shock of her finding out. As far as I know, Akavi's mother passed away in 2016 without ever learning of her daughter's plight.

Ultimately, it was Boucher's call whether Stuff would publish. She asked for some time to think it over then agreed not to push go on the story till we we could be sure that publication would not put Akavi at risk.

But we always knew that it was a case of when – not if – the story would eventually be told.

Slowly word trickled out and other journalists picked up the story. They all agreed to the same conditions of secrecy.

Silence and doubt

As the years went by fresh information about Akavi was sporadic. At times she seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth. For a long time, the mood in official circles seemed glum, the long silence interpreted as meaning she had died somewhere along the way on her horrifying journey.

It was known that she had been very sick at one point. There had also been reports that she suffered shrapnel wounds in one of the fire fights.

Some information I have collected over the years is hazy; I don't always have exact dates and there is much I don't know.

I only found out very recently, for instance, that at one point US forces had mobilised ready to extract Akavi when they had to stand down after realising it was a case of mistaken identity. The woman they thought was Akavi was actually a German aid worker, I was told. I don't know what happened to that aid worker.

In the early days it was suggested to me the International Committee of the Red Cross – Akavi's employer – was the lead agency on any negotiations or discussions on the ground.

It was explained that the Red Cross had the expertise in hostage negotiation and people on the ground with the necessary third party contacts.

The Red Cross had indeed been successful at negotiating the release of others. A number of other Red Cross workers had been taken hostage in the same ambush as Akavi. They were freed within days.

The Red Cross has only recently agreed to talk about its efforts to find Akavi over the years.

In the first years of Akavis captivity, in late 2013 and 2014, it was in active communication with Islamic State in Syria, operations director Dominik Stillhart said.

'We were not able to persuade them to release her and that communication fell off.'

Meeting the Muellers

Around mid-to-late 2016, it seemed like there had been a breakthrough. Sources told me Akavi was still alive, and working as a nurse at a hospital in Raqqa, treating Isis wounded. I could sense the renewed energy and momentum.

From piecing the story together later it seemed the Government was taking a far more active role on the ground, including flying elite SAS soldiers into nearby Iraq. This effort seemed to be in parallel with the efforts of the ICRC on the ground there.

I have been told by two separate credible sources this followed growing awareness that there was no longer much – if any – knowledge of Akavi among coalition forces in Iraq and Syria.

That may not have been surprising. As troops and headquarters staff rotated in and out of a chaotic and long running war, knowledge of her situation gradually dissipated. And there were many foreign hostages.

But it sounded to me like she had almost slipped through the cracks.

That all changed when the US became aware Akavi had shared a cell with a young American aid worker, Kayla Mueller, whose torture, rape, and reported death shocked America.

Akavi could potentially help the US find out what happened to Mueller. A rescue, or extraction, was under active consideration. It was also believed Akavi had been kept close to the Isis leadership because of her medical skills. She would have valuable intelligence.

I believe it was around this time the decision was made to send New Zealand special forces soldiers to coalition HQ in Urbil, Iraq (there are many dates I am unsure of because of the highly secret nature of the operation).

They were to play a more active role in intelligence gathering and pinpointing – and highlighting – Akavi's location: For instance, to make sure her whereabouts were known in the case of air strikes.

And they were to be part of the 'welcoming party' in the event Akavi was 'extracted'.

I was told some of our soldiers had travelled to Fort Bragg to train alongside US Navy SEALs. Other New Zealand agencies on the ground included the Government Communications Security Bureau, Security Intelligence Service, and consular officials.

Our presence there continued from 2016 to this day, I have been told. I am also aware that we had people operating out of the displaced persons camps in Syria as tens of thousands of refugees streamed from the village of Baghuz, Isis' last stand.

That group included consular, intelligence and defence officials, though there was never any

public acknowledgement of their presence there. In the days after Baghuz fell there was a report of a woman who matched Akavi's description. But it turned out to be an Iraqi woman who looked like her.

I became aware of the Mueller link after the younger woman's death in 2015. A story published in Foreign Policy magazine suggested she rejected a chance to escape out of loyalty to another Western female hostage who was too sick to flee.

My sources confirmed the other hostage was Akavi.

But it wasn't until 2017 that I reached out to Mueller's parents and asked for a meeting.

I assumed they knew about Akavi but had to be careful in the way I phrased my request. I had agreed to conditions of secrecy to protect Akavi and didn't want to jeopardise that. I had told only those who needed to know what I was working on.

Mueller's mother, Marsha, was equally careful in testing out how much I knew.

As I discovered later, Marsha Mueller felt fiercely protective of Akavi. She would never have agreed to an interview if she feared that would put her in danger.

In April 2017, I travelled to Prescott, Arizona to meet Marsha and Kayla's father Carl.

Their lives before Kayla's abduction revolved around family, friends and church. Carl is a keen hunter and outdoorsman. On the day of our interview, he wore a Trump supporter t-shirt. He felt badly let down by the Obama administration over its handling of Kayla's captivity.

Marsha is a former nurse; a self-confessed homebody prior to her daughter's death, now a tireless campaigner for hostage families. Marsha kept journals during Kayla's captivity. They provide an unflinching account of events as they unfolded, including the day when Isis announced her daughter was dead. Marsha read out that passage to me. Years later she and Carl are still unsure what really happened.

Good friend Kathleen Day was with them. Day was Kayla's campus pastor. One of Kayla's letters smuggled out by freed hostages was addressed to her. She has been Carl and Marsha's tower of strength since Kayla' disappeared.

We sat in their kitchen and talked. Carl told me what they had learned about daughter's period in captivity, including her brutal torture.

They were told her fingernails were pulled out. She was raped repeatedly. She suffered prolonged periods of isolation, forced labour, being held in stress positions and verbal abuse. And she was made to listen as male hostages were tortured, knowing her turn could be next.

Few parents could withstand such horror.

When Isis claimed she had been killed in an air strike, they were shown photographs.

These were the same people they had tried to plead with and reason with through letters and emails for their daughter's release.

Carl and Marsha are two of the bravest people I have met. They endured more than any parents should have to bear.

And they have never stopped questioning whether their daughter was let down by the US Government.

They also asked me a lot of hard questions about our own Government's efforts on Louisa's behalf. They cared deeply that she should not be forgotten.

Other hostages have been released over the years after ransoms were paid through the back door.

Carl and Marsha do not have great wealth. They are a working couple, like most of us. In fact, Carl says if it had not been for an offer on his business around the same time, they may not have survived financially. So they didn't have the money for a ransom – but they knew there were others who might be willing to pay. They could probably even raise the funds required through the church.

But they say the US Government blocked any attempt to raise a ransom because that would be breaking the law.

In Akavi's plight, they recognised the same terrible dilemma. So they championed Akavi's cause in Washington. They spoke up for her at meetings with US politicians, and officials. As the long silence about her captivity stretched into years, they wanted to make sure she was not forgotten.

They also tried to reach out to Akavi's family in New Zealand, hoping they might be able to offer them support, knowing what lay ahead.

The intensely private Akavi family declined a meeting, but the Muellers continue to harbour hopes of one day meeting the nurse who shared a cell, and possibly some of the last months of her life, with their daughter. I sincerely hope they get their wish. I know how much it means to them.

Telling the full story

It is still unclear how long Kayla and Akavi were kept together and there is also uncertainty about the account that she gave up her own chance of escape to care for Akavi.

This is certainly an account our Government sees as credible, but the Muellers question the timeline.

There are other gaps – and I have had to accept that much of this story may only be told once Akavi's fate is known.

There have even been doubts cast over the years about Akavi's survival. I have had two sources tell me, for instance, that intelligence about Akavi only had 70 per cent certainty at best. One source I spoke to regularly was convinced Akavi died, probably in the first year or two of her captivity.

I have also asked many times whether our people ever crossed the border into Syria.

But it is possible even very senior government ministers may not have known if we put boots on the ground there.

According to one former minister when I asked: 'I don't know … and I don't think they would have told us if they did.'

I have also found it difficult to match key dates. When reports surfaced in 2016 of New Zealand SAS on the frontline in Iraq I was told this was about Akavi. But I was later told ministers only approved putting boots on the ground in 2017.

As Isis was reduced to a few square kilometres in early 2019 and thousands of refugees poured out of the village of Baghuz, our people were still there, asking questions, and scanning faces.

There will be a time later for questions about the Government's five-year long silence on Akavi – and also the part journalists such as myself played in that.

We at Stuff asked ourselves often whether we were doing the right thing by keeping the story secret.

That question arose again when we became aware in mid-April that there was no sign of Akavi after the dust had settled in Baghuz. Sweeps of the tunnels and the caves surrounding the small town found no evidence that suggested she was alive. I was told intelligence officials had briefed the Government that for the first time in five years Akavi's status was 'under review' and they could no longer be sure she wasn't dead.

I also became aware that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had decided to proactively release the story to select international media outlets, causing disquiet with the New Zealand Government.

Myself and senior editors once again weighed up whether to publish, but in the wake of the Christchurch terror attacks and the threat from Isis following them believed there was still a risk to Akavi's life. But we were also conscious that the story looked likely to come out soon regardless and at that point the story would have to be told.

There will be some who challenge that decision to keep the story secret for so long. I was aware that only once we knew the full story would we know for sure if we made the right call.

And that story is only unfolding now.