Hostage Teacher Reveals Terrifying Secret Behind Young Somali Pirate’s Deadly Grip
Ever wondered what it’s like to go from teaching a classroom full of kids to being locked up by Somali pirates? Jessica Buchanan, a 32-year-old school teacher from Ohio turned international aid worker, lived through this nightmare back in 2011—and survived to spill every harrowing detail. Kidnapped during a mission in the volatile heart of Somalia, Jessica’s gut told her something was off before she even stepped foot outside. Yet, despite all the safety protocols, her convoy was stopped by men disguised in police uniforms, and what followed was a grueling 93-day ordeal involving ransom demands, an 11-year-old kid wielding an AK-47, and a rescue operation straight out of a thriller—thanks to 24 Navy SEALS and a presidential order. It’s a tale that forces you to rethink just how unpredictable life can be when you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time… but somehow, still find a way to come back. LEARN MORE
A school teacher has shared her horrifying experience of being held hostage by Somali pirates back in 2011.
Jessica Buchanan, from Ohio, US, was 32 when she was kidnapped and held for around three months, becoming one of the select few people who were captured by the criminals and lived to tell the tale.
Buchanan was working as an international aid worker when she was abducted on 25 October, 2011 during a staff mission in the south of Somalia, though she had been staying in Hargeisa, the capital of an unrecognised state in northern Somalia called Somaliland.
Before carrying out the training program in the town of Galkayo, she revealed in a new interview with LADbible that she ‘just didn’t feel good about it’ as she felt ‘something was off’.
Buchanan remembered going through the necessary security protocols, recalling: “Everybody said it was safe to go down, and so I thought, you know, what are the chances that something bad’s gonna happen?”
Pirates are a massive problem for authorities in the East African region (Getty Stock Image)
Despite taking these protocols, her convoy was stopped when returning to the guesthouse as men in police uniforms kidnapped Jessica and her 60-year-old Danish colleague at the time, Paul Hagen Thisted.
They were forced south and changed vehicles, with Buchanan explaining for the LADbible ‘Minutes With’ YouTube series: “It’s just completely pitch black, dark, and I hear a high-pitched voice behind me, and I think, ‘my God, this is strange, there’s a woman involved’ – which, that would be so odd, especially in Somali culture, ’cause females and males keep very separate.
“And finally, my curiosity got the best of me, and I turned around and there was a small child behind me, maybe like nine years old? And he was wearing belts of ammunition and he had an AK-47 – and it was as big as he was,” she shockingly remembered.
She noted that the child acknowledged him with a slight nod before telling her to turn back around.
“I later learned that his name is Abdulahi,” Buchanan said. “He was actually 11 but small for his age, and he’d already killed three people, and he was learning the family trade of kidnapping and ransom.”
The school teacher said she wanted to stay alive for the first 48 hours, something she learned in her humanitarian aid worker training, as she realised a man named ‘Abdi’ was in charge.
“We just want money,” she recalls being told by him.
Apparently, he asked both the Danish and US governments for a total of $45 million to guarantee their releases, though Buchanan admitted: “Because they were operating on this piracy standard of container ships being taken over in the Indian Ocean, and we kept just trying to explain to them, ‘we’re two humanitarian aid workers’, we are not a container ship and a crew, there’s no way you’re going to get $45 million for us’.
“That was incredibly scary and frustrating.”
The pirates would then start messing with the two kidnapped humanitarian workers, as Buchanan reflected: “Abdi was really good about that; he loved to screw with us. He would drive us to the airport in Adado and we would think, ‘oh my goodness’, we’re like, ‘this is it, this is the day the ransom’s been paid. They’re doing the drop-in-exchange’.
“And he would stop at the airport, and then he would turn around and look at us and he would wave his hand and say, ‘wave goodbye, Poul and Jesses’ – he always called me Jesses – ‘unless we get the $45 million, you’re never gonna see these planes’.”
The former humanitarian worker was held for 93 days in Somalia (YouTube/LadBible)
She described it as ‘cruel’, while the child, Abdulahi, would make her do trivial things like ‘move two inches to the left just because he could’.
Due to the dire conditions, the American would soon fall ill after contracting a urinary tract infection, using her final ‘proof of life call’ to the US on 16 January 2012, noting that she was in a ‘terrible amount of pain’ and needed a doctor as she felt she would die in weeks.
Nine days after her cries for help, Buchanan recalls hearing chaos at the Somali camp: “I hear the night just erupt into gunfire. All I can think is, ‘oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, we’re getting kidnapped by another group.
“This is probably Al-Shabaab, and I’m not gonna survive this. I don’t have the energy, I don’t have the strength, I don’t have the capacity to survive another group. I’m really gonna die out here’.”
After feeling someone grab her shoulders and ankles, trying to pull the blanket off her, she realised that it was a young American man saying, ‘Jessica, it’s okay. You’re safe now’, 93 days after being kidnapped.
Under former POTUS Barack Obama’s orders, 24 US Navy SEALS parachuted near the compound where the pair were being held to save them from the pirates, nine of whom were killed.
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