I was captured in January 2012 by pirates, and held for more than 2 and a half years. I was held in the bush. I mean, out in the open. Also, on a fishing boat for five months on the water with other hostages, and then alone, essentially in a solitary confinement in a series of prison houses in a town in Central Somalia called Galkayo. I’m American and I’m German. Two passports, yes. I arrived here in early January. Eh? January 6th, in Somalia. I have to request from the American or the German government the full ransom. They — they need to give an answer within three days. And if there’s no answer to payment of the ransom within three days, then the kidnappers here will sell me to — will sell me to al-Shabab. Our panel tonight is on freelancer safety. Michael Scott Moore, he’s a Pulitzer Center grantee, a journalist, and a novelist. He also, unfortunately, was kidnapped while reporting in Somalia and held captive there for two years and eight months? Eight months. And eight months. But in the vein of responsibility, and this is sort of a question for me and for Michael, many people feel it’s our fault, that in my case, I acted recklessly by going to this Taliban interview, that you were reckless for going to Somalia. And that’s a problem. And I regret my decision to go to an interview that got me abducted. And not in terms of your case, specifically, but do you hear about or feel there’s a change in terms of journalists themselves? Are people recognizing how much more dangerous the environment is? It wasn’t totally clear how dangerous Syria was until it became clear how many hostages there were. And that’s one drawback to keeping hostage cases quiet, actually, which yours was kept quiet, mine was kept quiet while they were still going on. And I think a lot of the cases in Syria were kept quiet to the point where other journalists didn’t know what they were getting into. So slowly, just because of the horrors that have come out of Syria, people are, in general, are probably trying to be a bit more careful. But that doesn’t mean that the general culture of freelance journalism has changed, no. Before you leave on a trip like this, you have to think that in the worst case scenario, you’re actually going to be putting your family in contact with some really unsavory people. And that haunted me in Somalia. That’s not something I ever wanted to do. So no story is worth your life. That’s just a hard and fast rule. And almost no story is worth getting kidnapped for. In fact, I can’t think of one that is. News report: “Last night, militants from the Islamic state group released a horrific video, showing James Foley being beheaded. It’s too graphic to show.” It was around the 20th of August — I was keeping pretty good track of the date at that point — there was news this morning on the radio that about Jim Foley, an American journalist who was decapitated by IS in the Syrian desert. Horrifying. I can barely imagine what my family is going through. Marlis Saunders: From time to time, I did go down to the ocean and I, you know, knowing that he loved to surf. And I, you know, so yeah, I would do that. And in the evening when I would look at the moon, I would always think, you know, well, he must see the same moon. And I hope, you know, he feels that I’m thinking of him, you know, that maybe he gets a little strength from that and to cope, cope for another day, another week. While I was there, I thought it would be a perfectly good idea for a Special Forces team to come and get me, especially after I was there for two years. I mean, I simply had no other sense of hope because I didn’t feel like there was any progress with negotiations. It was always hard to gauge what was going on behind the scenes. And after a year or so, I wasn’t sure I wanted to live anymore. So that risk of getting — of dying during a rescue seemed a lot less intense to me. And that’s still the official American position, is that we don’t negotiate. If anything, we rescue. And as long as you’re not going to negotiate, you should rescue. What’s true, I think that there were red lines that I set for myself. And a few of those I crossed. I went shopping for insurance, and when I got rejected shortly beforehand, I should have just called off the trip. We’re here because 26 men that I was held hostage with are just getting out of captivity. And actually, I’m terribly excited. They were the fishermen who I was held with on the Naham 3, the fishing boat that was captured in 2012. And they’re the last large single crew that’s being held by Somali pirates. And they’ve been in captivity for 4 and a half years, which is extremely frustrating because I was hoping and working for their — for their freedom as soon as I got out. And it’s painful to think how long they’ve been there. On the last day, a car came, and they told me to pack my things. And they had a sack of cash that was part of a ransom that was paid. And that particular sack was payment for the guards, apparently. And then I realized, you know, that what the pirates were saying was real. Before that, I was very much on my guard. You know, I wasn’t allowed — wasn’t allowing myself to believe them or to be hopeful because, you know, they’d been telling me for months that I was going to get out in a couple of weeks or a couple of days or something. I’d learned not to believe them. We came up with an agreement and everything. I mean, we made our demands when Michael would be brought and how he would be picked up, et cetera, et cetera. And there must have been some kind of rift because when the ransom was being distributed, they had a big gunfight, some of the top pirates, and — amongst each other. But luckily, Michael was out of there by then. I landed in Nairobi and this is the first place I felt comfortable, at least for a little while after you get out. And it marks a change in your life. I had my own bed, and I had my own shower, I mean, a working shower for the first time in 2 and a half years. And it was all mine. I could just sleep in the bed and then take a shower when I wanted to instead of having six guys get up with Kalashnikovs to guard my way. When we met, his first words were, I’m so sorry to put you through this. So I said, well, it’s O.K. You’re free. Don’t be sorry. [shouting] I contributed money to their release as soon as I got out and I heard they were still in there, because there was just no other way to get them out. I could kind of tell that there were — out of five governments, nobody was planning any kind of a rescue. So the only way those guys were going to get out of Somalia was going to be with money. When they all noticed that I was there, it was just pandemonium. It was really wonderful. You know, it was obvious they hadn’t forgotten about me, and it was really important for me to be there to show them that I hadn’t forgotten about them. In general, going to crisis regions like this is still something that has to be done. I mean, otherwise you don’t get a clear picture of what’s going on. That’s a responsibility the journalist has to take, and it was a complete failure from my point of view. There will always be journalists who take risks like this. But it’s a — you know, I’m going to be living with the consequences for the rest of my life of what happened. So —