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Warning: This story contains details which may be disturbing to some readers

After about a year of being starved, beaten and sexually brutalized, Amanda Lindhout decided it was time to kill herself.

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The Alberta woman, taken hostage in Somalia in August 2008, says she reached her breaking point after spending three days trussed up like an animal, her hands and feet pulled so tightly behind her back that she could barely breathe.

When her captors did untie her, they told her it was only a reprieve. They promised to use the same torture technique on her again each day until they got their ransom money.

Left alone, Lindhout resolved that she was better off dead. She would take a rusty razor to her wrists.

But as she held the blade in her hand, a small, brown bird flew into the doorway of the room where she was being held. It hopped on the dirty floor, looked at her and flew away. It was the first bird she’d seen since shortly after she was taken.