Harrowing evidence from freed hostage about kidnap ordeal

FREED hostage British hostage Judith Tebbutt has spoken in public for the first time about the ordeal of being snatched by Somali pirates who murdered her husband.

The partially deaf social worker, 56, yesterday relayed in vivid detail how an armed gang abducted her last September from a luxury beach resort in Kenya.

She gave her account of the tragedy in a statement given via video link from Britain at the trial of a Kenyan man charged over the incident.

Mrs Tebbutt at times fought back tears as she told how she and her publishing executive husband David, 58, were attacked just hours after arriving at the secluded Kiwayu Safari Village resort near Kenya’s border with Somalia.

She told the court how she and her husband realised they were the only guests.

She described how the couple were led along the beach to their grass-woven grass hut bedroom “banda”, and said: “I remember saying to David, ‘I’m not sure about this, because there’s no doors or windows’.

“He replied, ‘No, this is going to be a Robinson Crusoe experience’. I remember thinking to myself I was not sure if I liked a Robinson Crusoe experience.”

After dinner, the Tebbutts had drinks while chatting to the hotel owner in the bar and then returned to their bedroom.

The widow then described waking up to see her husband fighting an intruder in the room.

She said: “The lights were on and I heard David and he must’ve been shouting, because I didn’t have my hearing aids in, and I remember him shouting, ‘What the f**k is going on?’.

“I got pulled out of bed and they were inside the mosquito net, because one man was on my right side holding the tops of my arms very tightly and pulling me towards the door.”

She was then dragged to a waiting boat by her captors.

“I remained calm and did not panic. Then I was lifted up and thrown into the boat … We then sped off at speed.”

Mr Tebbutt’s body was later discovered in the bedroom. He had been shot in the chest.

Mrs Tebbutt told the court there were five men on the boat with her. She said she got to know some of them during her time in captivity and learned three of them were called Ali, Ibrahim and Abdullah. She said she created nicknames in her head for the other two, whom she called Leader Man and Nameless.

She described how she realised the gang planned to demand a ransom for her release after she asked Nameless what they were doing.

She said: “I remember saying, ‘Where are you taking me? What’s going to happen?’, and this person was rubbing his thumb and fingers saying, ‘Money, money, money’.

Mrs Tebbutt said she believed Leader Man had been the attacker who fought her husband.

Mrs Tebbutt spent seven months in captivity before being finally released on 19 March after a ransom was paid.

Former hotel worker Ali Babitu Kololo, 25, a father of two, was arrested in the days after the kidnapping and has been charged with violent robbery and kidnapping.

Kololo has previously admitted leading the gunmen to the Tebbutts’ bedroom on the night of the attack, but claims he did so only at gunpoint.

Mrs Tebbutt told the court she had not seen him on the night of her abduction but said the gang of five pirates had told her a sixth man was involved.

The trial continues.