Jessica Buchanan Somalia Kidnapping Ordeal Revisited: Survivor Describes Hostage Situation In Somalia

Jessica Buchanan revisited her traumatizing ordeal in Somalia when she described her experience of being kidnapped and rescued in her book “Impossible Odds.”

Buchanan was working as an aid worker in war-torn Somalia when she was kidnapped in 2011 and has been held hostage for several months. She was rescued by Navy SEAL Team Six members from her captors.

After being stationed in northern Somalia for some time, she was called to the more volatile southern portion, which is where the problems began.

“About 10 minutes into the ride, a big SUV Land Cruiser comes roaring up to the right of us and slams it brakes and blocks us, and splashes mud all over the car in the windshield and the windows. And I think that’s strange, like, what a jerk – like who drives like that,” she told the NPR.

She then shared what happened next, “And the next thing I know there are all these AKs, like the butt of AKs banging into the windshield and banging into the windows.” AK-47s are automatic rifles.

The kidnap survivor told CBS News that Somali pirates captured her and held her outside for around 93 days. At night, she was also forced to sleep outdoors.

She also said that she subsisted on tuna fish while with her captors, “maybe once a day. We would get a small can of tuna fish and a piece of bread.”

Jessica Buchanan said her captors in Somalia “treated us like animals. To be sick that, you know, you’re vomiting behind bushes. And you can’t walk straight and you’re laying in the fetal position on the ground under a tree. And they don’t even, they don’t care.”

She said that she knew that her captors’ duty was to keep her from dying, “because then I wasn’t worth anything.”

Buchanan was kept captive with Danish aid worker Poul Hagen Thisted until January 2012 when they were saved by the Navy SEAL team. The rescuers killed nine Somali pirates who were keeping Buchnan and Thisted at a compound near the town of Adow.

The pirates were seeking millions of dollars in ransom and after unsuccessful negotiations, American officials decided to raid the Somali pirates’ compound. They cited Buchanan’s failing health under captivity as a reason to intervene.

When the SEAL team rescued her, “at that point in time I have never been in my life so proud and so very happy to be an American,” Buchanan told CBS.

She and her husband returned from Africa to the United States and have had a child together after her rescue.