A Canadian journalist raped for 15 months by Somali kidnappers

News24xx.com -  Amanda Lindhout is a Canadian journalist who was kidnapped, tortured and raped for 15 months in Somalia, before she was forced to the brink of committing suicide.

Amanda Lindhout was just 26 years old when she traveled to the volatile east African nation's capital of Mogadishu alongside her then boyfriend, 36-year-old Australian photographer Nigel Brennan  in 2008.

But, on August 23, their third day in the country, the pair were kidnapped and abductors called their families and demanded a USD 1.5million ransom for each of them in exchange for their lives.

For the 15 months that followed the pair were beaten, starved and Lindhout, the freelance journalist was repeatedly raped.

"We're on a big open highway road and we see a car pulled over off to the side up ahead. Within minutes what unfolded was like something out of a nightmare. There were about a dozen armed men who had been hiding behind the parked car. And the next thing, I knew I had been abducted," she said

She recounts how she came to the decision that she was going to use a small razor to take her own life. But,  a bird made her to stopped her decision to suicide. 

"The desire to end my life left me and it never came back and this amazing feeling just flooded through my body, which was determination to survive no matter what; that I would have my freedom again; I would see my family."

 

 

 

 

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