Former al-Qaeda hostage on how he thought he would never return home alive
By ITV News reporter Sally Lockwood
A former al-Qaeda hostage has spoken for the first time about how he feared being beheaded during his 19 months in captivity in Yemen. Oil worker Bob Semple told ITV News that a $10m bounty was put on his head.
In an exclusive television interview, Bob also reveals the anguish his family went through. His wife Sallie was forced to sell the family home because she couldn't support their three children on her nurse’s salary, after his Yemeni employees stopped paying him after he was taken.
On 3rd February 2014, Bob was on his way to work in the Yemeni capital Sana'a. He’d driven this route countless times and he believes terrorists had been tracking his routine. Just yards from his office, a taxi pulled in front of his car and men armed with guns and knives, jumped out.
The guard he was travelling with fled, and Bob refused when ordered to get out of the car at gunpoint. He was stabbed in the arm and shoulder through an open window, and despite putting up a fight, Bob was hit around the head with a pistol until he was semi-conscious and bundled into a car.
His wife Sallie was at work as a nurse in the UK when news came from the Foreign Office that Bob had been kidnapped. Home on a training day from school, it was her 14-year-old who had to take the call.
Bob’s captors held him for a week near Sana’a before dressing him in a burqa, blindfolding him and with a gun to his back, they drove him to a remote location. He was chained in a dark cell with no hope he would ever see his family again. Bob bid a mental farewell to his wife and children.
"I switched my mind off." It was too painful. To distract himself from thoughts of home he would practise spherical geometry in his head. To keep his mind sharp.
After six months in captivity with no news of her husband,Bob's captors dialled his home phone number. Forced to repeat a message, Bob had to tell Sallie his captors wanted $10m. That emotional phone call was the first time she had proof Bob was still alive.
“I was the only person that answered the home phone in case it was Bob.”
Sallie speaks very generally about this period for her and their three boys. She acknowledges it was stressful and worrying, but appears to play down quite how traumatic the ordeal might have been. Perhaps as a way of coping, she and Bob have chosen never to talk in detail about this time for his family back in the UK.
Bob did attempt to escape. After nine months in a concrete cell, he’d managed to wear down a link in his chain against the wall, until it broke. His captors asleep, he took his chance. This bid for freedom failed when one of his captors woke up. He was rechained by his hands and feet and, moved to a tiled room.
Periodically Bob was taken out of his cell and put in front of a camera to record a message home. Sallie never saw them.
After sixteen months as a hostage, Bob's captors placed a television in his room. It didn't work, but one day it came to life and what he saw brought him out of the depths of despair.
Back home in the UK, Sallie had virtually given up hope her husband would be found. Adding to the stress and worry, were financial pressures. Unable to run a busy household of three sons on her nurse's salary, Sallie was forced to sell their home and downsize.
"Where we lived then was the last place that Bob had been, the last place we'd been together as a family. And unfortunately we couldn't afford to live there."
Bob had been gone for well over a year when Sallie began to look for help. Having served 22 years in the army as an engineer, ABF, The Soldiers' Charity came to her support. Within days of hearing about her situation, they had money in her account to help relieve her stress financially.Strong and stoic, the only time Bob gets emotional is when he speaks of his wife during this time.
Bob's rescue came on 24th August 2015. He’d been blindfolded and held in the boot of a car for more than ten hours by his captors, when it burst open. He felt a hand on his arm and a voice say "You're safe now." It was UAE special forces. He immediately asked to remove his blindfold but was told not to. He thinks this was to protect the identity of those who helped save him.
Bob still doesn’t know exactly who was responsible for rescuing him. His only clue were the words “I am Salim” whispered in his ear while he was still blindfolded. He remembers giving a young Yemeni man with this name a job a few years before. He believes it was him that alerted authorities as to where he was being held - and saved his life.
565 days after Bob was taken, he found himself being flown to Abu Dhabi. His kidneys had begun to fail during his time in captivity, his muscles had wasted. He was seen by medics in the United Arab Emirates, before crucially meeting the British Ambassador who handed him a phone. It was Sallie.
Since returning to the UK in August, Bob has never told his story until now. His priority was for he and his family to recover from the trauma of what they’d been through. For a time, Bob would still feel the chain on his leg while he slept. And even now, being home with his wife and children, he says, still feels "surreal".
"We've been together 25 years but it's like starting over again. It's like remeeting."
Former hostage, Terry Waite called him to welcome him home. They’ve since met and Bob got the chance to tell Terry the story, of how seeing him on television saved him in his darkest hours, when he was ready to give up.