The only human contact Peter Shaw was allowed during the past four months was the sight of his kidnappers’ hands passing food down into the dank, underground hole where he lay chained at the neck.
Yesterday, barely 24 hours after escaping execution on a Georgian mountainside, the 57-year-old banker was back in Britain and trying to come to terms with the sudden ”miracle” of his freedom.
Reunited with his family, including an eight-week-old grandson he had never seen, Shaw explained to a press conference at Heathrow airport how his captors killed one of their own gang they mistook for him as he fled into a ”pitch-black night” in Georgia’s lawless Pankisi Gorge, near the border with Chechnya.
Looking remarkably alert and healthy, he maintained a tone of self-deprecation. ”I won’t bore you with the details of the stay… I was forced to undertake,” he began, as he launched into an account of his ordeal since being seized at gunpoint in the country’s capital, Tbilisi, on June 18.
Shaw, twice divorced, used to be manager of the Midland Bank in Cowbridge, near Cardiff. He went to Georgia six years ago to work for the European commission and became director of the local, EU-funded Agro-Business Bank.
In June, his contract expired and he decided to leave Tbilisi with his Georgian partner, Diana Khorina, and their three-year-old son, Danny. Kidnapping is a constant danger for foreign workers in the Caucasus region and Shaw was well aware of the risks.
Days before he was due to fly back to Wales, his car was stopped near his house in Tbilisi at what appeared to be a police checkpoint. He was forced out but resisted. The disturbance attracted the attention of genuine officers. A gun battle ensued, but Shaw was bundled into a camouflaged car and driven away.
For the first month, he said, he was ”taken from place to place, all over Georgia” and held in the mountains or in caves. ”The only information I had was on the first day of my captivity. Standing outside a tent, they told me I had been kidnapped and that they had asked for $2-million.
”I knew the UK government wouldn’t pay such sums to terrorists. [The kidnappers later] tried to force me to write a note to my family and ask for $1-million — which is impossible because we don’t have $1-million. I couldn’t see much chance of the money appearing.
”For the past four months, I have lived in a hole in the ground measuring one and a half metres by two and a half metres. There was no sunlight, just half a candle a day. I was chained by the neck so I couldn’t walk and there was a bucket next to the cot. Water was dripping in from the ceiling; the bedclothes were two ladies’ coats. I was soaking and cold.
”I had no contact apart from two hands coming through giving me food and water. You have to stay alive from day to day and try and pray — which is not something I had made a habit of doing during my 57 years — but I certainly did over the past months.
”Yesterday at 7.30 [pm], four people came to the hole in the ground and took me out and put me in a car. I was driven for about 20 minutes. I was taken out and we walked up a mountain path. Two guys held me by the arms and two were behind me. I thought ‘I’m going to be shot’.
”They stopped walking and stood still. I heard one of the guys behind take his rifle or machine gun off his shoulder and pull the bolt. I thought ‘This is for me’. It was pitch dark, I wasn’t going to stand there. So I jumped into some gorse bushes on the side of the lane [and ran]. They fired.”
When Shaw stopped and looked back there were three people disappearing down the lane and a man lying on the ground making noises. He stayed hidden in the bushes for half an hour in case the kidnappers returned. Then he ventured back and found the man dead. Shaw, like his captors, had been wearing an army uniform and he believes that in the confusion they mistook one of the gang for him. ”I’m not ashamed to tell you that a miracle happened last night. I survived because of the ineptitude of Georgian marksmanship and because it was so dark and I was wearing a uniform like those guys.”
In the distance, he could make out lights so he set off walking. ”After about 400 yards, I heard people talking Georgian and I heard them shout my name. I shouted back ‘I’m Peter Shaw, Peter Shaw, I’m British’.” It was a Georgian army patrol. ”I was told I was in the Pankisi Gorge. I didn’t think it was the army at first but they were very friendly. I was taken to headquarters where I met the deputy minister of security, who said ‘I don’t know how you got here, but you are safe’.”
The soldiers told him the hole in the ground was in a farm complex. The kidnappers, who are thought to have been a local mafia gang rather than Chechen separatists, may have feared they were about to be encircled by troops. They gave him cigarettes and food from neighbouring Azerbaijan to make him believe he was in another country.
Denis Corboy, the former EU special envoy to Georgia, said yesterday: ”No ransom demand was ever received. That’s unusual for a kidnapping. We think it was a dispute between people in government and the local mafia. Shaw is very lucky, very resilient. He even says he will go back one day.”
Cradling his new — and fast asleep — grandson, Ioan, in his arms, Peter Shaw said: ”It’s absolutely marvellous to be back in the UK. I’m feeling much better than I was several hours ago.”
In order to survive captivity, he had summoned up memories from his childhood. ”You go through it, day by day. You bring back every picture you have in your mind. You think of your mistakes and wish you hadn’t done that… and [you realise] you failed to appreciate what you had until it’s almost too late.” -Guardian Unlimited (c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001