A BRITISH reporter kidnapped in Iraq described yesterday how his captors threatened to behead him before he was freed by chance when US soldiers raided the farmhouse where he was being held.

Phil Sands, of the Dubai-based newspaper Emirates Today, was rescued on New Year’s Eve after being held for five days on the outskirts of Baghdad. He had not been reported missing and his family was unaware of his plight.

He was forced to make a video calling for British withdrawal and the release of all detainees in Iraqi prisons, but his captors had not distributed it before their arrest. Throughout his captivity Mr Sands, 28, was convinced that he would be killed. At one point he was led to a deep pit and assumed that he was about to be shot. US soldiers found a large sword and an orange boiler suit similar to those worn by other murdered hostages.

He is the only British hostage to have been freed during a military operation and whose captors have been caught. Captain Eric Clarke, a US military spokesman, described his case as “frankly amazing”.

Mr Sands was kidnapped on Boxing Day on his way to interview academics in Baghdad. About ten armed men in masks forced his car to stop in a desolate suburb and bundled him into the boot of another car. Mr Sands, who has covered the Iraq conflict for three years, said: “From the moment I was taken hostage, I was certain I would be killed. A strange calmness fell over me. I thought, ‘What is the point in panicking? I am dead’.”

He was taken to a house where he was handcuffed and blindfolded. “They asked who I was, what I was doing there. I told them my name. I told them I was a journalist,” he said. His captors said that they would check and, if he turned out to be a soldier, they would kill him.

They said that they were Sunnis, the minority to which most insurgents belong. They gave him a bed and fed him well. He worried about his parents, David and Jackie, who live in Poole, Dorset, and tried not to think about dying.

About 2.30am on New Year’s Eve, he heard helicopters. The door flew open and two US soldiers burst in, yelling at him and his guard to stand up. Only when he saw how surprised the Americans were to see him did he realise how lucky he had been. They were on a routine search for insurgents and had found him by chance.

He was flown to Dubai where British security services questioned him for seven days. “We went very thoroughly through what happened.

They’ve got all those outstanding hostage cases in Iraq,” he said, referring to hostages such as Norman Kember, 74, the British peace activist who was snatched with three other foreigners on November 26.

Mr Sands, now in Poole with his family, said: “One of the things I am most glad about is that my parents did not know that I had been kidnapped. It was a weird phone call, to say the least. Dad picked up the phone and was amazed that I had bothered to call. They are always complaining that I do not get in touch enough.”

He has no immediate plans to return to Iraq, but when he does it will be as an embedded reporter with the military. He said: “I feel fine. I was lucky. I’m definitely taking a stiff upper-lip approach. I don’t feel traumatised, just humbled.”

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