Jessica Buchanan, Somalia Hostage, 'Never Expected' to Be Rescued by Navy SEALs (VIDEO)
Jessica Buchanan was held hostage in Somalia for 93 days in 2011 and recently opened up about her experience for a new interview. She said she "never expected" to be rescued by SEAL Team Six, the same team responsible for the death of Osama bin Laden.
"I'm just an aid worker. I figured it was just in the hands of my family and my organization. Never. Never in a million years," Buchanan said of her expectation to be rescued.
Buchanan was in Somalia, teaching children how to avoid unexploded landmines. As she left the school where she was working, gun-toting men jumped into her car and kidnapped her and co-worker Poul Thisted. The captors drove them into the desert and forced them to get out and walk.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
"I figured they were going to rape me and then kill me. And I just kept thinking, 'This can't be the end of my life. I am only 32 years old. I haven't had any children yet. 'Please help me. I'm too young to die,'" Buchanan yelled while in the desert. "I'm bracing myself to be shot in the back of the head, and I think that there's mercy in the fact that maybe they're not going to rape me first, but that it's just going to be quick," she added.
Instead, though, her captors told her and Thisted to sleep, which they did. The captors explained that they wanted $45 million for their release and constantly moved them around in the desert to throw off any search teams. Buchanan said that she and Thisted were fed enough to stay alive but eventually became ill.
"To be so 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. Their duty was to keep me from dying because then I wasn't worth anything," Buchanan said.
"They treated us like animals. I'm afraid I'm going to die out here," she told her captors, hoping that they would get word to U.S. officials.
The word finally did reach the right person, and Navy SEALs constructed a plan of rescue. They pulled it off under the cover of darkness, which made Buchanan extremely happy.
"At that point in time I have never in my life been so proud and so very happy to be an American," Buchanan told CBS.
She and her husband returned from Africa and now have a child together. Her new book "Impossible Odds" is available now, and the interview for "60 Minutes" aired Sunday, May 12.
Watch the CBS interview here:
