Locked Up Abroad

Soon after Cullen Thomas and his girlfriend moved to Asia to teach English, Cullen was lured into drug smuggling by the tropical travel and easy money. After a short time in the South Korean drug industry, Cullen was arrested by the Korean police and eventually spent three and a half years in prison.

In March 1999, safari guide Mark Ross and 14 tourists were kidnapped in Uganda by Hutu rebels. These "Interahamwe" were involved in the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Tutsis in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The rebels forced the hostages to march for hours through impenetrable jungle, and then split them into two groups. Mark's group negotiated a safe release at the Congo border, while the other group suffered a terrible fate.

Tempted by a $20,000 pay-off, 18-year-old Lia McCord agreed to smuggle packages of heroin from Bangladesh. In a dramatic downturn of events, she was caught at the airport with seven pounds of heroin strapped to her body and was sentenced to 30 years, narrowly escaping the death penalty. But, as a model prisoner, Lia came to the attention of Congressman Bill Richardson who appealed to the President of Bangladesh for her release.

While on their anniversary trip at a Filipino resort, Martin and Gracia are taken hostage along with 18 others by an Islamic extremist group, Abu Sayyaf. The terrorists keep the couple captive for over a year and demand $1 million for their release. During a gun battle with the Philippine army, Martin is killed, but Gracia escapes and reunites with her children.

In the late 1980s, 19-year-old Scott White was living the high life in Kuwait City. He was offered a chance at easy money by selling drugs, but was arrested during his first deal and sentenced to five years. When Iraq invaded Kuwait and chaos set in, Scott escaped through a hole in the prison, trekked through the desert, was picked up by a Sudanese family, and finally fled back to the UK.

Rhys Partridge was backpacking in India when he was kidnapped by radical Islamist Omar Saeed Sheikh-who trained under Osama Bin Laden and was later found to be involved in the beheading of Wall Street Journal reportor Daniel Pearl. Witness the riveting chronicle of Rhys' terrifying journey to freedom.