By BARBARA JONES
The Daily Mail
The chandeliers in the grand drawing room of the Ambassador’s Residence sparkled overhead.
Swathes of tartan were draped round the room and a bottle of whisky stood at the centre of every table as guests arrived to the sound of bagpipes.
Held last Friday at the British Embassy in Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia, this was a most unseasonable Burns Night.
But then – as the Ambassador Bob Dewar confided to one guest – back in January when it should have taken place, there had been “a little bit of trouble from the local Somalians”.
Still, the three-month delay did nothing to curb the lavish entertainment or high spirits on the night. The lights blazed from the wisteria-covered residence, illuminating the manicured lawns outside.
Beyond the 90-acre embassy compound, on the southern slopes of the Enoto hills, past the six-hole golf course and densely wooded gardens, leopards prowl and poverty pollutes.
But the world outside the compound was of little interest that night to the privileged few who knew with smug satisfaction that they were being indulged in the loveliest embassy in Africa.
Theirs is a world coloured by the blossom of bougainvillea and shaded by fig trees. A fantasy of expat life where the compound’s own pub, the Addis Arms, serves roast beef on a Sunday and has warm beer on tap.
And it is ringed with walls and protected by 35 armed guards whose gaze is fixed forever outwards to the dust and suffering of the city of Addis Ababa.
It was into this far less hospitable realm that, the day before the Ambassador’s sumptuous Burns Supper, eight bedraggled Ethiopians had returned.
While the guests at the embassy partied, these men and women struggled to adjust to their first day of freedom after 52 days in captivity.
And they hoped, quietly, that just one of the senior British Government officials whose folly had placed them in danger in the first place, just one of the embassy staff, might acknowledge their return. They waited in vain.
Safe at last: Yonas Mesfia, Debash Bayu and Ashenafi Mekonnen arrive at Addis Ababa
The capture of five British embassy officials working out of Addis Ababa by the Eritrean military last month made international headlines and their rescue was the subject of fervent diplomatic endeavour. But it was the fate of the embassy party, and not the eight locals, that seemed to matter.
Missing were Peter Rudge, First Secretary; his 25-year-old French-born girlfriend Laure Beaufils, a working-group leader for the British Government’s Department for International Development; Jonathan Ireland, administrative officer at the British Embassy in Addis Ababa; Malcolm Smart, a personnel officer for DFID; and Rosanna Moore, wife of the head of the British Council.
A Foreign Office team of ten had flown to Addis Ababa to secure their release, the Finnish diplomatic mission had been pressed into setting up a field hospital and military helicopter cover and the SAS had been placed on stand-by across the Djibouti border.
The eventual release of the five Europeans, after 12 days, was presented as the “happy ending” to the incident – but until now nothing has been known of the fateful trip that led to their abduction nor of their conduct during captivity and, more pertinently, their behaviour following their release.
But now The Mail on Sunday can reveal the truth about the life of careless ease enjoyed by these servants of the realm.
We can reveal the utter folly of a journey that saw them place not only their own lives, but those of the local guides and staff who accompanied them, in mortal danger – when just a glance at the Lonely Planet guide would have provided stark warning of the dangers at their planned destination.
Their arrogance was compounded by the decision to travel in white 4×4 vehicles bearing easily recognisable diplomatic plates and marking them out as a prime target.
Most shockingly of all, we can reveal the callous disregard displayed by these adventurers to the Ethiopians who accompanied them on their trip.
The officials promised support when they were released ahead of their guide, cook, mechanic and the five other locals who made up their party. Once the Europeans were free, the Ethiopians were abandoned to their fate.
There was no sign of the diplomats at the night vigil held in Addis Ababa’s Anglican church to call for the Ethiopians’ release. They did not join the support committee lobbying for the men’s freedom.
And they were not at Addis Ababa airport on Thursday alongside The Mail on Sunday to embrace their bedraggled brothers in adversity, though it was by then a full 40 days after their own ordeal had ended.
None of the hostages has spoken of their ordeal until now and it is through the testimony of guide Ashenafi Mekonnen, 25, cook Debash Bayu, 27, and mechanic Yonas Mesfia, 31, that the true and shaming picture emerges.
Ashenafi, an orphan of the 1987 famine, is remarkably forgiving as he recalls his ordeal. He says: “We all had good days and bad days but we Ethiopians knew we were always in the most danger.
“The Eritreans hate us after our 30-year struggle and our recent years of fighting on the border. We thought they would kill us. They were threatening us all the time. We believed we would all be rescued together one day or die together.
“Nobody knew which it would be. All the days seemed the same and ran into each other. Only heat exhaustion helped us to sleep at night.
“But one hot afternoon our captors called the ferangi – the white men – to one side and said they should get ready to go. They told us Ethiopians we were not going anywhere. We were staying in the desert.
“At first the British tried to persuade them to let us come. But they soon gave up. They came to say goodbye, hugging us and saying they would never forget us. The French girl, the pretty one, she was crying with happiness.
“They knew they were going home. We have never heard from them since, even these few days we have been free.”
Instead the British group walked gratefully off to the helicopter that would take them home, leaving the Ethiopians who had cooked and cleaned for them, guarded them and driven their vehicles, with barely a backward glance.
They returned to the sybaritic existence of feckless indulgence that had placed them in such danger in the first place. Rudge, Beaufils, Ireland, Smart and Moore had embarked on what they expected would be four fabulous days in one of the world’s most remote areas – the lonely Afar region. Yet a glance at the Lonely Planet guide would have told them in emergency red lettering that their choice of destination presented “an extreme risk to your security”. They would have also read that travel to this area at the Eritrean border military zone should be avoided. They knew that they should take armed guards.
But with supreme arrogance they carried on regardless, planning to meet up with their local helpers in the region itself.
This trip was, after all, a reward – a treat given by the small group of friends to themselves, after staging a particularly gruelling production of Macbeth for their fellow expats.
By the fourth day of their trip they had trudged up the Erte Ale volcano, and journeyed down to the salt pans in the Danakil Depression 410ft below sea level, with their food, transport and comfort assured by the retinue of staff who came in their wake.
“They don’t know much about our culture,” says Debash, the party’s cook. “So it was a change for them to be with us. We took all the food, water in jerry cans, and mattresses from Addis.
“We brought the table and chairs, knives and forks and even tablecloths to make them feel at home.”
And while the small party enjoyed this relative comfort, Debash cooked nourishing soups from potatoes, carrots, onions and garlic and they ate rice with curry sauce.
Guide Ashenafi says: “We had enjoyed being with the white people. They were so happy to see our desert landscape up in the Afar region. We walked up the volcano together to the lava lake at night and we went to the salt mines and saw the camel caravans.
“It was new and exciting to them and they were very jokey and friendly. Malcolm Smart was always the heart and soul of the party.
“We ate together at night. They shared one bottle of wine each evening and we joked about having a big party together once we got back to Mekele, the main town in the region.
“On our last night in the Danakil Depression we stayed at a simple Afar tribal house, ate some goat meat and rice and drank a little wine. We only had the vehicle headlamps for light and there was no bathroom.
“It was primitive but they seemed proud of themselves to be roughing it for once.”
They could, after all, have spent a lifetime in Addis Ababa knowing only the comfort of the embassy where rooms are air conditioned, lawns watered, food plentiful and linen freshly pressed.
Ashenafi describes what happened on the night of the captures. “Three of us Ethiopians slept outside on the desert floor and Peter and Laure were together in their camp-bed close by.
“All the others slept on mattresses inside the thatched house. It was warm and there were many, many stars. We were planning to get up at 6.30 for the journey back to Mekele, then home.”
Three hours after settling down the sleeping men were kicked awake by masked Eritrean militiamen carrying AK47 rifles. Ashenafi says: “They cried, ‘Get Up! You’re all coming with us.'”
In a startlingly brave gesture their host that night, an Afar tribesman called Hussein, pleaded with the Eritreans to take him, not his ferangi guests.
“Instead,” says Debash, “they made him come with us. They let the white people get their shoes and clothes and rucksacks from the vehicles and then we walked.”
Debash recalls how, in a moment of intense tension, Rosanna Moore used her remote control key to lock their vehicles as they left – but her pointless act caused chaos.
The signal of the alarm and the flashing lights that went off as the locks operated spooked the nervy captors and they loosed off bullets and a hand grenade, destroying two of the cars.
Once calm was restored the party embarked on their long walk into captivity. Debash recalls: “After two hours they let us rest but we walked on for five days altogether.
“Peter’s shoes weakened and he ended up limping painfully. We all had to be kept in the desert with a little water and terrible food. We seemed to be in it together, keeping each other’s spirits up.
“The ferangi found some books and paper in their backpacks and cut them up to make a pack of cards so we could while away the long hours in the desert. We played Patience and we taught them some of our games and they played together.
“Malcolm kept them strong, trying to negotiate with the 30 soldiers guarding us. He made jokes and kept our spirits up. And he carried everything, the water, the rucksacks and the heavy things.
“But Jonathan Ireland, who had organised the trip, really crumbled and became weak. He was very sick with stomach problems and depressed and all he wanted to do was sleep. The two women were strong though the French girl cried at everything, good or bad.
“At night we slept in a long row under palm trees out in the open. There were guards sleeping at each end of the row and us all lying together.
“We could not do anything without the Eritrean soldiers giving us permission. They stood with their guns and told us when we could wash, when we could go into the bushes, when we could eat and when we could drink water.
“The water had sand in it and so did the crude bread they made over hot stones heated on an open fire. It was horrible.
“We had some rice and goat’s meat and we all ate with our hands, even though the ferangi were not used to it.”
It might be assumed that through the awful uncertainty of that time a bond of mutual support and trust would spring up between the “ferangi” and their retinue.
So on the day the five Europeans were released, as Ashenafi and his friends watched them depart, there was no reason for him to doubt their promises not to forget them.
But forget them, it seems, they did. There followed days of beating, threats of torture and near starvation. There was no diplomatic mission, no SAS on standby, no field hospital or helicopter gunships ready for them. Instead a rag-tag group of Afar elders made it bravely through the disputed desert territory to talk their captors into releasing them. The kidnappers in turn held these elders for a week.
Last Friday as the skirl of two bagpipes – played by two members of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders who were flown in specially for the Burns Night – drifted into the evening air at the Residence, The Mail on Sunday asked Ambassador Dewar when he planned to see the released Ethiopians.
“When they get back here,” he smiled. “Who told you they were already in Addis? You don’t want to believe that. It’s not true.”
Yet as the Ambassador returned to his guests, just two miles away the eight Ethiopians ate a meagre supper of injeera – a doughy pancake – and meat curry: abandoned to their fate, it seems, for a second time.