Faye Turney On Iran, Ahmadinejad, Knickers And Freedom
FRESH from an audience with President Ahmadinejad of Iran, Faye Turney looks out at Sun readers.
Pictured with an Ahmadinejad own brand headscarf in her hand, Turney strikes a defiant blow for Western fashion and British military might.
“I feared being raped by Iranians,” says one teaser. “Stripped to knickers in dingy cell.” And: “The truth behind our TV smiles.”
Sun readers have every right to be appalled. Granted, Turney was not raped and at no time molested in a sexual manner. And being stripped to her knickers would, perhaps, be more shocking if Turney had been stripped to her Y-fronts, but the point is made.
Turney takes that blue headscarf between thumb and forefinger. She dangles it towards the ground. He look is tight-lipped.
And she prepares to tell us about her “evil Iranian captors”. Faye is a “25-year-old “mum”. Sure, she is a mum trained to fight and armed with a loaded weapon, but that is not central to the narrative. In any case, Turney’s gun is British military issue and will very possibly melt in the heat as if made of chocolate.
A Dead And Alive Hole
Faye gathers herself. And she speaks.
“One morning, I heard the noise of wood sawing and nails being hammered near my cell. I couldn’t work out what it was. Then a woman came into my cell to measure me up from head to toe with a tape,” says Faye.
“She shouted the measurements to a man outside. I was convinced they were making my coffin.”
We don’t know if they were. And before the Sun can press Faye on this point, we hear more of those knickers.
Using military-style bullet pints, the Sun delivers a volley of outrage:
“Faye told The Sun how she was:
STRIPPED to her knickers — with the rest of her clothes and belongings taken away — and caged in a tiny freezing cell.
WARNED she might not see her three-year-old daughter Molly again and asked how she felt about “dying for her government
THREATENED with years in prison as a spy unless she did what her captors wanted.”
Faye was separated from her all-male colleagues. “I was thrown into a tiny little cell and ordered to strip off. They took everything from me apart from my knickers.”
The knickers. Always the knickers. A totem of happier times.
“Then some cotton pyjamas were thrown in for me to wear and four filthy blankets. The metal door slammed shut again,” says Faye.
Did she keep her knickers on? Were new knickers provided? And did the knickers clash with the black Islamic cape Faye was ordered to wear?
Question Time For Faye Turney
These are questions for the Sun’s Page 3 girls to grapple with. For now we go with Faye.
“A slimy-looking man whose tan leather shoes she will never forget” approaches Faye
Faye: Where are my friends? I want to see them.
Man in mini-cab driver shoes: What friends?
Faye: Mr Felix and Mr Chris (her officers Lieut Felix Carman and Captain Chris Air).
“He rubbed the top of my head and said with a smile”:
Ozcab 5: Oh no, they’ve gone home. Just you now.
Says Faye: “I was taken back to my cell again and that was my lowest moment. All I could think of was how completely alone I was. They could do anything now and nobody would know.”
Faye says she “lost it”. “She was even reduced to counting the 135 bricks in the walls, the 266 circles in the air vent and the 274½ squares in the ageing carpet,” says the Sun. (Yes, there was carpet in her cell. That all British prisoners should be so lucky.)
And then the questions came. Says Faye: “Every night, it was the same questions. Sometimes I’d have to go back two or three times. One session went on until 6am.” Faye knew what the time was. But Sun readers do not learn at what time her questioning session began. Readers can only imagine and fear the worst.
Spies Like US
What did she know? “I told them, ‘How do I know? I’m just the bloody boat driver’. I tried to play the dumb blonde.”
Faye said: “Two new guys in suits arrived. They didn’t shout like the others. One said he had come to make me an offer.
“If I confessed to being in Iranian waters and wrote letters to my family, the British people and the Iranian people, I’d be free within two weeks. If I didn’t, they’d put me on trial for espionage and I’d go to prison for ‘several years’. I had just an hour to think about it.
“If I did it, I feared everyone in Britain would hate me. But I knew it was my one chance of fulfilling a promise to Molly that I’d be home for her birthday on May 8.
“I decided to take that chance, and write in such a way that my unit and my family would know it wasn’t the real me.”
And the smiles for TV?
Says Faye: “We were only smiling in the TV pictures because we were relieved to see each other. We couldn’t help it. The Iranians knew this. That’s why they filmed us at that time. Then we were taken back to our cells — and were alone again.”
Freedom
And then freedom. Freedom to return to sons and daughters. Freedom to sell stories to the press. Freedom to be free.
Freedom to wear clean knickers when, where and how they want to!
Posted: 9th, April 2007 | In: Tabloids Comments (14) | TrackBack | Permalink
