As Taliban* forces overran the capital of Afghanistan last weekend, a 56-years old former UK Royal Military Police officer named Ian Cameron made a daring escape from a jail where he was locked up amid the chaos, The Sun reports.
According to the newspaper, Cameron was arrested in Kabul in March with over £30,000 worth of "illegal alcohol" that he was selling, and was being kept at the high-security Counter Narcotics Detention Centre on the northern outskirts of the Afghan capital when a firefight broke out outside the jail on Sunday.
"I’ve been in a few tight spots but I can honestly say, with my hand on my heart, this was the first time I thought, ‘I might be a goner,’" he said during an exclusive interview with the newspaper.
As Cameron explained, he and the others "tried to run outside" but when they got to the front gates, "bullets were hitting the walls" around them.
"We ran back inside and the guards put us in this safe room with a heavy metal door next to the commander’s office," he recalled, saying that the shooting lasted for about an hour. "It started to quieten down, then all of a sudden it was just a free-for-all."
As a guard unbolted the door, Cameron – still clad in his prison outfit complete with open-toe flip-flops – and around 1,000 other prisoners bolted.
He explained how his fellow inmates provided him with a cotton scarf and face mask to help him blend in with the crowd, and told him to stay quiet and keep his head down. A local friend of his named Mohammed was also waiting for Cameron to help guide him to safety.
"We just ran. We were ducking and diving through the traffic trying to avoid the Taliban," Cameron said about his intense trip to the airport. "It was like doing a ten-mile stretcher race without training. It was the first bit of exercise I had done in six months."
As they finally reached the airport, the Afghan guards at the North Gate refused to let Cameron in due to him not having any ID, so he had to make his way to the security barrier of the Baron Hotel to the southeast of the airport where British soldiers were processing evacuees.
"I said to Mohammed, ‘Come with me. I will try and get you out.’ But he said, "I can’t leave my family,’" Cameron added.
They bid each other farewell and Cameron reached the British troops and eventually departed the country aboard a RAF C-17 bound for Dubai. He then travelled to Birmingham where he was forced to quarantine in a hotel for ten days.
He also remarked that his wife already told him "No more adventures. From now on it’s dull and boring." He says he's fine with this.
*The Taliban is a terrorist organisation banned in Russia and many other countries.