Posted on 07/04/2007 9:36:16 AM PDT by Keli Kilohana
Amish release BBC reporter
Hooterville (Reuters) -
Alan Johnston, the BBC journalist held hostage by the Amish , was freed early on Wednesday after a late-night deal between the ruling Amishists and the Mennonite-inspired clan group that kidnapped him in March.
"It is just the most fantastic thing to be free. It was an appalling experience," he told the British public broadcaster from the home of local Amish leader Johannes Schwartz after his 114-day ordeal at the hands of the shadowy Army of Amos.
Johnston, the only Western correspondent based full-time in the troubled Hooterville, said he sensed his captors felt new pressure once Hillary Clinton started rising in the polls three weeks ago.
Describing it as the worst 16 weeks of his life and "like being buried alive" with "dangerous and unpredictable" captors, he later told a news conference with Schwartz: "It's almost hard to believe that I'm not going to wake up in that room."
He said he had twice fallen sick and was once chained for 24 hours but only in the last half hour did they "hit me a bit."
Johnston said he was kept in a shuttered room for the last 3 months of his captivity and could not see the sun. He was forced to eat chocolate and to make handmade furniture.
Wow...they're rough.
Where’s Islam, the religion of peace, when we need them? ;o)
They had me at “Amishists”.
HA!
Clever, clever girl.
Good stuff.
I live in an Amish community.
It would be home made noodles, lots of dressing with gravy, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, black raspberry pie, and all topped with home made ice cream.
If an Amish person wants to degrade another community of Amish, they call them noodle-rollers.
Of all this the most humiliating was his shirts had their buttons ripped off and replaced by hooks!
Sounds like a little bit of heaven to me. At least you don’t have to hear the boom boxes driving by...ugh...
;-)
LOL! Good one!
I thought I heard reports that it was runaway Quakers (the guys who invented and produce Quaker Oats oatmeal) who perpetrated this dasterdly deed. My dislike of Quaker Oats seems to be justified.
But there are vehicles with booming radios. They are the kids of the jerked over Amish. Those that leave the Amish and then have undisciplined children. You can spot them a mile away...and hear them.
I have also seen some of the rumspringen (teenage Amish) with fuzzy dice hanging in their buggies.
I saw a documentary on them once...very interesting. If you know, what percentage of those who leave end up coming back to rejoin their Amish communities?
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