The Trap

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Speaker 4 I was tied up and tortured. These people almost murdered me.

Speaker 5 I was terrified.

Speaker 6 A mother just fighting for her child. That's universal.

Speaker 1 She survived a harrowing hostage ordeal in one of the most dangerous places on earth.

Speaker 7 Tonight, they have brought me out to kill me.

Speaker 1 Then, from across the world, her kidnapper found her again.

Speaker 5 He reached out on Facebook.

Speaker 6 Did your heart stop?

Speaker 4 It was so scary that he could find me.

Speaker 1 Tonight, for the first time, she shares her dramatic news story. How she helps secret agents hunt down her captor.

Speaker 6 This all plays like a Tom Clancy thriller. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 The setting, a perfect island paradise. The plot, a daring undercover sting.

Speaker 9 You were supposed to get some money. Yes.
With the big 10,000.

Speaker 10 We didn't think it would work.

Speaker 1 Face to face with her kidnapper at last.

Speaker 4 I just broke down.

Speaker 6 It's still hard for you.

Speaker 4 This is real life, like pain.

Speaker 1 Would she get justice?

Speaker 4 I got the courage in that moment. Then I said, I'm ready.

Speaker 1 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Kate Snow with the trap.

Speaker 9 Mom, Amanda, Amanda, I love you.

Speaker 6 Imagine being the mother on the other end of this call.

Speaker 7 If you guys

Speaker 7 don't pay $1 million for me by one week, they will kill me, okay?

Speaker 6 Your daughter, a world away, in the hands of kidnappers.

Speaker 12 Amanda.

Speaker 6 Both mother and daughter traumatized in their own ways by a callous captor.

Speaker 4 My head is pulled back and then there was a serrated knife.

Speaker 6 And her mother, Lorinda Stewart. Did you keep it together?

Speaker 5 I did.

Speaker 13 I had to be strong for her.

Speaker 6 Driven by strength, courage, and endurance, these women would not only survive this ordeal, ordeal, but their determination in a completely new chapter of their story would ultimately lead them to triumph over one of the men who had terrorized them so brutally.

Speaker 6 And it would take an elaborate international sting. It sounds like something out of a movie.
It does.

Speaker 10 We always refer to this operation as the Hail Mary play.

Speaker 6 But before all of that, this story begins in a small town in western Canada where a young woman named Amanda Lindhout yearned for a world beyond her hometown.

Speaker 4 One constant was that I wanted to be a world traveler, that I wanted to go to every country in the world.

Speaker 6 Amanda began to realize her dreams of seeing the world in the 90s. At 19, she was off to Venezuela.

Speaker 9 We're driving in the back of a pickup truck away from

Speaker 9 the village of El Pohi back to the town of Santa Elena.

Speaker 4 The whole world was wide open to me at that time.

Speaker 6 So wide open, she kept moving, kept pushing forward.

Speaker 4 Going from India to Pakistan, it did feel like a big deal to me. It was something I really wanted to do and then I did it.

Speaker 4 And Afghanistan is right next door.

Speaker 6 Mom Larinda grew concerned, especially as her daughter trekked into active war zones. She tried to talk Amanda out of those trips, but she says her daughter was headstrong.

Speaker 6 And the more Amanda traveled, the more she began to see a path to something else.

Speaker 5 She thought, wow, you know, I would love to write about the people that I'm meeting.

Speaker 6 She resolved to turn her wanderlust into a journalism career.

Speaker 4 This is Amanda Lynn Tout, Press TV, Baghdad.

Speaker 6 She wanted to get more experience, but also cover stories she cared about. You need to get out there and go somewhere where you can get a break.

Speaker 4 I'm also starting to look like a little bit further out onto the horizon.

Speaker 6 How far? One of the most dangerous places in the world.

Speaker 4 What other stories are out there that I feel passionate about? At the top of my list was Somalia.

Speaker 6 Amanda knew she had to tell her mother Lorinda about her plans. And you're thinking what?

Speaker 5 I would really rather she didn't go.

Speaker 6 Do you think maybe you were, to use your mom's word, a little headstrong?

Speaker 4 Yeah, I was... headstrong and I don't think that I had spent enough time thinking about what would happen if something did go wrong.

Speaker 6 Soon enough, she would find out just how wrong things could go. On the plane into Mogadishu, she remembers a fellow passenger turning to her and her colleague, Nigel Brennan, with a stern warning.

Speaker 4 He said to me, your head, your head alone, is worth half a million dollars. In Mogadishu, be careful.

Speaker 6 As Amanda left the airport, the capital city was chaotic.

Speaker 6 Back at home, Amanda's mother, Lorinda, worried about her daughter.

Speaker 5 I just made sure every time I talked to her that I told her I loved her.

Speaker 6 Amanda managed to tamp down her nervousness and got to work. On her third day in Somalia, she was in a car with Nigel chasing a story.

Speaker 4 The vehicle started to slow down and I looked up. About a dozen armed men were emerging from where they had been hidden, all of them with AK-47s.
Next thing I knew, my door was pulled open.

Speaker 4 And then I found myself lying face down in the dirt, spread eagle with a gun held to the back of my head. Terrifying.

Speaker 4 I asked, is this about money?

Speaker 4 And he said to me, ah, it might be something like that.

Speaker 6 All the way back in Canada, her mother, Lorinda, stopped hearing from her daughter. She began to fear the worst.
She didn't want to be right, but she knew kidnappings were common in Somalia.

Speaker 6 You must have felt so helpless.

Speaker 5 I felt like we were so far apart and we didn't know where our daughter was.

Speaker 6 I think I would have been a collapsed puddle on the floor.

Speaker 5 Well, I knew I couldn't.

Speaker 5 I couldn't.

Speaker 6 Lorinda reached out to Canadian officials who told her this was, in fact, a kidnapping by Islamic rebels, and they scrambled to set up a recording system in case the kidnappers called.

Speaker 5 The next morning, my cell phone rang, and it was Adam who was negotiator for the kidnappers.

Speaker 6 Canadian investigators had Lorinda lead the negotiations, but what she couldn't know then was just how much terror the man who called himself Adam would bring into her life.

Speaker 16 There are two options: only to say, I don't want to pay a money, otherwise, to pay one million for your daughter.

Speaker 6 When this Adam called Lorinda on day four, he had a surprise.

Speaker 9 Okay, Lorinda.

Speaker 8 Yes. Talk to your daughter.

Speaker 12 Amanda?

Speaker 17 Mom?

Speaker 6 Amanda, I love you, sweetheart. Proof that Amanda was alive.

Speaker 5 After the first couple weeks, we realized that this might go on for longer than we hoped.

Speaker 6 On the other side of the globe, Amanda couldn't know how long she'd be held, but feared the worst.

Speaker 4 I was the only female in a group of about 16 men, so there was a lot of scary thoughts.

Speaker 1 When we come back, the danger and terror escalate.

Speaker 7 Tonight, they have brought me out to kill me.

Speaker 9 Amanda, Amanda, stay strong, stay strong, hon.

Speaker 1 And later, a new twist.

Speaker 6 You're an undercover agent. Correct.

Speaker 1 Can Amanda help turn the tables on her captor?

Speaker 4 My heart started pounding and I fell to my knees and I started crying.

Speaker 6 Nearly a month after being kidnapped, one morning the captors came for Amanda and her colleague Nigel. They were taken out of their room and marched outside.
There he was, the man known as Adam.

Speaker 4 We were terrified, and a small video camera was brought out, and we were told to beg for our lives.

Speaker 6 September 17th, 2008, Lorinda turned on the TV in Canada and saw this, a hostage video on Al Jazeera. She was crushed.
It was the first time she had seen Amanda and she didn't look good.

Speaker 6 What are you feeling as you watch it?

Speaker 5 I just want to bring her home.

Speaker 13 Never, never let her go.

Speaker 6 Weeks turned to months, and then their captors separated Amanda and Nigel. Why was that so important?

Speaker 4 That day and the days that followed

Speaker 4 were among the very, very worst because suddenly I'm alone with my own thoughts and my mind.

Speaker 6 Amanda's mind ran wild. She feared she would be raped.
Then one day, a captor entered her room. It turns out your fears were justified.

Speaker 4 He did cross that line, and my worst fears were realized. And my whole experience in captivity really changed.

Speaker 6 Somehow, she held on. And then one night, Amanda was jostled awake and driven out into the desert alone.
What happened next was terrifying.

Speaker 4 They brought me over to an acacia tree. They had me kneel.
My head is pulled back,

Speaker 4 and then there was a serrated

Speaker 4 knife.

Speaker 6 The ruthless kidnappers told a desperate Amanda she only had three minutes to plead for her life with her traumatized mother on the other end of the call.

Speaker 7 If you guys

Speaker 7 don't pay $1 million for me by one week, they will kill me, okay?

Speaker 7 Tonight, they have brought me out to kill me.

Speaker 9 Amanda, Amanda, stay strong, stay strong, hon.

Speaker 13 That phone call definitely made it harder

Speaker 5 not to let my imagination go.

Speaker 6 Did you keep it together?

Speaker 18 I just felt like I had to.

Speaker 13 That I had to be strong for her.

Speaker 6 Canada does not pay ransom to kidnappers, so if Lorinda wanted to buy Amanda's freedom, she was on her own.

Speaker 6 A world away in Somalia, Amanda and Nigel, locked in separate rooms, had discovered something. If they each stood at their windows, they could hear each other.
They began to hatch a plan.

Speaker 4 Nigel realized that we might have a chance to escape out that bathroom window, which at first seemed like an impossible idea.

Speaker 6 Each time they used the bathroom, they chipped away at the mortar holding the bricks together blocking the window.

Speaker 6 Then they would replace the loose bricks until one day the hole was big enough and they made a break for it.

Speaker 4 From the moment that I dropped down out of that bathroom window and hit the sound below, I knew that it was that.

Speaker 6 They sprinted for a mosque, the one place where they thought they'd be safe.

Speaker 4 Right before we stepped in, I looked back and I saw one of our young captors.

Speaker 6 Inside the mosque, one person stepped forward to try and help Amanda, someone she'll never forget.

Speaker 4 It was the first woman that I had seen in about five months. And when she hugged me and held on to me, it was the first time in those five months that I felt

Speaker 4 something akin to being safe.

Speaker 6 That feeling would be fleeting.

Speaker 4 I just clung on to her and I started pouring out my heart to this woman and she began pleading with my captors to let me go.

Speaker 6 Her pleas were ignored. The kidnappers circled Amanda, guns drawn, and began dragging her out of the mosque.

Speaker 4 That woman threw herself on top of me and was drug partway across the floor with me until she couldn't hang on anymore.

Speaker 4 And right before they pulled me out the door of the mosque, I looked back and I saw her on the floor. She had tears pouring down her face, and she still had her hands outstretched to help me.

Speaker 6 You don't know whatever happened to that woman?

Speaker 4 No, I don't.

Speaker 6 After the escape attempt, Adam and the gang clearly grew frustrated, and Adam took it out on Lorinda.

Speaker 19 If I had the money, I would pay you.

Speaker 19 We are not playing games. It's you that are playing games.

Speaker 8 I am playing a game.

Speaker 8 You should see my game.

Speaker 6 The escape attempt made things much worse for Amanda. They tie your arms and your legs and pull your body up by ropes and leave you.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it's very hard for me to

Speaker 4 go back to that and think about what happened to me

Speaker 4 during those three days.

Speaker 6 After that, Adam forced her onto the phone again. It's one of the hardest calls to listen to.

Speaker 6 The calls were agonizing. The families of both Amanda and Nigel, desperate to have their children home, eventually hired a private security company to help.

Speaker 6 Months went by, and one night, Amanda's captors came to her room.

Speaker 4 They marched me outside and then had me sit down on the cement and they produced a small saw and began sawing through the chains that had been on my ankles for 10 months.

Speaker 6 Amanda and Nigel hadn't seen each other for months, but now they were thrown into the backseat of a car and driven into the dark Somali night.

Speaker 4 We're both crying. Guns surround this car that we're in.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 I think this is it.

Speaker 6 Then a man appeared at the car's window.

Speaker 4 He says to me, why are you crying?

Speaker 4 Here, talk to your mother. And she said to me, Amanda, you're free.

Speaker 6 Amanda's mother, Lorinda, had never stopped negotiating, and Adam had agreed to accept $680,000 for both Amanda and Nigel. The captives flew out of Somalia and landed in Nairobi, Kenya.

Speaker 6 They were whisked away to a hospital. Mother and daughter finally reunited.

Speaker 5 I barely recognized her. It was relief, it was joy, and it was

Speaker 18 heart, heartache.

Speaker 18 to see her like that.

Speaker 4 I would not be here now if it was not for my mother. My mom gave me life and she saved my life.

Speaker 6 Amanda Lindhau was finally safe, back with her family. But Adam, the one who tormented them so much, wasn't finished with them yet.
A single word from him would bring it all back.

Speaker 1 Coming up.

Speaker 6 Did your heart stop?

Speaker 4 It was so scary that he could find me.

Speaker 1 A Facebook message from across the world and a daring undercover plan to catch a kidnapper.

Speaker 6 It sounds like something out of a movie.

Speaker 10 We didn't think it would work.

Speaker 1 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 6 Amanda Lindhaut was back home in Canada, struggling to move beyond the horrific events in Somalia and trying to cope with the idea that the captors who so terrorized her might never be brought to justice.

Speaker 6 And as Amanda tried to get her life back on track, there was an interruption.

Speaker 4 I had enrolled in a university program in eastern Canada, and it was during a break between classes. I I was checking you know my emails and I saw that I had received a Facebook message.

Speaker 6 One word, hello. It was from the last person she ever wanted to hear from.

Speaker 4 It was a message from Adam.

Speaker 6 Did your heart stop?

Speaker 4 It was so scary that he could find me even though I was safe and across the world and was at home. It was really disarming.

Speaker 6 That one simple message was about to launch a new and dangerous chapter of her story. The messages didn't stop there.
Lorinda heard from Adam too, but her communication with him extended beyond hello.

Speaker 6 Out of the blue, you get this Facebook message from Adam. It must have been shocking.

Speaker 5 It was a total shock. It was kind of terrifying too, because

Speaker 5 it just felt like he was right in my space again.

Speaker 6 Adam taunted Lorinda. He said he was reaching out because he had journals Amanda had written in captivity, deeply personal writing that had helped her get through it all.

Speaker 6 What were you thinking when you replied back?

Speaker 5 I was hoping that I could get him to send Amanda's journals.

Speaker 6 But if Lorinda wanted those precious journals, Adam said she'd have to pay. For Lorinda, it was outrageous.
Her daughter's kidnapper had tracked her down with more demands for cash.

Speaker 6 That's when she reached out once again to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. In Ottawa, a staff sergeant named Larry Laren got a call from his bosses.

Speaker 17 We become aware that Adam's been in touch with her, and at that point, my team was engaged to pursue that to the full extent.

Speaker 6 A 30-year veteran, he ran priority undercover projects for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. His mission, find Adam, if that was even his name.

Speaker 6 He reaches out on Facebook, which means you have his Facebook address, right? You know,

Speaker 6 you kind of know where he is.

Speaker 17 We know he's in Somalia. Right.
We know, we suspect that he's using an alias.

Speaker 17 So the principal course of action at that point is who is Adam?

Speaker 17 And so to do that, we have to engage him directly through an undercover operation.

Speaker 6 An undercover agent.

Speaker 17 Correct.

Speaker 6 is going to start trying to get in touch with Adam.

Speaker 17 Yes.

Speaker 6 That's where this man comes in. He's a Canadian investigator who we've agreed to refer to by his cover name, AK.

Speaker 6 Right off the top, I just want to acknowledge we're hiding your identity. We've changed your look.
Yes. That's because you're an undercover agent.

Speaker 10 Correct.

Speaker 6 AK reached out to Adam first by phone. The undercover agent told him he was a media consultant for Amanda's family.
Amanda didn't know about AK or what he was doing.

Speaker 6 All she knew was that Adam's Facebook messages had triggered some kind of investigation.

Speaker 4 I didn't really know what was going on. I knew that there was the hope to catch this guy.

Speaker 6 AK and Adam communicated on and off for years. It was slow work, but AK knew pushing too hard could crater the operation, and patience paid off.

Speaker 10 One day I received an email from him, which was a scan, scanned copies of 16 letters.

Speaker 6 They looked like letters, but they were actually pages ripped from Amanda's journals. Adam had originally asked for thousands of dollars for them, but now?

Speaker 10 I call him up and I ask him about this, and he says, Yeah, I've sent you the letters.

Speaker 10 I don't need any money for them. Our relationship had evolved to the point where he trusts me enough now.

Speaker 6 And then Adam shared a new idea. He told AK he was a scholar and wanted to write a book, A History of Somalia.

Speaker 6 As implausible as that sounds, to investigators, it was an unexpected gift, a way to get Adam on on the hook. You're telling a kidnapper

Speaker 6 who you believe was involved in this really major kidnapping and a lot of crimes that you're going to help him publish a book. Yes.

Speaker 6 It sounds like something out of a movie. It does.

Speaker 10 We always refer to this operation as the Hail Mary play. We didn't think it would work, and as it was continuing, we were surprised ourselves.

Speaker 6 You didn't think he would actually say, yeah, I really want to write a book? No. And I'm going to pursue this with you.
No.

Speaker 10 He'd convinced himself that he wanted to write this book and that he was able to write this book.

Speaker 6 That's your in. That's our in.

Speaker 10 We knew we wanted to talk to him. And we looked and we thought, okay, how are we going to move this forward? How are we going to gather evidence? Because ultimately, that's our goal.

Speaker 10 Gathering the evidence

Speaker 10 and maybe one day bringing him to justice.

Speaker 6 Money, fame, to Amanda, it was just the kind of bait that could trap her kidnapper.

Speaker 4 It totally fits in line with what I knew of this man.

Speaker 4 He struck me as the kind of guy whose ego was so big. Of course, if somebody told him he's capable of writing a book, he would think that

Speaker 6 the Hail Mary play was in motion. But investigators knew they needed more than phone calls and emails.
Their next move, get Adam to meet in person.

Speaker 1 Coming up.

Speaker 6 We need to see him.

Speaker 17 We need to see him to identify him fully.

Speaker 1 A meeting in a perfect island paradise. Undercover agent, an unsuspecting kidnapper.
dangerously face to face can you believe he's saying all this it was amazing

Speaker 6 as the hunt for her kidnapper progressed amanda continued to recover and heal part of that journey included sharing her story with the world four years after being freed she released her memoir, A House in the Sky.

Speaker 6 It became a bestseller. In my own life, friends, family, book club people say to me, have you read this book? You've reached a lot of people.

Speaker 4 Most people will never be kidnapped. But people know pain and loss and adversity that they don't think that they can get through.

Speaker 4 And so what I feel people find in the pages is, you know, inspiration and a reminder that they are strong

Speaker 6 Her strength would become crucial to the operation now underway.

Speaker 6 Investigators knew they had her kidnapper Adam on the hook. They also knew that in order to get justice for Amanda they needed more than long-distance conversations.
We need to see him.

Speaker 17 We need to see him to identify him fully.

Speaker 6 Whose idea was it to meet face to face? It was his idea.

Speaker 6 Imagine the opportunity to meet with one of Amanda's kidnappers face to face, but where in the world to do it? Somalia, too dangerous. Canada, too risky.
How about paradise?

Speaker 6 Mauritius, four hours away from the kidnappers' homeland of Somalia, this island gem with its pristine beaches, crystal clear water, beautiful mountain vistas, and luxury resorts.

Speaker 6 AK convinced the kidnapper that he would serve as his book agent and invited Adam here to talk about the project.

Speaker 6 Adam lives in Mogadushu, in a really difficult place to live, and you're bringing him to a place where Europeans come on vacation.

Speaker 10 I think what it did do, though, was it solidified my status as an international business person, somebody who had the means to get him what he wanted, which was essentially a book contract.

Speaker 6 Adam took the bait. Here he is in Mauritius with AK.
Did you ever get nervous that Adam was figuring out who you were?

Speaker 10 I did initially, and then we were walking around the resort, and he turned to me and he said, what did you think of me? And so I buttered him up a bit. I said, your English was great.

Speaker 10 You've come a long way from such humble beginnings. And I turned it back on him and I said, what did you think of me? And he said, first I thought you were intelligence.
But now, now we are brothers.

Speaker 6 Against a backdrop of serene stillness and beauty, the brothers continued to talk and even relax. They each had something to gain in this face-to-face meeting.

Speaker 6 He had one objective, getting that book deal. He did.
And it seemed like you had one objective.

Speaker 10 Oh, we had definitely we had one objective.

Speaker 6 The objective was to see him confirm that Adam was indeed the man who had terrorized Amanda and Lorinda. Next, they wanted him to admit his involvement in the kidnapping.

Speaker 6 That's where the phony book deal came in.

Speaker 10 We knew that he was interested in writing a book. We brought props, and one of them was a book cover that we had designed.

Speaker 10 And I was going to sign a contract with him that laid out his and my relationship vis-à-vis the publisher.

Speaker 6 The contract had a trap buried in it. Adam would have to disclose any wrongdoing in his past.

Speaker 10 It had a special paragraph in it that we had inserted, a disclosure paragraph to encourage him to tell us his story.

Speaker 6 He signed and incredibly he told his story, including details of his involvement in the kidnapping. Can you believe he's saying all this out?

Speaker 10 In my head, I was dancing.

Speaker 10 It was amazing.

Speaker 10 You couldn't ask for better evidence.

Speaker 6 He even described his role in one of Amanda's worst days, that hostage video on Al Jazeera.

Speaker 10 I showed him a video that had aired on Al Jazeera television, and he pointed to himself as if he was really, really proud of this. He said, I'm the one that shot that video.

Speaker 6 Amanda vividly remembers that video and Adam that day.

Speaker 4 Adam was now manning this and setting the stage for this video.

Speaker 4 I would say there was a great deal of excitement among all of them that they were going to be doing this little video and, you know, in their mindset.

Speaker 6 Because it was getting

Speaker 4 attention and money.

Speaker 6 In Mauritius, investigators accomplished two big things. They'd identified Adam as the kidnapper and got him to admit his crimes.
But after all that work, it still wasn't enough to arrest Adam.

Speaker 6 Mauritian law prohibited AK from recording the confession. So you have no video or audio of what he's saying?

Speaker 18 No.

Speaker 10 Correct.

Speaker 6 Investigators wanted to have the strongest evidence they could against Adam in order to prosecute him under Canadian law. You're leaving Mauritius with a success, but you need more.
Yeah, we do.

Speaker 6 How did you feel when you left here?

Speaker 18 Conflicted.

Speaker 6 You're leaving him, watching him go back to Somalia.

Speaker 10 Yeah, it was,

Speaker 10 as investigators, we'd succeeded in getting the evidence, we'd succeeded in getting the identity, but we had to let him go. It was like a catch and release program.

Speaker 6 In order to catch Adam and bring him to justice, they were hoping they could lure him even farther from home, a place where they could control the setting, all the way to Canada.

Speaker 6 But how on earth would they convince Adam to do that? And how long would it take?

Speaker 6 While you want justice, this is dragging on for years.

Speaker 4 And as the years passed, I started to think the likelihood of that would diminish.

Speaker 1 Coming up,

Speaker 1 investigators set a trap.

Speaker 9 I'm a spokesman, right? I'm an intelligent person, an arcade person.

Speaker 10 It played out like a movie.

Speaker 4 I answered the phone and my heart started pounding.

Speaker 1 When dateline continues.

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Speaker 6 Amanda Lindhout knew investigators were doing their best to bring her kidnapper to justice, and she did did her best to help them.

Speaker 4 Every couple of months, I would have in-person visits with the RCMP.

Speaker 4 And during these meetings, they could never tell me very much, but enough to give me at least a little bit of confidence that they might be able to pull this off.

Speaker 6 AK and his team considered the undercover operation in Mauritius a success, but it wasn't enough. They wanted to get Amanda's kidnapper to confess his crimes on Canadian soil.

Speaker 6 Why did you need him to go to Canada?

Speaker 10 We didn't want him to be arrested overseas, so we wanted him in the country so we could deal with him in the most efficient way possible.

Speaker 6 In order to grab Adam in Canada, they had to get him there. AK truly had to convince him the fake book deal was real.
So he thinks you're his book agent?

Speaker 10 I'm his book agent. So we had now got to the point where he was going to meet the publisher.

Speaker 10 So it was my job then to send him a plane ticket, which is difficult to do if you want to fly somebody out of Somalia.

Speaker 6 Difficult would be an understatement, as it turned out. You're going to bring an international kidnapper into Canada.

Speaker 9 Correct.

Speaker 6 That doesn't sound easy.

Speaker 17 Well, the dichotomy of it is that we're usually in the business of keeping terrorists outside the country.

Speaker 6 Coordinating and planning an itinerary for a kidnapper would take time and threaten the operation. Once again, AK played the long game.

Speaker 10 I kept on putting him off saying we will be meeting with the publisher soon.

Speaker 14 And then at one point

Speaker 10 I had to fake a heart attack.

Speaker 6 I'm sorry, you had to fake a heart attack.

Speaker 10 I had fake a heart attack.

Speaker 10 And that was the way we were able to put him off for a while.

Speaker 6 Yeah. In real life, you were actually doing other cases.
Yes. Finally, after years of hard work and delays for Amanda and her mother, everything was in place and Adam was on a plane to Canada.

Speaker 10 He arrives at the airport in Ottawa and he comes in and there's big hugs and we sit down and we talk about the impending book deal, the publishing deal that is about to be signed.

Speaker 6 Adam was looking forward to a different kind of future. Little did he know that is precisely what he would get out of this deal.

Speaker 10 I go into the room with Adam first. We have a boardroom set up for our meeting and then the book publisher arrives, knocks on the door, comes on in.
Him and I are allegedly old friends.

Speaker 9 This is my star.

Speaker 6 We're actually both undercover agents.

Speaker 10 Both undercover agents. And then we have a bit of chit-chat and then we sit down and we go over the contract.
And Adam, as we had done in Mauritius, he goes over everything that he'd done.

Speaker 9 So

Speaker 9 you would be the negotiator between the people who had Amanda and Adel.

Speaker 9 And I told you, Lorenzo, the accepted table. Right.
I'm a spokesman.

Speaker 9 I'm an intelligent person, educated person.

Speaker 10 It played out like a movie. It was excellent.

Speaker 6 He's actually confessing to you his crimes. Yes.

Speaker 9 So after the three months then, you, but as far as I understand it from what Lorinda and Man have told me, you were still the person on the phone. Yes, I'm welcome.
I want to get the benefit. Right.

Speaker 9 You were supposed to get some money. Yes.
Do you know how much?

Speaker 9 I don't know. But I was expecting more than with the big gift.
With the big gift? 10,000.

Speaker 6 After that meeting,

Speaker 6 you walk out. Yes.

Speaker 10 We signed the contract. Everybody's very happy.
We were walking out because I had told him we were going for a tour of Ottawa.

Speaker 10 But that didn't happen.

Speaker 6 You were both arrested. You're arrested too because you're still undercover.

Speaker 10 Yeah. Uniformed police handcuffed us both.

Speaker 6 Adam must have been totally shocked.

Speaker 10 He was. You could see in his face that he was clearly thrown by this.

Speaker 10 And I had to play up, you know, get your hands off my client. What are you doing here? This is ridiculous.
And they handcuffed us both, led us off in different directions.

Speaker 10 I went for a beer, he went to jail.

Speaker 6 It had been seven years since Amanda Lindhout had been chained in a squalid cell in Somalia, terrorized and tortured by her kidnappers for 460 days. Now, Adam was in chains himself.

Speaker 6 Amanda was home when she got the news.

Speaker 4 I answered the phone and I was home alone, and my heart started pounding. And he said,

Speaker 4 We've arrested Adam. And I fell to my knees

Speaker 4 and I started crying. And the next day I woke up and it was my 34th birthday.
And on the front page of every newspaper in Canada was his face.

Speaker 4 A face that I hadn't seen in

Speaker 4 over five years.

Speaker 5 I came in right after and she was crying and I think she was saying they got him, they got him, they got Adam.

Speaker 6 And what were your feelings?

Speaker 18 I was crying and I couldn't even speak.

Speaker 4 And immediately my mind went to, well, there's going to be a trial.

Speaker 4 And I will have to testify in that trial.

Speaker 4 And the weight of that and what that really meant to me and would mean to my life became real.

Speaker 1 Coming up.

Speaker 1 Face to face with her captor at last.

Speaker 20 She was crying.

Speaker 4 She was upset. I was so afraid to see this man again.

Speaker 1 What would happen inside that courtroom?

Speaker 4 I wondered if I could do it.

Speaker 6 As unlikely as it may have seemed, authorities had their man in the kidnapping of Amanda Lindhout, and they got him in Canada. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police announced Adam's capture to the world.

Speaker 21 This arrest is a testament to the investigative team's perseverance, and I wish to thank them for their excellent work.

Speaker 6 With the investigation over, it would now be up to Amanda herself to keep Adam behind bars. It would take everything she had to do it.

Speaker 4 I'm going to have to testify, and I'm going to have to face this man in court.

Speaker 15 You're going to have to see him.

Speaker 9 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Before that could happen, Amanda would have to assist the prosecution team in building its case against the kidnapper.

Speaker 4 The group of us would meet every couple of months for two and a half years.

Speaker 18 Wow.

Speaker 4 It's exhausting. It was exhausting.
This was such a difficult story for me that there was still so much real active trauma in the telling of this story.

Speaker 4 And I just so appreciated the time that they took with me, guiding me through the process. And as the trial date was getting closer, I can't even say that it became easier.

Speaker 4 The idea of facing him cost me a lot of pain.

Speaker 6 Croft Michelson was the lead prosecutor. What were the biggest challenges?

Speaker 20 One was the magnitude of the file. My recollection were there weren't more than 700 emails between AK and Adam alone.
The second challenge was, are the witnesses actually going to be able to testify?

Speaker 6 The man known to Amanda and Lorinda for so long as Adam was actually a 40-year-old Somali national named Ali Omar Ader. He pleaded not guilty to the kidnapping.

Speaker 6 On October 5th, 2017, the trial began in the kidnapping of Amanda Lindhau.

Speaker 4 It was like the biggest day of my life.

Speaker 6 Dateline was with her that morning as she made her way to the courthouse. What was going through your head? What were you worried about?

Speaker 4 In those moments before entering the courtroom, I wondered if I could do it. I was so afraid to see this man again.
Inside of me was the thought of seeing his face.

Speaker 4 But I gathered myself.

Speaker 4 I needed to do that as much for myself as anything.

Speaker 6 I just saw you gather yourself just there when you said it. It's still hard for you.

Speaker 4 It is.

Speaker 4 I expect it always will be. You know, this is real life, like pain.

Speaker 4 And then the doors opened and I walked into into the courtroom and Adam was sitting directly in front of me and I kind of crumbled.

Speaker 6 Now came the moment for Amanda to testify against her kidnapper. Can you describe it for me?

Speaker 20 She was crying, she was upset, she was afraid.

Speaker 20 And then she swung her head over and she looked at Adam in the box and She stopped crying and gave him a look like I would never want anyone looking at me like that.

Speaker 6 What kind of a

Speaker 20 It was a firm resolve.

Speaker 4 Seeing him sitting across from me as a prisoner in that box,

Speaker 4 that was also the truth now.

Speaker 6 It's a reversal.

Speaker 4 Exactly.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 he looked so small in a way, sitting in that box.

Speaker 6 In her testimony, Amanda spoke openly about how Adam terrorized her. She was on the stand for one long day.

Speaker 8 Okay, my name is Adam. I'm from Odisha.

Speaker 6 But her mom, Lorinda, spent three days in court listening to the phone calls that would prove crucial to the case.

Speaker 19 I am not lying to you.

Speaker 16 You do not want Amanda to be home because if you want,

Speaker 16 you should raise the money.

Speaker 6 So again, you have to relive it. Yeah,

Speaker 18 it was empowering.

Speaker 5 The truth was being told. And there was a small part of me that actually felt

Speaker 5 sorry for him, compassion for him.

Speaker 20 Adam's defense was that he himself

Speaker 20 had been taken hostage and they had threatened him.

Speaker 6 In the end, his defense didn't work. The man known as Adam was found guilty of kidnapping.
For his crimes, he was sentenced to 15 years in a Canadian prison. Victory for Amanda Lindhout.

Speaker 6 Amanda read a victim's impact statement at sentencing. In it, she addressed Adam.
I am the victim. I am also the survivor, she said.
I am the one who will go out and live the lessons of this.

Speaker 6 I choose to lean into the lesson and challenge of finding forgiveness, compassion, and peace.

Speaker 6 Those words, bringing to a close not one, but two improbable stories, Amanda Lindhout's kidnapping and the years spent in pursuit of justice. Ten years of your life.

Speaker 10 Ten years, yeah. Five years for the undercover operation, 10 years in total until conviction.

Speaker 6 Worth it?

Speaker 1 Absolutely.

Speaker 6 He's sitting in prison right now in this country. Do you think about that ever?

Speaker 5 It's justice, but I don't take joy in any suffering of any other human being.

Speaker 6 Have you forgiven Adam?

Speaker 4 I can't say yes or no to that question because it's not a forgiving because Adam deserves to be forgiven.

Speaker 4 But I deserve to have the freedom in my life of not being full of that anger all the time and keep pointing my feet towards forgiveness.

Speaker 1 That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt.
Thanks for joining us.

Speaker 6 Are you ready to get spicy?

Speaker 11 These Doritos Golden Sriracha aren't that spicy. Maybe it's time to turn up the heat.
Or turn it down. It's time for something that's not too spicy.
Try Dorito's Golden Sriracha.

Speaker 6 Spicy.

Speaker 11 But not too spicy.