Czechast Special: Remembering Iraq Ordeal of Three Czech Reporters 20 Years Ago

There were scenes of great joy at Prague airport 20 years ago when three Czech journalists kidnapped in Iraq were reunited with their families. Vít Pohanka, now your Czechast host, was one of them.

This special episode is really a Czechast first: it is hosted by Amelia Mola-Schmidt and her guest is Vít Pohanka. He was among the three Czech reporters kidnapped near Baghdad twenty years ago.

The drama lasted over 5 days and was frontline news for the whole time. Czech authorities put together an emergency team at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and were in constant contact with the American authorities in occupied Baghdad but nobody knew whether the three journalists were alive, held by the insurgents or dead.

This was a time of a very high level of violence when quite a few other foreigners were kidnapped in Iraq and, in some cases, gruesomely executed in front of a video camera, their deaths then broadcast globally.

So, no wonder that Czechia was literally gripped by this unexpected drama in far-away Iraq for the whole time. In this episode of Czechast, Vít Pohanka retells his story of what it was like to play a part in this truly unique episode in the recent history of Czechia.