Oklahoma Native, NY Times Journalist Shares Story At Memorial Museum

News9.com

OKLAHOMA CITY – Anthony Shadid, and three other New York Times journalists, survived violent captivity in Libya and Thursday night the Oklahoma native shared his story at the Oklahoma City Memorial Museum.

"They got us on our knees and they forced us on our stomachs and at one point one of the soldiers said to us or said to his colleague 'Shoot them.' And it felt like minutes had passed but it was just seconds and another soldier said 'You can't, they're Americans," Shadid recalled.

Forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi captured Anthony Shadid and three other journalists. Shadid said they were tied up, blindfolded, beaten and even fired upon.

Libyan officials released the journalists after almost one week. Shadid said he's still struggling with the decisions that led to his capture.

"But I guess I've been wrestling over the past couple weeks with the sequence of decisions that I made that kept me as long as I was there. Why didn't I leave earlier? Why didn't I realize I had enough stuff, enough material for the story that I was going to write for the next day's newspaper?" said Shadid.

The journalists' driver is still missing. None of them know what happened to him.

Shadid said that's a burden they will all bear for a long time.

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