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Some of you heard about three US citizens who were arrested here and deported. They were employees of a private security company employed by Oscar Kashala, one of the 32 presidential candidates. Dr. Kashala is a physician in the US, and I don’t know anybody here who had heard of him until these arrests. Regarding his campaign, he says, “I am a very rare breed of Congolese. I live abroad and I can earn $375,000 a year without stealing any money." With memories of Mobutu, such a slogan has an appeal.

The three Americans were arrested with a group of 19 South Africans and a few Nigerians on charges of plotting a coup. The international response, including that of the UN, the US, and the press, is that the Congo is paranoid: Private security firms with retired secret service agents and police captains and large contingents of South Africans trying to destabilize a country? Absurd!

Below is an interview with two of the men, who seem like relatively high-level folks. Their utter surprise at the behavior of the police demonstrates a lack of familiarity with the security situation here. There have been recent raids against Congolese opposition leaders that do not make the news in the US. Dr. Kashala did not hire a very well informed security team.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/orl-mhostages0106jun01,0,6026991.story?coll=orl-news-headlines

Orange men recall anxiety of 9 days jailed in Congo

Jim Leusner
Sentinel Staff Writer

June 1, 2006

Kevin Billings and Joe Robinson thought they were dead men.

It was about 6 p.m. May 19 when security forces burst over their walled compound with machine guns and grenade launchers, looking for evidence of a plot to overthrow the president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Billings and Robinson had been hired to protect and advise a rising presidential challenger in the African nation's first free elections in 46 years. They were on a porch at gunpoint when their guards clicked off their safeties, preparing the rifles to fire, and walked toward them.

"The weapons were cocked. . . . We thought, 'They're going to shoot us,' " Billings said.

"I started thinking, 'Which one can I [kill and] take with me?' " Robinson said. "I wasn't going to sit there."

So began the earliest moments in a harrowing, nine-day ordeal in the west-central African country formerly known as Zaire, where the men were held captive until they were released May 27 and banned from returning. They flew to Orlando on Monday afternoon aboard a company Learjet.

The men, who were providing unarmed security through Orlando-based AQMI Strategy Corp., recounted their nightmarish adventure in a 90-minute interview Wednesday with the Orlando Sentinel at their company office atop the SunTrust tower downtown. Until a few days earlier, the conference room was the nerve center where the company pressed for assistance from police, government and humanitarian agencies worldwide.

The men are tired but relaxing with family. And they still await blood tests to see whether they have contracted malaria. Meanwhile, they are taking preventive antibiotics.

The two calmly detailed their detention and squalid confinement conditions and joked about how they kept their spirits high in police custody by singing corny television theme songs. They also thanked company and government officials and friends for fighting for their release and consoling their worried families.

"The upside is if nine days in jail results in a lot more international attention and democratic elections, it was worth it," Robinson said. "The people are hungry for the opportunity to vote, but they are scared to death because of the [country's past] atrocities."

Political consultant Robinson, 47, retired as an Orlando police captain and a top aide to Mayor Buddy Dyer in January. Security adviser Billings, 49, is a retired U.S. Secret Service agent from Maitland. Both were contracted to advise and protect Dr. Oscar Kashala, a physician who holds dual U.S. and Congo citizenship and is one of 32 candidates running for president.

Billings, who previously worked in Iraq and Somalia for other security companies, said the Congo trip was uneventful until the men were pulled off their flight to Paris on May 18 by immigration officials. Their passports were taken, and they were told that an apparent misunderstanding would probably be resolved the next day.

Instead, they were arrested.

"My thinking [before the trip] was to watch out for the militant groups and insurgents coming over from Burundi and Rwanda," Billings said. "If you told us the biggest threat was the police, I would have told you [that] you were nuts. We got attacked by the police and robbed by police."

Billings and Robinson said they were held for three hours at the compound while authorities searched the house and dug up the yard. They were looking for weapons and rummaged through rooms in the home, stealing clothing, iPods, watches, cash and malaria medicine.

"They were expecting they were coming in on a group of terrorists -- meaning us -- and expected a fight," Billings said.

"They found nothing," Robinson said.

Both said they think DRC President Joseph Kabila or top members of his government were behind their arrests.

Though the Americans were unharmed, one South African was beaten with rifle butts and required hospitalization. Another man was beaten during interrogation, Billings said.

Three Americans, including AQMI contractor Seth Taylor of San Diego, and 29 other South African and Nigerian security and translation contractors for Kashala were jailed. They were held in rooms atop a local police station with barred windows, no furniture and only a drip of running water. The detainees slept on the floor, used the tiny amount of water to bathe, recycled it to flush one toilet and fought off bugs and mosquitoes.

All have since been released.

Told at one point they could be held for three months, Robinson and Billings said the detainees were told daily they would be released that day. The men said police officials -- who still use typewriters with carbon paper -- were skeptical why the Americans had a laptop computer.

The two men also said they bribed guards to pass messages to other captives in other rooms and to buy food to supplement their one daily meal of water, bread and a small can of fish or beef.

To keep up their spirits, Billings said he led colleagues nightly singing "America the Beautiful" and theme songs from TV's The Beverly Hillbillies and Gilligan's Island.

"I got everyone singing, 'If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands' and stomp their feet," Billings said, laughing. "They [guards] came running upstairs peeking around the corner" to investigate the disturbance.

Jim Leusner can be reached at 407-420-5411 or jleusner@orlandosentinel.com.

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