U.S. journalist held in Libya testifies on Vienna Convention

During 44 days of captivity in Libya, journalist Clare Gillis endured lengthy interrogations, appeared before judges without a lawyer and had to sign documents written in Arabic, a language she couldn’t read.

The document demand came after a six-hour interrogation.

“That’s when I’d say I cracked. I started crying,” said Gillis, one of three journalists held by Moammar Kadafi’s regime this year. “It could say that I’m a spy … I could be signing my own death certificate. He just kept waving the pen, and I realized I didn’t have a choice.”

Gillis, a freelance journalist from New Haven, Conn., was covering a battle in eastern Libya on April 5 when she and her three colleagues came under fire from Kadafi’s forces.

“The soldiers punched and hit us with the butts of their rifles, they tied our hands behind our backs and threw us in the back of their pickup truck,” she testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

One of the journalists, South African photographer Anton Hammerl, had been seriously wounded, while Gillis and two photojournalists were captured. The group never again saw Hammerl, who is presumed dead.

In those first weeks, Gillis and the two other journalists, James Foley and Manu Brabo, were held incommunicado. They lay awake at night listening to NATO airstrikes.

“We wondered if anyone knew where we were or even that we were alive,” Gillis told the committee at a hearing on whether the U.S. should comply with the Vienna Convention. She dialed her parents’ phone number over and over in her head.

Finally, after 16 days, Gillis was allowed to call her parents to let them know she was safe. “I never again felt as bad as I did during those first couple weeks,” she said.

Nevertheless, Gillis testified that her treatment in captivity was fair. In an article in the Atlantic this year, she described being given decent food and places to sleep, and sometimes even cigarettes. “I was honestly better rested, better fed and cleaner as a captive than I ever was as a practicing journalist,” Gillis joked after the hearing.

The U.S. Embassy had closed the day Gillis arrived in Libya, leaving the captives at the mercy of Kadafi’s justice system.

“We knew that we were in a place where there was no rule of law,” Gillis said. “We didn’t even know who to ask for.”

Ultimately, the Hungarian and Turkish consulates, in conjunction with the State Department, secured their release on May 18.

Her experience, Gillis said, led her to testify in support of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. The treaty obliges a host nation to inform the consulate of another country when one of its citizens is arrested for a serious crime.

The issue arose during the case of a Mexican national, Humberto Leal Garcia, who was convicted in the kidnapping, rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl and was executed in Texas, over the objections of the Mexican government.

Supporters say honoring the treaty in the United States gives Washington greater leverage when American citizens are detained abroad.

“Kadafi’s Libya honored its obligations to me under the Vienna Convention,” Gillis said, “and I think and I hope that we can at least do as well as they did.”

christine.maiduc@latimes.com