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Nelson man escapes Libya

Nelson man who was trapped in Libya when the uprising broke tells his harrowing tale of life in the thick of revolution and his respect for the people fighting for freedom
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Nelson’s John Mcnab (inset

If the Libyan people are successful in their struggle to oust dictator Muammat Gaddafi, John Mcnab would go back to the country in a heartbeat.

The Nelson man says he has “nothing but tremendous respect” for those involved in the Libyan uprising — even as he admits he expected to die when the conflict flared up around him just over two weeks ago.

Mcnab had been in the country for about a year before the uprising began, working on the construction of a new airport for engineering and construction firm SNC Lavalin in the eastern city of Benghazi.

“Libya was extremely safe for the whole year,” he remembers. “You could walk around Benghazi any time, day or night. The people were nice, they’d come up and walk with you. They’d all say welcome and shake your hand.”

Though the Libyan protests came after similar struggles in neighbouring Egypt and Tunisia, Mcnab says none of the 2,500 foreign workers in his camp expected the wave of civil unrest to spread to Libya.

But when the violence began, it escalated quickly — and most of it began in Mcnab’s home base of Benghazi.

According to most accounts, including Mcnab’s, protests in the country began the week of February 15, after the arrest of a prominent human rights activist.

By that Friday, “we got word people were getting killed in Benghazi.”

A day later, Mcnab remembers watching helicopters rain gunfire down on the city, as mercenaries poured into the area.

“There were hundreds of soldiers there at the airport, right near where we were,” he told the Star.

“We didn’t know who they were, if they were mercenaries coming in from Niger and Chad, or whether they were government soldiers, or whether they were the people.”

On Sunday, another group of unidentified, armed men barged into SNC Lavalin’s camp, located just 200 metres from the airport runway.

“They had machine guns mounted on the back of their trucks and everyone was heavily armed with AK-47s and pistols,” he says. “They came tearing through camp, so we immediately got everybody back and told them ‘go to your rooms, go to your cabins and don’t come out.’”

The men overpowered SNC’s unarmed security and took most of the camp’s food supply, as well as its heavy machinery and computers.

“We thought we were dead,” Mcnab says. “We didn’t know who these people were... Basically, we were waiting for them to come in, shoot their way in our doors and kill us.”

As the days wore on, sounds of gunfire drifted to the camp from the city, and fighter jets buzzed in the skies. But the tide of the fight was turning and the Libyan military was joining forces with its people.

At the SNC camp, one of Mcnab’s coworkers made contact with British officials, who would eventually provide a way out for about 18 members of the crew (busloads of Thai and Filipino workers from the camp had already left for the Egyptian border).

A week after the conflict began, the British sent word they were docking a ship in the Benghazi harbour.

“We just ran out the door, ran to the bus, got a Libyan driver and told him to stay out of the city as much as he could,” says Mcnab.

Within 90 minutes, they were at sea.

“I can’t even describe the feeling. We had seven days of high stress, thinking we were going to die the first day or two for sure — when we came around the corner and there’s the Union Jack fluttering in the breeze.”

It would take him most of the weekend to get home, flying from Malta to Rome to Paris to Montreal, before touching down in Vancouver and booking his final flight to Kelowna. Though he’s been back in Nelson since Monday night, Mcnab says he’s only just starting to shake off the time change.

As he follows the Libyan uprising from West Kootenay, Mcnab says he worries about retaliation against the city that started it all. And there’s awe in his voice when he speaks of the conflict that held him captive.

“The changes in that part of the world have just been phenomenal. And done by the people with nothing but stones and bricks and sticks,” he says.

“It’s just unreal when you sit back and think about it. I have nothing but absolute and total respect for them.”