The Derry oil worker who was abducted by tribesmen in Yemen last Sunday night returned home yesterday, vowing never to go back to the Middle East.
Cork-born Mr Patrick Walsh (58) said he "was scared stiff and I will not be going back". Armed tribesmen in the remote Marib desert abducted him at gunpoint from the Hunt Oil compound, where he was a plant operator. The oil workers are flown to and from work by helicopter for security reasons.
In the early hours when "some men called at me from outside the fence". One of them pointed a gun at him and "ordered me to climb the fence and bundled me into a pick-up truck".
"I had a company radio with me so I was in communication with the company and the local security services. The tribesmen were tracked down easily enough and the security men came about five hours later and took me away," he said.