CNN correspondent Clarissa Ward revealed that she and her crew were held captive by a militia for two days while covering events in Darfur earlier this month. The 44-year-old veteran war correspondent traveled to Sudan to report on the civil war, which has triggered a humanitarian crisis affecting over 26 million people at risk of famine.
In an essay she wrote for CNN, Ward recounted that she and her team were detained by a militia led by someone known as “the general,” hours after their arrival in North Darfur. Ward, along with cameraman Scott McWhinne and producer Brent Swails, was inside a vehicle when they were surrounded by armed fighters.
In the Clutches of Death
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The fighters then angrily ordered them not to film the situation. While Ward’s producer, Brent Swails, tried to de-escalate the situation, the general snatched his rifle and fired a shot, apparently targeting a bird.
“I was relieved that the gun wasn’t pointed at us but still disturbed by his erratic behavior,” Ward wrote of the scary experience.
Ward had been invited to the town of Tawila by the SLM-AW, a faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement that acts as a neutral party in the civil war.
Located just 32 miles from the war’s frontline in El Fasher, Tawila has become a sanctuary for those escaping the violence.
However, upon arriving at the designated meeting point in the town of Aby Gamra, she and her team were confronted instead by a rival militia, accompanied by two trucks equipped with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns.
The team’s driver was taken away in chains to the local jail, and the crew was interrogated individually for three hours in a “small, windowless room.”
Encounter with Death
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After the interrogation, Ward and her team were placed in their vehicle and instructed to follow a convoy moving further into Darfur. Ward recounted that as the general fired his weapon again and yelled at the crew, she begged him, saying, “I am a mother. I have three little boys.”
She said that a security chief reassured them not to be afraid and asked the CNN team for their loved ones’ phone numbers so he could confirm they were safe.
The militia subsequently contacted the crew’s relatives to tell them of their safety, while also threatening that they could be held for many years if they disclosed any details about their situation.
The crew was then held for two days under the supervision of armed men, some of whom were as young as 14, Ward wrote. After 48 hours, the general told the CNN team that they would be released, stating, “We thought you were spies but now you can go home.”
“A wave of relief crashed through my body,” Ward said. ‘There were smiles and handshakes with our captors. We posed awkwardly for a photograph at the edge of the mat that had been our makeshift prison.”
War between the Sudanese military and the Rapid Support Forces erupted in April 2023 in the capital, Khartoum, and has since spread throughout the country. Darfur has seen especially fierce fighting.
The UN estimates that around 20,000 people have been killed, with thousands more injured since the onset of the conflict.
