Publisher's Synopsis
Like many expats, Paul Ride took a job abroad to earn a better level of income to support his family. A trained chef, in the early 1990s Ride was working as a contract catering manager in Kuwait where he'd initially been assigned to a company tasked with extinguishing oil well fires started by the Iraq military in 1991 as they retreated from the country due to the advance of United States-led Gulf War coalition forces. When the firefighters had completed their work he was reassigned to an organisation responsible for explosive ordnance disposal.
June 28th 1992 began like every other day for Ride. An early morning start to deliver packed lunches and pick up bread from a bakery. A delay left him with time to kill so he decided to visit an old colleague working at a United Nations facility in northern Kuwait close to the border with Iraq - a border he was coerced into crossing by a gun-toting Iraqi soldier. Accused of spying, Ride was taken hostage and repeatedly interrogated by the Mukhabarat, Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein's murderous secret police. Eventually charged with illegal entry, he was sentenced to seven years in jail and transferred to Abu Ghraib, a notorious maximum-security prison close to Baghdad. 'Ride To Hell: Prisoner Of A Dubious Peace' is Paul Ride's gripping first-hand account of his traumatic incarceration, its devastating personal consequences, and his ongoing quest for justice, compensation, and an understanding of why the UK Government seemingly allowed him to fall through the diplomatic cracks that existed at that time.
