By Dave Clark

TRIPOLI, Apr 01, 2011 (AFP) - The first shots rang out as faint pops while the Libyan army truck was still hundreds of metres away, but as it roared down upon us the sound built into an insistent volley of sharp, earsplitting cracks.

"Yalla, yalla! Drive, drive!" we screamed, as our pursuers flashed their headlights.

Bullets sliced into the bodywork of our out-matched car and we gave up the race, daring to hope that by surrendering we would not be killed in cold blood.

As we rolled to a stop, the vehicle swerved alongside and bursts of automatic fire shot out two tires and peppered the engine compartment.

We spilled out, hands above our heads, shouting: "Sahafi, sahafi! Journalists, journalists!" -- the latest foreign reporters to fall into the hands of Moamer Kadhafi's army.

It was Saturday March 19 and NATO air strikes had yet to begin. Kadhafi's forces were racing eastwards along a desert road between the rebel-held oil port of Tobruk and the front-line battleground of Ajdabiya.

We had hoped to spend the day interviewing refugees, instead AFP photographer Roberto Schmidt, Getty Images photographer Joe Raedle and I found ourselves prisoners of a still powerful but unpredictable regime.

We would be transported to Kadhafi's hometown of Sirte and on to the secret prisons of Tripoli.

Kneeling by the roadside, we watched our equipment piled up alongside a Michelin road map of North Africa.

Then came intelligence officers in civilian clothes. We were separated and forced into three pick-ups.

We had never come face-to-face with the regime's soldiers and they were offended by reports they were bloodthirsty mercenaries.

But their morale was high and they were better armed and disciplined than the rag-tag rebel volunteers drawn up against them.

When pro-Kadhafi civilian militia manning checkpoints on the road west tried to assault us, our guards protected us. They shared food and drink with their captives.

But as we reached the outskirts of Kadhafi's hometown the mood darkened.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy was warning of action "within hours". Sirte, a regime bastion, could expect to be a target.

Hysteria was mounting. I understand very little Arabic, but some phrases are unmistakeable: "F-16! F-16!" -- the US strike fighter. Armed civilians with faces contorted with rage tried to reach into the vehicle to slap at us.

Anti-aircraft fire snaked upwards. Then the first explosion rocked the town. A flash, a dull boom, a faint shockwave and a ball of fire.

We would later learn that US and British warships launched cruise missiles at air defence systems.

Already, I had begun a mental countdown until the hour I estimated my wife would start to worry. I wondered how long AFP would wait before warning her that I had not checked in.

We were prisoners of a paranoid, isolated regime -- citizens of "enemy states", captured on the battlefield.

At the first detention centre, glowering intelligence officers warned that entering Libya without visas put us in a "difficult position".

The first night we were questioned by an officer with impeccable English. He wanted the names and cellphone numbers of our Libyan rebel contacts but my Thuraya satphone had long since been stolen and our car with my notebook in it burned.

We were building a strong friendship based on moments of humour, tales of home and a flick football game with a water bottle top.

Then we were transferred to plain-clothes agents. Our situation took a dramatic turn for the worse.

We were handcuffed painfully behind our backs and blindfolded. The day quickly turned to agony.

Packed into a pickup, the metal cuffs soon tightened, cutting into our wrists.

We had not bathed for days. The foul odour mounted as the cabin heated up in the desert sun. Our escorts would spray us regularly with sickly, sweet-smelling perfume.

As I type this almost a week later I can still see bruises and cuts on my wrist. I seem to have lost sensation in the back of my left hand.

The cuffs came off only to be replaced with tight plastic bindings that were scarcely more comfortable. We were loaded into a steel box, too small to stand up in, on the back of a police van.

"If you're happy and you know it clap your hands," Roberto sang. None of us could as much as flex our hands.

In the roasting oven we were at least away from our jailers and free to swear and speculate about our fate. None of the signs looked good, except that we calculated that we must by now be near Tripoli.

Eventually we were pulled out, completely disoriented. As I was led up a concrete stairwell to a cell, I began to imagine being led to a seaside clifftop.

The blindfolds came off -- although I remained without my prescription glasses. We were locked in behind a stout steel door.

Then we were split up, our great fear. First I was taken for interrogation, once more blindfolded. Joe was questioned separately. Roberto was left alone in the cell.

For an hour and a half my unseen interrogator resorted to insults, threats and a couple of mild slaps.

"You are a good man, David," he said patting my shoulder as he departed, confident he had enough material for my "confession".

I was allowed to eat a few mouthfuls of greasy rice before a French-speaking man with an African accent felt up my breasts and made sexual jokes for his unseen comrades.

Then a younger "bad cop" stormed in to repeat the same questions.

"You came by the desert road? How did you find it?" - "We have a map." - "Aha! Who gave you this map? MI6?" he demanded, referring to Britain's Secret Intelligence Service. "Michelin," I replied.

The interrogators seemed not really to believe we were foreign spies. They hectored us about media coverage before trying a different tack.

"What religion are you?" "I come from a Christian family," I hedged, for some strange reason suddenly coy about denying my atheism, having lied about pretty much everything else. "Christian family, but you are Jewish!" he spat.

I tried to back-pedal. "No, no. I'm Christian. Protestant Christian." But bad cop shouted "Jewish!" once more before his voice disappeared.

A middle-aged man pulled up the blindfold and led me through signing and thumb-printing 24 pages of a "confession", entirely in Arabic.

Back in the cell, I found a fearfully worried Roberto. We were joined by Joe and for the first time the three comrades began to imagine our spirits might be broken.

The anti-Semite had got to Joe, telling him: "You are a spy. You will go before a military tribunal and you will leave here in a coffin. I am the one in charge and I decide this."

We had no idea what we had confessed to but had been told we were subject to a formal military investigation. Jail or execution seemed likely.

Suddenly, three men burst in. We were led blindfold back down the stairs to be crammed once again into the rear seat of a Toyota.

No one spoke, but I imagine my comrades had the same thoughts: "Here we go: A quick trip to the desert, a bullet in the back of the head, a shallow grave."

Instead, we were told to take our blindfolds off. We were driving along a well-lit highway in downtown Tripoli. "Do not worry, you are going to the hotel," the man in the passenger seat said.

Sure enough after less than a kilometre we pulled up at the five-star Rixos, the main media base.

The hotel floor manager knew our secret police escorts by first name and they shared laughter. He gathered our depleted possessions and we emerged blinking into the foyer.

Kadhafi's chief spokesman, the London-educated Moussa Ibrahim was there in his tailored pinstripes to welcome us and steer media questioning towards our supposed gratitude to "The Guide".

We were told we could stay on and report from Tripoli or get a bus out of Libya the next day. I told him I had to think about it, but I was already half-way to Tunisia in my head.

Friendly faces -- AFP colleagues -- emerged among the media pack covering our arrival. At last I grasped a cellphone. Calling family, friends and colleagues I learned that our release had been announced three hours previously.

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Copyright AFP 2011.