I arrived home from Yemen late on Friday but still made it into work for 8:00 a.m. on Saturday, even if that was just to clear my paper work before starting a long overdue holiday. The factory was open and I found Tony Preece in his office; I handed over the machine acceptance forms and began trying to tell Tony my suspisions from YemPak and Yemen, but he stopped me.
“It doesn’t matter, they’ve already paid” Tony said.
I stressed my point. “No really, there was something…”
Before I could finish Tony had got up and was shooing me out of his office, telling me not to worry and go enjoy my holidays. Tony who’d arranged shipment and my visit to an already acknowledgedly suspicious customer in kidnapping central Yemen was blanking me when I tried to tell him what had happened there. In retrospect and with hindsight that was a very strange reaction by my works manager.
The next time I saw David Hughes, the senior service technician, I tried to ask him who I should report my concerns about airport security to but David stopped me mid sentence and said never to report any such concerns, saying there were people whose job it was to spot that. He went on to say that rreporting such things to the security services could result in ‘my card being marked’. Like the factory manager, the senior service technician essentially shut me up when I tried to speak about my visit to Yemen and my hijacking premonition.
Links to .pdf files of my photo contact sheet — diary entries — YemPak customer database entries
Satellite images of the HSA Group HQ & YemPak and the view from Taiz to Al Qa’idah town
Google Maps HSA Group HQ at PO Box 5302 Taiz & Route from HSA Group HQ to Al Qaidah