Name: Adventurer Charlie Walker Was Detained in a Russian Jail for 1 Month
Uploaded: 2022-06-15T18:34:34.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Adventurer Charlie Walker Was Detained in a Russian Jail for 1 Month' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-06-15. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Adventurer Charlie Walker Was Detained in a Russian Jail for 1 Month' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-06-15. Transcript available.

But I was free to carry on. So I carried on about another four weeks, you know,
got up onto the
tundra, visited some reindeer herders, you know, got some very remote
settlements and spent the
final sort of 10 days hiking on the frozen Arctic Ocean, you know, camping out,
you know, under some
of the most incredible starscapes and, you know, northern lights. It was
beautiful, really good time.
I arrived in Tixie, this port town at the end, which used to have, I think,
like 15,000 people now, it's about 5,000 people. It's another one of these, the
Russians have a
phrase for this, like a dying town, a town more dead than alive. And on arrival
in Tixie,
someone who I'd met on the road weeks earlier, who I got in touch with on
arrival, he said, you know,
get in touch, we'll catch up. He told me that the FSB, the KGB wanted to talk
to me. And I thought,
right, we'll just take the bull by the horns. I'll just go to their building.
And I'll say,
hey, I hear you want to talk to me, I'm here. And they were a bit taken aback
by that. And they said,
can you come back at this time tomorrow? So I did. And they said, it felt like
an interrogation,
but eventually turned out it was just this standard procedure. They asked me
these questions, who I was,
the name of my family members, the history of my family, did any of my
ancestors ever,
were they ever in the British forces? Do I have any political beliefs? Was I in
the army? Just all
these kinds of standard suspicious questions. And it went on about two, three
hours. And when
we were finally done, the guy said, okay, well, that's it. You're free to go. I
was like, oh,
great. He said, make sure you visit the museum. There's a mammoth skeleton, you
know, have a good
time. Good luck to you. I went back to where I was staying. And I was recording.
So I took with me a
little zoom, like a little dictaphone, you know, a lot of people use them for
podcasts, I think. And for
for another podcast with a friend that'll surface in a month or so, I'd been
recording my experiences
in my own voice along the way of the cold, the people I met, the odd
conversation with other people.
But naturally with what was going on and people telling me of their opinions
about Ukraine,
in my own little recordings in my tent at night, sometimes I get a little sort
of political,
I guess. And after that encounter with the, in Ustkviga, when they came to my
door,
these policemen the first time, sorry, four weeks back, I know we're jumping
around.
When they came to my door, I was recording on my dictaphone and I went to
answer the door and just
slipped it in my pocket. And they said, right, come to the police station now.
And so I went,
but it was still recording. So I had a live mic throughout this whole police
process. And the
first thing they did in the police station was take my phone, turn it off. So I
wasn't recording.
And so little did they know there was this hot mic in my pocket. So after that
was done,
I got back to where I was staying, I kind of, in my own words, said what had
happened,
took the little micro SD card out, and then unscrewed a plug adapter, you know,
from like
a British plug to a Russian plug, unscrewed that, wrapped the SD card up in a
little scrap of white
paper, slotted it in there, screwed it back up. And it's like, you know, I don't
want to lose this.
It's not really a huge problem, but best just to hide it, have it safe.
Up in Tixie, I sort of recorded my final thoughts, uh, again, and I had this
little SD card. It was
just on the table. Um, and another one, I was worried, you know, my journal
that my diary that
I've been writing in each day, I was worried that that might get taken, you
know, because slowly
with the villages I passed through towards the end, you know, it was made very
clear that the
authorities were waiting for me in Tixie. And I thought, well, you know, that
might get seized,
not the end of the world if it does, if I, with my GoPro, take a picture of
every single page,
and I can hide that little SD card in the same plug socket. But when the knock
came on my door
in Tixie, um, I'd been asleep. I'd actually fallen asleep reading, uh, Kafka,
um, uh, the trial,
this guy getting arrested and not knowing what it's all about. Um, they, they
came to the door and
everything was just kind of out. And they said, um, it was the police again.
They said,
can you come to the station for registration? I said, again, well, this is a
little ominous,
but registration fine. I'd already, you know, the day before spoken to the FSB.
I knew
everything was fine. And in the station, um, it quickly became clear. Well,
after about an hour
of just this long, asking lots of questions, I said, well, can I go now? And
they said, no,
no, you can't go. And that's when I understood I'm under arrest. And this is
maybe a little bit more
serious. And once again, they, well, they said, who have you spoken to? Who
have you met in Tixie?
And I said, um, well, I met this guy, uh, who I'd met on the road, who it's a
small town. So I,
I didn't want to lie to them. I thought best just to say who I'd met. So I met
this guy and I've met
this other bloke. Um, and they didn't know who either of these people were. And
they were asking
questions about who they were. And without leaving the room, without making a
call, without doing any
texting, me having just explained to them who these people were, and they didn't
know who they were.
They quickly said, right, well, both those people are, um, are providing
witness to say that you have
been conducting journalism and asking questions about Ukraine. So, you know,
they, they sort of
essentially got me to provide them with false witnesses. Um, and this process
went on for hours.
They got an English teacher to translate for us. And as the hours passed, the
English teacher became
more and more fed up. She was meant to be, I think someone with a disease, uh,
in the town,
there was a bake sale to raise money for him. And she was meant to be cooking
cakes, cupcakes with her
daughter that evening. And, you know, I'd ruined this cause it was already, you
know, they took me at
about 4:30. Anyway, at 9:30, after a lot of waiting around, they finally said,
right, you're going to
court now. I thought, well, it's 9:30. How's that going to work? And they took
me to another building,
old Soviet looking apartment block site building. But on the third floor, there
was a courtroom.
Uh, and, uh, in the courtroom, they got this judge who just seemed pissed off.
You know,
he'd been dragged out of his home at 9:30 at night to deal with some thing. And
the teacher was so
pissed off by this point that she wasn't really translating in full anymore. So,
you know, the judge
would speak a whole paragraph and she would give me a half sentence in
translation. And so the trial
unfolded. I had been supposedly, uh, you know, conducting journalism again.
They had these witnesses
who said I'd said this, that, and the other. And they also said most worryingly
that I've been
photographing, um, restricted military sites or sensitive military sites. Um,
and the judge found
me guilty and he said, uh, you'll pay a fine again, not much like 70 bucks,
something like that. Um, and
you are banned from Russia for five years and you have to leave, you'll be deported.
And I thought,
right, you know, yeah, it's not the end of the world. You know, it looks like
Russia is not
particularly a place to go back to for five years, you know, fine. And so at
that point,
as far as I was aware, I would be, I would fly back to Yakutsk, get my own
flight back to England
via some other third country and then fly home done. Um, and I was taken back
to my, uh, the sort
of apartment I'd rented in this town. And, um, probably 20 minutes later, there
was a knock at the door
and it was the police guy. And they said, Oh, actually you have to be in the
cell tonight,
pack everything you have up and, and we're going now. And so with them in front
of me,
I had to pack everything up among the stuff that was all kind of laid out was
one of these little
SD cards with the second half of all the recordings from this zoom on it. And
all I could do was I had
a head torch next to it on the table because they were watching me pack. Um,
you know, head torches
are that little sort of hinge. So it can sort of angle down on your forehead.
Um, I bent the hinge down,
put the SD card in that bit and just snapped it shut and put a rubber band
around the whole thing.
But that just felt really precarious. You know, that's not well hidden. And
that's the last time
I was, you know, just before that point was the last time I was unattended with
all my stuff
for weeks to come. As it turned out, I fact, everything up, we were taken to
the cell. Um,
you know, fingerprinting us eventually about 1:30 put into this little cell. Um,
and you know,
I was thankfully tired enough. I got some sleep, wake up in the morning. And
from that point onwards,
I was accompanied or escorted by, uh, bailiffs technically, although they said
we're,
we're Russia's us marshals. They were quite keen to sort of compare themselves
to us marshals.
Um, and I had already changed my flight that I had booked a week away to the
following day to get
me back to the capital. And so I was deported on, well, sent down to Yakutsk on
the flight that I'd
booked, but with a man as an escort. And at this point, I still thought like, I'm
just, I'm free
when I get to Yakutsk, I'll go home. On arrival in Yakutsk, there was another
bailiff waiting for me.
And he said, right, well, you have to now go and stay in this, this kind of
hotel for foreigners
until you fly home. And I thought, well, that's not, it's not ideal, but again,
it's not the end of
the world. And then on the drive in this mini bus to the detention center, it
turned out,
yeah, it was a, it was a detention center for foreigners and it was just a
prison.
Um, and you know, my shoelaces were taken away, my belt was taken off, all my
goods were locked
up in a locker. And, uh, you know, after being processed and checked in the
door slam or the
cell door slam shut behind me. Uh, and then there I am. And I don't know how
long for, you know,
that that's, you know, one of the sort of bleakest moments where I just, I didn't
know
what exactly is going to happen after that point. Um, I, I still, I suppose was
thinking a few days
and I'll probably be out. Um, and they were sort of saying maybe 10 days, you
gotta wait for the
paperwork to come down from the coast or whatever. But after a few days, you
know, time had come and
gone. I was in this cell. I mean, you're in the cell around the clock, 24 hours
a day, uh, not allowed
outside foods, handed through a little hatch in the cell. I shared it with, uh,
two other men.
Um, and after a few days they said, right, you know, you should be getting a
lawyer.
Um, and I was allowed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, 15 minutes of access
to my phone.
So back home via these frantic, hurried phone calls, my, uh, my uncle and my
girlfriend were
kind of, you know, arranging, trying to help out. Um, and so we arranged for a
lawyer to come in and
he said, right, well, we'll appeal the decision. But that appeal wasn't heard
for two weeks.
And that appeal was dismissed out of hand. I was taken to the court. Um, and
this is after two
weeks, you know, by this point I was, you know, I was not a happy guy. Um, I
mean, it was almost
comical going to the court for the appeal. You know, I was so desperate to get
outside. I hadn't
been outdoors for two weeks and they said, right, you're going to the court.
And I knew that meant
I'd get to be outdoors for a few minutes, you know, as I walked from the door
into the minibus and in
from the minibus into the court at the other end. But they, they gave me, they
put me in cuffs
and then they, with another pair of handcuffs, cuffed me to one of the guards
who had a taser.
And there was a, another guard on the other side with a taser and they wouldn't
let me have my
shoelaces or my belt back. And I'd lost quite a little weight during this trek.
So my trousers
are falling down. My hiking shoes had these massive sort of, you know, tongues
lolling out the front
and walking, walking down the courthouse corridors. I was doing this kind of
weird, you know,
John Wayne wide-kneed shuffle to try and stop my trousers from falling down.
Meanwhile,
my hands are pinned to this guy to my right. But the judge looked at the papers
for, you know,
like two minutes and said, yeah, no, it's, your crimes are too serious. There's
a political element
and you know, you're, you're going back into the detention center. And this was
probably the time
when I felt most low. Um, about a week earlier, I had suddenly unexpectedly
been dragged onto,
in front of a TV camera and interviewed. And that was a bit concerning. That
felt like, um,
you know, being tried by the court of public opinion. They had, um, eventually
the news bit aired,
I think the day before my appeal, but they had gone up to Tixie and they got
witness statements from one
bloke who I never even met saying, yeah, you know, he was talking about Ukraine
and he's
photographing these military sites. Again, no photos were ever provided that,
you know,
backed up that story. Um, and all the while, you know, those, those first two
weeks,
all of my belongings are in their possession and the police have come and
searched. They've made
me turn on their phone, my phone, unlock it for them. I had a GPS device, which
really freaks them
out. My GoPro to them looked like a spy camera, but when they first laid out
all my belongings of
some policemen, you know, I was taking cuffed out my cell to be, you know, to
turn everything on for
him and sort of on the table laid out in this neat little row was all my items.
And among them was
this plug socket and that head torch with the hidden little, um, SD card in it.
And although
technically those things weren't really incriminating, the fact that they had
been hidden didn't look
good. And I probably should have said earlier back in March, two months earlier,
they had introduced a
new law with a maximum sentence of up to 15 years for journalists, um,
providing sort of spreading
fake news about the military, i.e. anyone really speaking the truth about the
military.
After the invasion. After the invasion. Uh, and you know, these recordings had
lots of
me talking about the invasion, the atrocities in Bucha and you know, all sorts.
And my whole diary,
which up to this point I'd kept hidden because when I was checked into the cell
while they were going
through all my stuff, I just slipped it in my trousers. Um, because I thought
this diary doesn't
look good. I slipped in my trousers, which again, freaked me out a little bit.
Are they going to frisk
me? Are they not? I got it into the cell and then I just hid it in plain sight
among my belongings.
Uh, and it was all the stuff in the locker that the police went and looked
through. So there's just
a lot of things going on. I'm constantly on edge that I'm just about to become,
you know, a political
bargaining chip. Did they find the SD cards? No, thankfully. Um, this is
actually the first time
I've spoken about those SD cards and you know, those would have qualified me
for at least, you know,
you're a journalist, uh, if not espionage and that the guards in the prison who
were,
I mean, I think they were probably nice, normal guys, but they treated, they
were wankers to us.
Um, I mean, they kept on saying to me, are you a spy and don't fight my country?
You know,
they were, they would also on their phones, look up phrases in English and then
kind of
chant them back at me that you are a spy walker. Um, and so it was, it was a,
it's a scary time.
Um, and after the appeal was rejected, I then thought, well, you know, this
could be,
this could be a really long time. You know, I could be here for months and the
longer I'm here,
the more chance there is that either they'll find some of these, these SD cards
or my diary or that
they will, you know, some ambitious, you know, cop, some ambitious policeman or
bureaucrat will
decide to pick up my case again to retry, try me under the criminal offense. I
mean, given they'd
made up most of their evidence anyway, it's no stretch to think that they could
pin on me,
the fake news journalist thing and put me away for 15 years. Um, I mean, I didn't
know that I,
I didn't even know of her at the time, but since getting out, I've learned
about,
and I'm going to get her name wrong, but Brittany Grinner, the basketball
player who, I mean,
we don't really even know where she is. I think, I think a bit of news came out
about her the other
day, but I mean, she's clearly being, in my opinion, I mean, it's totally
outrageous, but she,
I think is being held, you know, as a prisoner swap fodder, you know, that they
will use her when
convenient.

Adventurer Charlie Walker Was Detained in a Russian Jail for 1 Month

But I was free to carry on. So I carried on about another four weeks, you know,
got up onto the
tundra, visited some reindeer herders, you know, got some very remote
settlements and spent the
final sort of 10 days hiking on the frozen Arctic Ocean, you know, camping out,
you know, under some
of the most incredible starscapes and, you know, northern lights. It was
beautiful, really good time.
I arrived in Tixie, this port town at the end, which used to have, I think,
like 15,000 people now, it's about 5,000 people. It's another one of these, the
Russians have a
phrase for this, like a dying town, a town more dead than alive. And on arrival
in Tixie,
someone who I'd met on the road weeks earlier, who I got in touch with on
arrival, he said, you know,
get in touch, we'll catch up. He told me that the FSB, the KGB wanted to talk
to me. And I thought,
right, we'll just take the bull by the horns. I'll just go to their building.
And I'll say,
hey, I hear you want to talk to me, I'm here. And they were a bit taken aback
by that. And they said,
can you come back at this time tomorrow? So I did. And they said, it felt like
an interrogation,
but eventually turned out it was just this standard procedure. They asked me
these questions, who I was,
the name of my family members, the history of my family, did any of my
ancestors ever,
were they ever in the British forces? Do I have any political beliefs? Was I in
the army? Just all
these kinds of standard suspicious questions. And it went on about two, three
hours. And when
we were finally done, the guy said, okay, well, that's it. You're free to go. I
was like, oh,
great. He said, make sure you visit the museum. There's a mammoth skeleton, you
know, have a good
time. Good luck to you. I went back to where I was staying. And I was recording.
So I took with me a
little zoom, like a little dictaphone, you know, a lot of people use them for
podcasts, I think. And for
for another podcast with a friend that'll surface in a month or so, I'd been
recording my experiences
in my own voice along the way of the cold, the people I met, the odd
conversation with other people.
But naturally with what was going on and people telling me of their opinions
about Ukraine,
in my own little recordings in my tent at night, sometimes I get a little sort
of political,
I guess. And after that encounter with the, in Ustkviga, when they came to my
door,
these policemen the first time, sorry, four weeks back, I know we're jumping
around.
When they came to my door, I was recording on my dictaphone and I went to
answer the door and just
slipped it in my pocket. And they said, right, come to the police station now.
And so I went,
but it was still recording. So I had a live mic throughout this whole police
process. And the
first thing they did in the police station was take my phone, turn it off. So I
wasn't recording.
And so little did they know there was this hot mic in my pocket. So after that
was done,
I got back to where I was staying, I kind of, in my own words, said what had
happened,
took the little micro SD card out, and then unscrewed a plug adapter, you know,
from like
a British plug to a Russian plug, unscrewed that, wrapped the SD card up in a
little scrap of white
paper, slotted it in there, screwed it back up. And it's like, you know, I don't
want to lose this.
It's not really a huge problem, but best just to hide it, have it safe.
Up in Tixie, I sort of recorded my final thoughts, uh, again, and I had this
little SD card. It was
just on the table. Um, and another one, I was worried, you know, my journal
that my diary that
I've been writing in each day, I was worried that that might get taken, you
know, because slowly
with the villages I passed through towards the end, you know, it was made very
clear that the
authorities were waiting for me in Tixie. And I thought, well, you know, that
might get seized,
not the end of the world if it does, if I, with my GoPro, take a picture of
every single page,
and I can hide that little SD card in the same plug socket. But when the knock
came on my door
in Tixie, um, I'd been asleep. I'd actually fallen asleep reading, uh, Kafka,
um, uh, the trial,
this guy getting arrested and not knowing what it's all about. Um, they, they
came to the door and
everything was just kind of out. And they said, um, it was the police again.
They said,
can you come to the station for registration? I said, again, well, this is a
little ominous,
but registration fine. I'd already, you know, the day before spoken to the FSB.
I knew
everything was fine. And in the station, um, it quickly became clear. Well,
after about an hour
of just this long, asking lots of questions, I said, well, can I go now? And
they said, no,
no, you can't go. And that's when I understood I'm under arrest. And this is
maybe a little bit more
serious. And once again, they, well, they said, who have you spoken to? Who
have you met in Tixie?
And I said, um, well, I met this guy, uh, who I'd met on the road, who it's a
small town. So I,
I didn't want to lie to them. I thought best just to say who I'd met. So I met
this guy and I've met
this other bloke. Um, and they didn't know who either of these people were. And
they were asking
questions about who they were. And without leaving the room, without making a
call, without doing any
texting, me having just explained to them who these people were, and they didn't
know who they were.
They quickly said, right, well, both those people are, um, are providing
witness to say that you have
been conducting journalism and asking questions about Ukraine. So, you know,
they, they sort of
essentially got me to provide them with false witnesses. Um, and this process
went on for hours.
They got an English teacher to translate for us. And as the hours passed, the
English teacher became
more and more fed up. She was meant to be, I think someone with a disease, uh,
in the town,
there was a bake sale to raise money for him. And she was meant to be cooking
cakes, cupcakes with her
daughter that evening. And, you know, I'd ruined this cause it was already, you
know, they took me at
about 4:30. Anyway, at 9:30, after a lot of waiting around, they finally said,
right, you're going to
court now. I thought, well, it's 9:30. How's that going to work? And they took
me to another building,
old Soviet looking apartment block site building. But on the third floor, there
was a courtroom.
Uh, and, uh, in the courtroom, they got this judge who just seemed pissed off.
You know,
he'd been dragged out of his home at 9:30 at night to deal with some thing. And
the teacher was so
pissed off by this point that she wasn't really translating in full anymore. So,
you know, the judge
would speak a whole paragraph and she would give me a half sentence in
translation. And so the trial
unfolded. I had been supposedly, uh, you know, conducting journalism again.
They had these witnesses
who said I'd said this, that, and the other. And they also said most worryingly
that I've been
photographing, um, restricted military sites or sensitive military sites. Um,
and the judge found
me guilty and he said, uh, you'll pay a fine again, not much like 70 bucks,
something like that. Um, and
you are banned from Russia for five years and you have to leave, you'll be deported.
And I thought,
right, you know, yeah, it's not the end of the world. You know, it looks like
Russia is not
particularly a place to go back to for five years, you know, fine. And so at
that point,
as far as I was aware, I would be, I would fly back to Yakutsk, get my own
flight back to England
via some other third country and then fly home done. Um, and I was taken back
to my, uh, the sort
of apartment I'd rented in this town. And, um, probably 20 minutes later, there
was a knock at the door
and it was the police guy. And they said, Oh, actually you have to be in the
cell tonight,
pack everything you have up and, and we're going now. And so with them in front
of me,
I had to pack everything up among the stuff that was all kind of laid out was
one of these little
SD cards with the second half of all the recordings from this zoom on it. And
all I could do was I had
a head torch next to it on the table because they were watching me pack. Um,
you know, head torches
are that little sort of hinge. So it can sort of angle down on your forehead.
Um, I bent the hinge down,
put the SD card in that bit and just snapped it shut and put a rubber band
around the whole thing.
But that just felt really precarious. You know, that's not well hidden. And
that's the last time
I was, you know, just before that point was the last time I was unattended with
all my stuff
for weeks to come. As it turned out, I fact, everything up, we were taken to
the cell. Um,
you know, fingerprinting us eventually about 1:30 put into this little cell. Um,
and you know,
I was thankfully tired enough. I got some sleep, wake up in the morning. And
from that point onwards,
I was accompanied or escorted by, uh, bailiffs technically, although they said
we're,
we're Russia's us marshals. They were quite keen to sort of compare themselves
to us marshals.
Um, and I had already changed my flight that I had booked a week away to the
following day to get
me back to the capital. And so I was deported on, well, sent down to Yakutsk on
the flight that I'd
booked, but with a man as an escort. And at this point, I still thought like, I'm
just, I'm free
when I get to Yakutsk, I'll go home. On arrival in Yakutsk, there was another
bailiff waiting for me.
And he said, right, well, you have to now go and stay in this, this kind of
hotel for foreigners
until you fly home. And I thought, well, that's not, it's not ideal, but again,
it's not the end of
the world. And then on the drive in this mini bus to the detention center, it
turned out,
yeah, it was a, it was a detention center for foreigners and it was just a
prison.
Um, and you know, my shoelaces were taken away, my belt was taken off, all my
goods were locked
up in a locker. And, uh, you know, after being processed and checked in the
door slam or the
cell door slam shut behind me. Uh, and then there I am. And I don't know how
long for, you know,
that that's, you know, one of the sort of bleakest moments where I just, I didn't
know
what exactly is going to happen after that point. Um, I, I still, I suppose was
thinking a few days
and I'll probably be out. Um, and they were sort of saying maybe 10 days, you
gotta wait for the
paperwork to come down from the coast or whatever. But after a few days, you
know, time had come and
gone. I was in this cell. I mean, you're in the cell around the clock, 24 hours
a day, uh, not allowed
outside foods, handed through a little hatch in the cell. I shared it with, uh,
two other men.
Um, and after a few days they said, right, you know, you should be getting a
lawyer.
Um, and I was allowed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, 15 minutes of access
to my phone.
So back home via these frantic, hurried phone calls, my, uh, my uncle and my
girlfriend were
kind of, you know, arranging, trying to help out. Um, and so we arranged for a
lawyer to come in and
he said, right, well, we'll appeal the decision. But that appeal wasn't heard
for two weeks.
And that appeal was dismissed out of hand. I was taken to the court. Um, and
this is after two
weeks, you know, by this point I was, you know, I was not a happy guy. Um, I
mean, it was almost
comical going to the court for the appeal. You know, I was so desperate to get
outside. I hadn't
been outdoors for two weeks and they said, right, you're going to the court.
And I knew that meant
I'd get to be outdoors for a few minutes, you know, as I walked from the door
into the minibus and in
from the minibus into the court at the other end. But they, they gave me, they
put me in cuffs
and then they, with another pair of handcuffs, cuffed me to one of the guards
who had a taser.
And there was a, another guard on the other side with a taser and they wouldn'