“

I told everyone that we were going to go down the stairs very quietly. But with 150-odd people on a staircase, we were like sitting ducks. Two of my guys went ahead to make sure it was safe, we had two guys at the back. We'd move down to one floor, check the floor and then get everyone down. We did the same on the next floor. It took quite a while to get everyone down. We got out at around 3 or 4 in the morning, we were asked to take off our shoes to avoid making noise because we never knew if there were still terrorists around who could hear us. No one spoke either.