In September 2005, Major Rabia Siddique was two-thirds of the way through her tour in Iraq when she was asked to go to a police compound in the city of Basra to negotiate the release of two British special forces soldiers.
The soldiers had been captured at the compound — the Jamiat — when conducting covert surveillance operations on the infiltration of the police by Shi’ite extremists.
She was ordered to take over negotiations after talks between her colleague Major James Woodham and an Iraqi judge had broken down.
The request was from left-field because she had been hired by the British Army to monitor human rights abuses.
The order was "a step out of her comfort zone" because she was not a trained hostage negotiator and lacked hand-to-hand combat training.
"It was pretty frightening."
In Basra, corrupt police had spread a rumour the soldiers were Israeli spies and "whipped up a frenzy" among locals.
When she arrived at the compound, a pack of 300 "angry and volatile" people were outside, throwing stones and firing weapons.
Inside the compound, she negotiated to see the "bashed and bloodied" soldiers and to have their hoods removed and hands and feet unchained.
The negotiations continued and conditions with the judge were being agreed upon, so the soldiers could be released into her custody.
But just before the soldiers were to be released "all hell broke loose".
"I could hear rocket propelled grenades, I could hear glass smashing everywhere and I could hear these horrific, blood-curdling screams."
The screams were from British soldiers on fire as an angry crowd of about 2500 people stormed the compound.
"We heard this roar, which was the crowd breaking through the final wall ... when we heard that, everything changed."
The hoods and chains were put back on the two soldiers, the judge fled, and she was held in a cell with other British soldiers for several hours.
"I was the only woman. I was the only one that spoke Arabic and the only one with a Muslim background and all of those things up until that day had served me well during my time in Iraq ... but over the next few hours all of those things were turned against me."
Her captors subjected her to "humiliating and degrading" treatment in front of her male colleagues.
Later, British tanks smashed into the compound and rescued the British troops, including the two special forces soldiers, who were moments away from being beheaded.
"It really was a miracle all of us lived to tell the terrible tale ... and that should have been where the story ended."
Ms Siddique then took the British Army to court for discrimination and won a landmark case, details of which can be heard when she speaks at a public forum at the Dunedin Town Hall on October 12.
The forum has been organised by the Otago Medical Research Foundation to raise funds for research grants and scholarships.
