Men Of Mystery
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 24 February 2018
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A Gambian spymaster, a Czechoslovak secret agent and a South African ghost called Sam. Correspondents share wit, analysis, and tales of strange encounters. Introduced by Kate Adie.
Gambia’s intelligence agency has a new name and its boss is busy rebranding it – but beyond repainting the torture chamber, what does that mean, wonders Colin Freeman. Rob Cameron scours the archives of the StB – Czechoslovakia’s communist-era secret police– on the trail of ‘agent COB’. He meets the man who says he tried to recruit Jeremy Corbyn as an asset. Helen Nianais has coffee with a former jihadi who faces three years in jail after spending nine days in Syria. Now he’s trying to counter extremist propaganda online and help others reintegrate back into normal life in Kosovo. Shabnam Mahmood returns to Pakistan and finds that Uber and other cab-hailing apps are driving rickshaw drivers out of business, but there are still some parts of Lahore where older methods of transport dominate. And Harriet Constable visits Kaapsehoop – a village whose fortunes may have faded since South Africa's 19th century gold rush, but which remains rich in history, folklore, and ghosts.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:04.0 | Hello, today the weird world of spies, |
| 0:07.6 | glamorous on screen, not so exciting in reality |
| 0:11.0 | as we meet an African spymaster and a Czechoslovak agent. |
| 0:15.0 | In Kosovo we have coffee with a man who headed for jihad in Syria. |
| 0:20.0 | No fighting though and back just nine days later with different thoughts. |
| 0:25.0 | In South Africa our correspondent goes in search of a ghost called Sam |
| 0:30.0 | and other remnants of a 19th century gold rush and in Pakistan, |
| 0:34.4 | in Pakistan, Rickshaw or Uber. Is there room for both on the roads of Lahore? |
| 0:40.2 | In a speech marking Gambian Independence Day, President Adama Barrow spoke of a new Gambia and a world of hope. |
| 0:49.0 | He also announced a moratorium on the use of the death penalty. It's just over a year since he replaced |
| 0:55.3 | Yaya Jameh whose paranoia and ambition dominated Gambian's lives and whose rule |
| 1:01.1 | was marked by allegations of political assassination, corruption and |
| 1:05.5 | depression. Winning the war against dictatorship was the easy part, the new president |
| 1:10.8 | said on Sunday, maintaining peace will be a bigger challenge. |
| 1:14.8 | Colin Freeman recently visited Banjul to see how much has changed. |
| 1:20.0 | Would you like tea or coffee sir? And is the air conditioning, okay? |
| 1:24.2 | It's fair to say that not every guest at an African secret police HQ can expect a cordial welcome and a choice of hot beverage. But as I wait for my interview with Gambia's new |
| 1:34.4 | spymaster-in-chief, his protocol officer seems very keen to make his mark. |
| 1:38.8 | Until recently, protocol wasn't something that people worried about too much around here. |
| 1:44.6 | Under the rule of dictator Yayajameh, the HQ of the National Intelligence Agency was where anyone |
| 1:50.4 | who crossed him was taken for interrogation and torture. |
... |
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