It wasn’t until he had heard several calls to prayer the next day that someone untied his aching body from the radiator and led him into another room. Once the blindfold was removed, he saw comfortable armchairs and a wooden desk. Behind the table sat a masked man, who turned out to be his interrogator. Daniel was ordered to sit on the floor and answer questions that he had already answered several times.

‘Who are you?’

‘I am Daniel Rye.’

‘Where do you come from?’

‘Denmark.’

‘Who drove you here?’

‘Friends,’ answered Daniel.

The voice behind the mask sounded very young; Daniel guessed they had put a twenty-year-old in charge of the interrogation because he could speak some English. The interrogator announced that he didn’t believe Daniel.

‘We know who you are. We know you’re lying,’ he stated, and Daniel was taken back to the radiator in the foyer.

After another night of sitting cross-legged with no water or food, he was taken back to the interrogator.

‘Tell us the truth. We know what it is, but we want you to say it!’ he shouted.

Daniel repeated the same information.

‘I’m only here to portray the civilian suffering caused by the war,’ he said, faintly registering some kind of rummaging going on behind him.

Before he had a chance to realize what was happening, more hands forced him down on to his back and a car tyre was pressed down over his bent legs, so his knees were sticking up through the tyre. A stick was then placed behind the backs of his knees, locking his legs in place. He was turned over on to his front, which exposed the bare soles of his feet.

He gasped for breath.

A searing pain surged through him as the guards began relentlessly hitting his feet with some sort of cable or pipe. Daniel screamed and a man pressed a stun gun against his ribs and shoulder. He screamed again. He couldn’t hold it in.

‘Who are you?’ one shouted.

‘I’m Daniel Rye Ottosen,’ he stammered, and was thrashed again.

‘You’re lying! You’re lying!’ shouted the interrogator. ‘Tell me who you really are!’

Daniel cried and screamed.

‘Man up and stop crying!’ one of them shouted.

Every time they lashed him, he screamed. If he didn’t scream out loud for fear of provoking more lashes, he screamed inside, losing all sense of time.

When will it stop? What do they want? How long will this go on? Just as long as they don’t break my bones or anything. As long as they don’t cause any permanent damage.

At some point, the whipping and the pain ceased. Someone removed the car tyre, dragged him out to the radiator in the foyer and handcuffed him to it once more. A few hours passed. Then they started all over again.

It was on the third or fourth round that everything started to become a blur. The only thing he was aware of was that he was back in the interrogation room again.

‘You’re a gymnast?’ asked the interrogator.

‘Yes,’ answered Daniel.

‘Right, well, what can you do then?’ he continued.

Daniel replied that he could show them some exercises if the handcuffs were removed.

‘We can’t do that,’ said the interrogator, who sat behind the table with a couple of other men.

‘Can you handcuff me in front of my body then?’

The interrogator agreed and his hands were handcuffed in front of him.

Daniel hadn’t moved very much in recent days apart from writhing from pain. His body ached; his feet were swollen from the beatings; he was thirsty, hungry, tired and completely beside himself. He took a deep breath and looked up at the ceiling, straightening his posture and trying to feel his body.

And then he was off. He jumped as high as he could in the air and as he tucked his knees towards his stomach he flipped backward. His eyes scanned the stone floor to gain his bearings before he landed firmly on both feet. Pain surged through his body, but he had managed to perform a standing back flip and had stuck the landing – accomplished for the first time in his life with his hands cuffed.

The guards’ initial reaction almost made him laugh.

‘That’s a pretty stupid thing to do,’ one commented.

‘I can also stand on my hands,’ suggested Daniel, and he was allowed to show them another move to prove to the kidnappers that he wasn’t a CIA agent, but an elite gymnast from Hedegård. Standing tall, he bent forward and laid his hands down on the floor. He wanted to slowly bring his legs upwards into a handstand, but his palms were too close to each other because of the handcuffs, so the result wasn’t perfect.

The guards called him over to the table and placed a printed picture in front of him, which he had taken at the European Gymnastics Championships in Aarhus in 2012.

‘Who are they?’ asked the leader.

Daniel stared at the five men in the picture in their tight, white-, black-and-red gym suits. They were his teammates. He had taken the picture just before they took the floor at the final competition of the European Championships. They looked particularly determined: if they won this event, they would bring home the gold medal.

‘They are Niels, Stefan, Andreas, Lasse and Steven,’ said Daniel.

They beat him again. His answers didn’t seem to make any difference.

When they were finished, he was dragged back to the radiator, which had become the symbol for respite. His feet were cold, sore and swollen. It must have been about three days since he had had any water or food. Or gone to the toilet.

· * ·

‘Helloooo Daniel. Are you ready for me now?’ shouted a deep voice. Daniel didn’t recognize the voice that echoed in the foyer that evening, but he would soon know to whom it belonged. The torturer who used the nom de guerre Abu Hurraya, meaning ‘Father of Hurraya’, was known as the prison’s most brutal guard, reputedly taking genuine pleasure in torturing hostages.

‘You have beautiful hair. Why did you even come here in the first place? It was really stupid, you should never have come. Follow me,’ said Abu Hurraya in broken English as he stood in front of Daniel and fumbled with a key to the handcuffs.

Abu Hurraya was a tall, broad Syrian with long hair gathered in a ponytail. He lived on the first floor of the building, just above where Daniel was being kept. The other prison guards always knew where he was because of his distinctive voice, which they called ‘heavy’.

The torture would take place either in the office, where other guards had seen him put a stun gun to a prisoner’s body, or in special rooms, where a selection of chains and other instruments hung on the walls. Abu Hurraya was often summoned for beatings, which he performed dressed in ordinary trousers and a T-shirt. Unlike many of the other guards, he didn’t look like a fighter.

Abu Hurraya released Daniel from the radiator and walked behind him towards a room that Daniel hadn’t seen yet. As they entered, he noticed a man lying motionless in one of the corners. ‘You’ll look like that in twenty-four hours,’ commented Abu Hurraya.

He wrapped some foam around Daniel’s wrists and put the handcuffs on again.

‘Reach out your arms,’ said Abu Hurraya, stepping on to a chair. He pulled down some chains from a hook in the ceiling and looped them around the handcuffs. Daniel’s body was now completely extended. He was standing on flat feet, with his arms stretched up towards the ceiling. The foam lining the handcuffs fell off and he felt the sharp iron dig into his wrists.

‘See you tomorrow. You might be ready to talk by then,’ said Abu Hurraya with a cheery voice, before walking out, leaving Daniel almost dangling from the ceiling. The feeling in his hands and arms quickly disappeared; it was replaced by a constant tingling pain that penetrated his entire body.

When he had entered the room Daniel had faintly made out a window with a balcony and now he could hear people outside the window – Syrians, who might be on their way home from work, if they still had a job, or were perhaps out shopping for dinner. He was thirstier than he’d ever been and dreamed of gallons of water.