The Seventh Circle: My Seven Years of Hell in Afghanistan’s Most Notorious Prison

‘I was arrested on Thursday 9th July 2009. On Wednesday I’d quit my job, killed a man and set his body on fire. I was sentenced to death. I’m not a good man, but I am an honest one. This is my story.’

Former soldier Rob Langdon was working as a security contractor in Afghanistan when he was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death in a case that would have been ruled a clear miscarriage of justice in the British legal system. His sentence was commuted to 20 years in jail, and he served his time in Kabul’s most notorious prison, Pul-e-Charkhi, described as the world’s worst place to be a westerner.

Rob was there for seven years, the longest sentence served by a westerner since the fall of the Taliban, and every one of those 2,500 days was an act of extraordinary survival in a jail filled with Afghanistan’s most dangerous extremists and murderers. In 2016 Robert was pardoned and returned to Australia.