As she returned to Britain for the first time, Chloe Ayling said that she feared for her life "second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour". Photo / Chloe Ayling Instagram
As she returned to Britain for the first time, Chloe Ayling said that she feared for her life "second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour". Photo / Chloe Ayling Instagram
A British model has described how she was drugged, handcuffed, gagged and put in a bag in the boot of a car by kidnappers who then tried to sell her as a sex slave in an online auction.
Chloe Ayling, 20, has given a terrifying account of her week-long ordeal after she was drugged with ketamine, taken by balaclava clad men and chained to a chest of drawers in a remote Italian farmhouse, according to the Daily Telegraph.
As she returned to Britain for the first time, Miss Ayling said that she feared for her life "second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour".
A police reconstruction of how Ayling was stuffed in a suitcase after being abducted.
Her captors claimed to be part of an online organization called "Black Death" and threatened to sell her on the "deep web" if her agent failed to pay a ransom of US$300,000 (NZ$404,960).
She was told that she would probably by trafficked to the Middle East where, once the man who bought her bored of her, she would be passed on to someone else or fed to tigers.
Lukasz Pawel Herba, 30, a Polish national who lives in the UK, has been arrested by police and confessed to the kidnapping, which investigators described as an elaborate plot that involved months of planning.
His home in Oldbury, in the West Midlands, has been raided by British officers.
Miss Ayling told Italian police that her agent had booked her a photo shoot in Milan on July 11 but when she turned up at the abandoned building she was attacked.
"A person wearing black gloves came from behind and put one hand on my neck and one on my mouth to stop me from screaming,"she said in her statement.
"A second person wearing a black balaclava gave me an injection in my right forearm. I think I lost consciousness. When I woke up I was wearing a pink bodysuit and the socks I am wearing now.
"I realised I was in the boot of a car with my wrists and ankles handcuffed, adhesive tape on my mouth. I was inside a bag and was only able to breathe through a small hole."
As she screamed for help she was driven 190km to the tiny hamlet of Borgial near the French border where they forced her to lie on the floor next to a chest of drawers and handcuffed her hands and feet to the legs, leaving her "totally immobilised".
"They watched me, they stopped me from fleeing and they threatened to kill me if I did," she said as she revealed that there were four men involved all of whom referred to each other by initials.
"I didn't want to eat until July 14 as I was so stressed," she said. "I didn't trust what I was being offered."
They had taken compromising photographs of her while she was unconscious, which were posted on the dark web with the view to auctioning her off.
However, one of them confessed to her that they had made a mistake seizing her because she was the mother of a young child.
He said it was against the "rules" of his organisation and his superiors were angry. Afterwards they removed the cuffs from her feet and allowed her to move around the farmhouse, she said.
The captors demanded NZ$404,960 from her agent but eventually dropped agreed to accept NZ$88,060 and Herba took her to the British Consulate in Milan on July 17 where he was arrested.
The interior 'dungeon' of the farmhouse where the model was kept for six days before she was taken back to Milan to be released.
The day before the pair had been seen in a shop together buying shoes, and Miss Ayling told police that she "made him believe we could be more intimate when the incident ended" so that she could escape.
Since her release Miss Ayling has been helping Italian police, including taking them to the scene of her ordeal where the memories cause her to "shed a tear", according to her lawyer.
Under a section named "Trafficking" on the Black Death's dark website they advertise women for sale with their measurements and an assurance that they have been checked by a doctor for any sexually transmitted diseases.
Miss Ayling said that Herba told her three women a week were auctioned and he had earned US$15 million (NZ$20.2m) in the past five years from the sales, with most destined for Arab countries.
He told her: "When the buyer gets tired of the girl he can give them to others or if she's not longer of interest she's 'tiger meat'."
Photo released by police of Lukasz Pawel Herba, a Polish citizen with British residency, who has been arrested in the alleged kidnapping of a young British model. Photo / AP
She told police she had met Herba a few months earlier on a shoot that was aborted in Paris.
During that trip she was caught up in a terror incident as she was walking down the Champs Elysees at the moment a policeman was shot dead in an attack claimed by the Islamic State.
Speaking on the doorstep of her family home in south London last night, Miss Ayling said: "I've been through a terrifying experience. I feared for my life, second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour."
Police found a small bedroom at the property, but it is unclear whether it was used by the model or the kidnapper.
"I am incredibly grateful to the Italian and UK authorities for all they have done to secure my safe release."
"I have just arrived home after four weeks and haven't had time to collect my thoughts.
"I am not at liberty to say anything further until I have been debriefed by the UK police."
Her family admitted they thought they would never see her again and a friend told the Daily Mirror: "They thought they would never see her alive again. She has been through hell. We just want to get her home".
