'I was held as a Falklands war spy in the Argentinian Alcatraz' - The Guardian

When I arrived in Argentina in 1982 after the invasion of the Falklands, the mood was euphoric. "The recovery of our islands has been very easy," said the slogan on Argentinian TV, as the screen filled with a map of the "Malvinas".

Few people in Argentina thought there would be a war. Even when Margaret Thatcher dispatched a task force, the six weeks it would take for British troops to reach the Falklands seemed plenty of time for diplomacy to do its work and find a compromise.

Argentinian officials were in ebullient mood at a reception I attended in the presidential palace. The press secretary of Leopoldo Galtieri, head of the ruling junta, waved his arms expansively and replied, "Anywhere you like," when I asked him where I was allowed to travel in the country.

So as defence correspondent of the Observer, and with no need to file daily reports, I set off with two colleagues towards the military bases in southern Argentina in the hope of finding an amenable pilot who would fly us over to the islands. At Rio Grande airport in Tierra del Fuego, the bright red Tierra del Fuegan government Lear jet sat tantalisingly close on the tarmac and its pilot was almost persuaded to take us "for a spin". Ten minutes on the ground in the Falklands would have been enough for a global scoop.

But it was not to be. In the end, having reached Ushuaia, the most southerly town in the world, we gave up. In the south, closer to the Falklands, the mood was darker. As we were about to return to Buenos Aires, an Argentinian naval officer accompanied by armed marines marched up and arrested us. "For you the war is over," he said sneeringly in English.

At first I felt pleased. I had no doubt that I would soon be released, as journalists invariably were, and would have a ready-made story of "My night in an Argentinian jail". It was only when a judge announced that the three of us would be charged with espionage that I realised the seriousness of the situation. The "dirty war" in Argentina in which thousands had disappeared had not yet ended and the country's naval intelligence, in whose hands I now was, was guilty of many of the atrocities.

My mistake had been to fail to realise that, unlike in other wars that I had covered, I was a citizen of the enemy state this time. My notes of the military aircraft and troop movements I had seen were deemed to be not journalistic but espionage material.

Ushuaia prison was "locked down" for our arrival. Prisoners were confined to their cells, and total silence imposed. The first evening we were allowed to exercise along the prison corridor. A cell door opened and shut again almost immediately and three apples came rolling towards us. It was the first sign that, while we might have been dangerous international spies in the eyes of the Argentinian authorities, as far as the other prisoners were concerned we were fellow victims of the system. Later I discovered that our benefactor was Humbert, a Chilean businessman in prison for stealing whisky.

The three of us were questioned at length separately and afterwards put into one cell and allowed to mix with the other prisoners. There were around 26 of them in cells along a single corridor. They were a mixed bunch, ranging from local criminals to cattle smugglers and one former Tupamaro guerrilla from Uruguay called Castro, who was in prison for grievous bodily harm. Some were pathetic characters. One named Moreno, who attached himself to me, was a conscript serving two years for hitting an officer. He confided that he had had sex only once and that was with the wife of a lion-tamer while he was working in a circus.

Another prisoner, who had forged his identity, asked me to write to his English girlfriend in Chile to inform her that he was "in obscurity", so she would not know he was in prison.

There were two women in the prison, in a separate section. One was a young prostitute from a nightclub serving two years for taking out the eye of another woman with a broken bottle. The other female prisoner had killed her 13th baby.

The war was ever present. The prison was in line with the runway of Ushuaia's air base and we saw Argentinian Skyhawk jets taking off to attack the British fleet. The worst day was 2 May, when a British submarine sank the Argentinian cruiser General Belgrano with the loss of 323 lives. The Belgrano was based in Ushuaia and had sailed from there to patrol the south-west approaches to the Falklands, as there were fears that the Chilean navy would intervene on the side of Britain.

Our cell was invaded by furious prison guards, who took everything except basic necessities. We lost the shortwave radio through which we had been following the conflict on the BBC without having to rely on Argentinian propaganda on a TV set in the prison. Feelings ran high in the town when the bodies were brought back. Commander Juan Carlos Grieco, the senior naval intelligence officer dealing with my case, was at the dockside. He told me that one lifeboat had contained bodies frozen to their seats, including that of an Argentinian sailor still holding a lamp aloft. Officers from the Belgrano had been at his house the night before the cruiser sailed, and made final calls to their families, some their last.

My greatest fear was of being torn to pieces by a mob. There was yelling in the street, death threats were sent to the court and in the nearby Argentinian naval base there was talk of an attack on the prison to seize us.

Escape was out of the question because of the harsh Antarctic winter and the fact that Tierra del Fuego had originally been chosen as the site of Argentina's Alcatraz because of its remoteness. There was a glacier behind the prison. But at the front, by standing on a chair, I had a beautiful view through the barred window towards the Beagle Channel and the snow-capped mountains of Navarino Island in Chile, sometimes rose-tinted in the wintry sunlight.

One small blessing was that the original prison, in which prisoners had to wear full-length yellow and black striped tunics and looked like human wasps, was defunct. But conditions were harsh and the food poor – chicken necks being my least favourite dish. The prison was the most patriotic place in town, being the first to "volunteer" to forego electricity for the sake of the war, although this self-denial did not extend to the prison officers' club. There was nowhere to exercise and the air was blue with tobacco smoke as there were no open windows.

The rattle of chains on an outer gate near my cell during the night always woke me. Usually it was just a new prisoner being brought in. At weekends it was drunks from a nightclub called the Igloo. They were put in a cell that always smelt of urine and released with a small fine on Monday. I came to recognise some of the "regulars".

I was not tortured. A highly effective international campaign was organised on our behalf. The judge received more than 600 telegrams of protest and prison guards realised that we were too "important" to be harmed.

When the war ended the Argentinian mood changed to one of resignation. Eventually, when I had spent nearly three months in prison, the judge granted bail with freedom to leave Argentina. Seven years later through a statute of limitations the case expired. Officially, I was neither guilty nor innocent.

I returned to Tierra del Fuego to make a BBC documentary for the 10th anniversary of the Falklands invasion. I met again many of the leading characters, including the prison governor, José Barrozo, a civilian, who had prospered, and Grieco, who had fallen on hard times. Both were honourable men. I felt no animosity towards them, nor did they towards me. I like to think that we ended up friends.