Channel 4 News at 25: Lindsey Hilsum

Last Modified: 30 Oct 2007
By: Lindsey Hilsum

Chile, Jenin and Iraq - it's no surprise that our international editor Lindsey Hilsum has picked three revealing foreign stories as the tales that really mattered.

Interviewing Ariel Dorfman

When Jon Snow asked Ariel Dorfman what he would say to Pinochet should he be listening, it was as dramatic as Dorfman's own play Death and the Maiden.

It was a moment when you felt, as a viewer, that the suffering the Chilean people underwent during the Chilean dictatorship could be redeemed, that somehow there could be resolution. It was breathtaking.

Inside Jenin

When Tim Lambon and I snuck into Jenin, just after the Israelis had demolished the people's homes and while Israeli armoured vehicles were still patrolling, my heart was pounding.

So that was what I said: 'Imagine what it must have been like.' I wanted to conjure up that moment for the viewers.

We had to run for an hour, climb over a 15ft wall, hidden in the ruins of the town. When we reached the centre, old women came out wailing and children stood, stunned in the rubble. I was speechless but I had to do a piece to camera.

Suddenly I was imagining the terror people must have felt a few hours earlier when the roaring, relentless armoured bulldozers crashed through their homes.

So that was what I said: "Imagine what it must have been like." I wanted to conjure up that moment for the viewers, to get them to put themselves in the position of the people we had just been filming. It was totally unprepared.

I was imagining it myself as I was speaking.
- Watch the report

Saving Zahra

The day after the Americans entered Baghdad, we were filming a marine unit which had taken over one of Saddam's palaces.

They were shooting randomly at passers by, because they didn't want anyone to drive down the street but had not put up signs saying it was closed off.

Our fixer, Mohammed, suddenly said, "I can hear crying." He went across the road to see what had happened.

If I forget everything else in my life, I don't believe I will ever forget that moment.

The image of him running back, carrying a bundle in his arms, is etched on my mind forever. The bundle was wearing an orange and white spotted dress, with dark hair dangling down.

She was five years old and her name was Zahra.

The Americans, shooting at a car which had come too close, had shot her in the head.

If I forget everything else in my life, I don't believe I will ever forget that moment, and the subsequent minutes when we screamed at the Americans to help her, and they started to treat her wounds, and our team rescued more injured people.

That day will stay with me forever. Zahra survived because Mohammed saved her, and because the Americans who had shot her treated her head wound.
- Read Lindsey's 2003 Iraq diary
- Read Lindsey's Iraq memories