Erik Aude 3 years in Pakistan

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Oh? Well, I'm I'm a poker player. I'm a stuntman, a stunt coordinator. Sometimes. I'm an actor of en acting for twenty seven years.

And I know, I just I try to be a happy guy and I go through life.

As easily as possible. That's about it.

Yeah, that's how you come off in this film, and like a really likable guy and very extensive to IMDb page, a lot of film mark You've done a lot of stuff. One thing I was interested in, though, is you got hit by a bus when you were eight years old?

Not hit, but run over. I got run over by a bus when I was eight.

I spent a couple almost two years in a wheelchair. I had over fifty surgeries, and I had my urethras severed and reconnected. I'm the first person on earth to have that happen. But yeah, I was in the hospital for a long time, and you know, from an early age, I had to deal with pain and a lot of suffering, and that was that was my life.

That was the life, I know.

Yeah, but then you went on to be like a high school foot post star and stuff like that.

I was told I'd never walk again, and not only did that, I do that, But yeah, I played for a small high school called Bethel Christian up in Lancaster, and it was a small school.

We had a small division, but I probably proke.

State records with with tackles for a defensive end, and those records hold to this day. So it turned out that, you know, it was a lot luckier than most would have been in my position. I was told I never walk again and end up doing pretty good in the inn the high school football world.

And that's in Bethel, Pennsylvania.

No, no, no, that's this is this is Lancaster, California.

Lancaster, California. Okay, okay, And did you go to college on a scholarship?

I was offered. I was offered like partial scholarships the smaller colleges, but I didn't want to go.

I wanted to be an actor and a stunt man, and I moved down to La as soon as I could.

So no, okay, and what about like any residual pain from this bus incident.

Yeah, for the rest of my life, I'll be I'll be in pain. But you get used to it, you know, if you get an ache in your and your hip and your shoulders and your and.

Your legs, you just get used to it.

So I'm I've gotten used to kidney pains, I've gotten used to hit pains, And it's sort of why I've become a stunt man, because I've been just used to pain my entire life.

Okay, so no pain management, no pain meds.

No. I became when I was a kid.

I became addicted to him, and I'm talking like when I was eight years old, so they had to weed me off of it because eventually it wasn't working anyways.

Fascinating life, man, I got to tell you, fascinating When are we going to get into this whole thing? So why don't you tell us what happened here with the whole how you got involved with the smuggling operation.

Well, well see, you're you're discribing it really kind of badly. Actually, Okay, yeah, I had no idea it was a smuggling I mean, did you watch the documentary?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, what did you take away from the duck?

Well, yeah, that you would they tricked you into into getting jackets or something, leather goods and stuff like that. You were traveling for this guy horning the gym, right.

Yeah, all right, Well you know it's I was hired to unknowingly smuggle opium, and that's what happened.

I was I was.

Working for a good friend of mine, and I thought I was importing expensive leather goods from different countries and getting a free trip and getting a little spending money for it. The trips originally were to Turkey, and I'd

So was a win win. And it turned out that me and several other.

People were being used to unknowingly smuggle opium, and I would be the one.

To find out the hard way, right after nine to eleven.

That we were actually being used as dupes, not mules. Mules are people who knowingly are smuggling illegal contraband. Dupes have no idea they're being used to smuggle illegal contraband. I thought it was bad enough to be beating the import text by bringing in expensive other goods. And we were told they were bringing in anywhere from twenty five to thirty thousand dollars worth of leather goods, and we were saving him fifteen to sixteen thousand dollars on the

And I was the one who found out the hard way.

How much were you getting paid for trip?

Eight hundred bucks?

Eight hundred bucks? Okay?

And I'd go through that, you know, in my first few days on food alone, food and.

Expensive food and exciting you know, adventures and movies and dinners and all that. So the trip for mean the I would have.

Done these trips for free, because the triple, the trip in itself to a to a nineteen year old kid was the payment.

Gotcha, okay? I was gonna ask you next. You were nineteen years old. When you were doing this, Okay, Now, when you were taking these trips back and forth, you were passing through customs and through were they examining their dogs and stuff like that?

Yeah, well the customs were there.

I went through customs in Turkey, went through customs in Sweden.

I went through customs at JFK Report.

And you know, the first few trips I made, no one found anything.

No one was ever the wiser.

Okay said, then what happened at that that trip where you got caught?

Uh?

And I was in Islamabad. I was in Pakistan. The trips weren't originally to Pakistan. This was the trip was a mess up, messed up for the for the very get go. Wasn't even supposed to be my trip. It was supposed to be my old brother's trip. But when he found out it was to the Middle East, he backed out. He wasn't adventurous enough to go. And me had been a loyal friend. Didn't want to let my friend down because I had encouraged this job to my brother and.

I and.

In Islamabad I found out the hard way. That yeah, I found out the hard way. In as long as bad there was either someone either blew a whistle or the cop was just a really good cop and and did his uh, did his job. And it looked weird that a white guy was in Islama bad it was the only white you know, well, I was the only American, the only white person in the airport, so I stood out pretty good.

Now, how about when you were on the previous trips, like when you were handling these leather goods, you couldn't find anything like hidden compartments and stuff.

You didn't notice that if you opened up those suitcase, it looked like an empty suitcase you could fill around and everything it was.

It was an empty, empty, very light suitcase.

But drug drug smugglers are shame still get their products across any way they can, and they're they're great at what they do at hiding jobs, and they you know, they're they're going to continue to do this until the end of time.

So the drugs were hidden in the suitcase, not in the actual leather goods.

Had nothing to do with the leather.

If I taken those leather jackets and put them in another suitcase.

You would have been in trouble man.

I would have I would have.

Known that something was obviously up by their reaction when they were pissed off that I gave them.

Oh yeah, the other suitcase got jacked up. Here's the suitcase here, You're welcome.

It got wet. You know the other suitcase count wet? I butt you knew it?

Well, yeah, obviously if i'd known then what I know now, I wouldn't have done the trip, but I would have been able to pick up that. They're why are you so mad about a suitcase? I don't understand, because the jackets was the job.

Now what about how much were how much drugs were they concealing in these suitcases? You know?

Well, I only know from the one time I got caught, and that was three point six kg.

So three kilograms I guess, right. And how much is that worth.

Worth? Like in money?

I don't know, Okay, not a drug smuggler, I don't know.

You never found out for all these years, you never found out what the street value was and how would you cost over there in Pakistan or Turkey? What this was going for over there?

Uh? No, I was in jail. I was in jail trying to fight for my insence.

I wasn't out there trying to find out how much exactly that I was being used to smuggle, because that wasn't my priority.

My priority was getting out of prison. No.

So really so even while you were there in prison talking to the other prisoners, and you must have chatted about you know, what you're in for, that kind of stuff.

Okay, have you been have you been to jail in Pakistan?

Not in Pakistan? Though?

How many people do you think speak English and pacts? Oh?

Yeah, that's another thing too, right okay, prime? Right?

Right?

Can that make see you? Because not very many?

Okay, So the conversations in Pakistan weren't Hey, by the way, you're carrying this much amount and opium and this is how you cut it, and this is how you sell it and this is how you move it. No, this is the questions were why are you American? The Americans evil? Do you like George Bush? What do you think about Israel? Those are the questions that people ask you if they can even speak English.

Okay, let's go to the first Let's start when when you got caught. Okay, when you got busted and they picked up described to us at first he didn't think anything was wrong, right, So, so what happened at there? At the airport.

It was I guess right, yeah, when they first got caught, well, that was the second they found the drugs.

I was panicking.

I tried to They said they were going to hang me after five o'clock prayer.

I mean it went from they went from.

Zero to ninety nine miles an.

Hour so fast.

When they said they were going to hang me, I panicked. I rushed to another room to try to find a phone. I found a phone, and I started calling my manager. I wanted to call my manager, and my goal was simply for to tell him because he knew exactly what I was doing.

He knew I was.

I was working for this man to travel in the world and important expensive other goods.

I wanted him to warn the others that this was that we were being used a smuggle opium.

I figured, if I'm going to die, I want to at least make my life worth something. Turn Out, the guy who told me they were going to hang me was just kidding. But by then I look like a looked like an asshole.

They said. I tried to escape.

The DEA came to the airport to talk to me, but they didn't believe a word out of my mouth, because in their eyes, possession is ten tenths of the law. People think, well, you're either in on it or you're so stupid that you deserve to be in jail. Anyways, Well it makes sense to me because if a drug smuggler can pay you to do the job for them and not tell you about it, that they're going to save a lot of money by keeping you in the dark.

They also figure you won't draw suspicion.

To yourself because you don't know you're being used to travel.

With anything illegal.

Before I went to jail, I thought, oh, yeah, if you're arrested, you're guilty right away. Now, I believe the majority of people, especially for narcotics related.

Cases, or innocent. I think a lot of people in jail in.

General are innestent, especially in Pakistan, because in Pakistan.

They will beat They will beat you until you admit.

To the crimes that you're part of, or until you give up names of people, and they'll start naming off anyone that they can't think of who has nothing to do with the crime they're being accused of, simply to get the beatens to stop so and then when they grab those new people, those people will start naming off

It simply to stop getting beat.

Oh you know, explain it though. This isn't some rogue cops bending the rules. This is their law. There there are a lots of torture, a confession out of you.

Yeah, it's called physical or man, they're legally allowed to beat you. I mean people here see oh I got slapped, No it ell was slapping?

Is I wish it was a slap?

Beating you there is is hitting the bottom of your feet with a cane, electric cuting you, hanging you up like a punching bag, punching you like one drowning you, and then repeating. And the judge it's up to the judge in the lower the lower courts to decide how many days of physical remand you get. The prosecutor in my case wanted ten days, but she only got three.

Okay, so when they start doing this to you, did you I saw from the movie you did right away start naming names of this guy who sent you over.

There, right I named one name, Ray Gazarian?

Right now, what about did you know the names that are people you were meeting with in Pakistan? That kind of snuff.

At the time.

I knew like first names Joseph and I forget the other guy's name.

I knew those guys, but my contact was Ray. He made it, you know, it was all about Ray.

They came to the I was picked up from the airport and then driven to the hotel. They left me at I was supposed to hang with these guys for the week, but they said that Ray messed up and I was supposed to me to Karachi, which is nowhere near Islamabad.

Karachi's way way way south.

And so instead of hanging out with me for a week, you know, and showing me around and keeping me safe, which is what one of the one of the enticing factors that Ray says, Hey, you're because when you hear the word Pakistan, no one wants to go to Pakistan. I sure as hell didn't want to go to Pakistan. He's like, don't worry, my friends are going to show you around. But when I landed, they said, Ray messed up.

You're supposed to go to Karachi.

Uh, we'll be back when you leave on Friday, and they so I was instead of hanging out with these guys getting to know these guys I saw when I got there, and I saw one of them when I left, So I didn't know too too much about these guys at all, and that was not how it was supposed to be.

So Ray Gazarian was the.

Only person, and turned out his name wasn't even Reygazari, and his real name ended up being Rasnik Manassing, which I would find out about six months later when the DEA comes to the to the prisons to show me the because by this time I'm in jail one throw and the DEA comes back with papers or the pictures, asking who if I never recognized any of the people,

So they set up a sting and they.

Arrested both her and Regazarian at a hotel in Glendale, except he posted bail under the name Erasmik Manassian, which would end up being his real name. My mom at the time had a private investigator looking for this guy.

Because the police don't give a shit about you.

Once you're in jail. You're in jail and they oh drug related, they don't care. They just their jobs to arrest people. Their jobs actually not to actually prove people are innocent. Their job is to people. You know, when's the last time you ever heard of a cop gole? And this guy is actually interestent, Let's help him get out of jail. You never is the answer. So it was my mom's private investigator that was able to put two and two together for the DA and say, hey,

She was approved.

She was declared innocent and a dupe, just like I was.

And so they re arrested.

Rasmcmannasky and denied him bell and it was because they knew what he had done to me. Unfortunately, they couldn't do anything for me because I was in Pakistan. So here I was, six months after I had been arrested on death row, being shown these photos by a guy, a DA agent. And this DA agent when I asked him, I go, okay, what's happening now? How am I getting

But back to when you first hit this prison, because you said yourself that no one speaks English over there, right and the ones more some.

Some do, but it's broken, or they understand. They can say words, but they don't really understand my accent.

Did they ever look accuse you of being cia?

Uh?

No, no one ever brought that up, even though even the cops over there and stuff like that. No, okay, never, okay, all right now even then, Now, how did you get along with these people if you could? How did you communicate them? If you couldn't communicate? Just the little things like you know, being told where to go and what to do and stuff.

Hand gestures, I guess, or I was being led by someone grabbing my shoulder and leading me, or I would just follow a guard to where I needed to go. I mean, those things are easy if you you know, we're if you just pay attention to people, you don't have to speak the same language to understand. Like head nods are pretty universal. Hand pointings pretty universal.

Okay, can you describe the conditions of the prison.

The prison's called Central jel Audiyala. At the time it was the old it was.

It was considered a new prison, but it was the biggest prison in Pakistan, the Pakistan.

The prison had been built in nineteen eighty six.

It was a prison meant to house only eighteen hundred prisoners, but at the time I got there, there were over six thousand prisoners there. And the way I know this is because when you walk into the prison, there's a board on the right and it's got the number of inmates under trials and this is in English, well English and or do. But it tells you how many women prisoners, how many children prisoners, how many under trials, how many convicted,

Over six thousand.

I've never seen under six thousand, but it was between sixty one and sixty three one hundred. And he had hundreds of prisoners coming and going every day.

Children, children, What are children being served? What's going on with the children?

Children commit crimes too? Or a kids of crimes at a juvenile prison? Inside the inside the joe.

Yeah, and now did you come into contact with children when you were in there?

I did you know through the children when they were I saw kids from time to time. The kids would usually get like a lot of the arran jobs I guess, like running messages or uh like the worker jobs cleaning the different parts of the prison.

But they but they but they.

Are also mostly inside their juvenile There was a fourteen year old kid that was in charge of the canteen.

But he wasn't even a prisoner.

He was just kid that was in charge of the canteen that was bringing in all the groceries from out of the prison.

Okay, And you were able to make purchases. Your family was able to send you money. They had like a commissary type situation.

You can make purchases.

And yeah, I got money in and I would buy my own groceries.

Okay. So were you able to compare to the other prisons. Did you have a pretty good funnel of money coming in?

Not at first, but once I understood how things worked, I would get money in, and you'd have to smuggle money in because if the guards knew you had money, they were coming after it.

They wanted the money.

The guards were the most corrupt, sinister assholes there that you could ever think of.

And the reason is because the.

Guards would only make six thousand rupees a month from the government.

At the time, one.

Dollar was sixty rupees, so six thousand rupees is one hundred bucks and that's their salary for the month for the governments. But if they wanted to work inside that and they were spending fifteen thousand rupees a month, which is two hundred and fifty dollars, so they're they're spending one hundred and fifty more than they're even making just for the opportunity to work inside that prison. Now, once they're in that prison, though, it's fair game. They're beating

Wait, I know you've been through a really serious trauma here, man, And I know you've been through hell im back. But you got to keep the language PG because this is going to air on AM radio, Okay, so you got to keep that.

See, that's something you got to start with. I know I usually do usually do in the beginning a story. This story is not a PG story.

I know. Well, usually at the beginning before I give you the contown, I have a little checklist of things I read off to you. But you know, we had that problem with the audio. Let's take a little commercial break. We are here with one of the most intense stories I've seen it in a long time. And we had that guy Midnight Express on. We had him on the show too.

Ah.

I was just hanging with him last night. Billy Hayes came to the comedy show in Vegas last night.

Yeah, Billy Hayes is a local Vegas guy too as well.

Yeah, yeah, we're good friends. We were just hanging last night.

I can imagine the stories you guys had. Eric Auday and the film is called Three Years in Pakistan, The Eric Auday Story, and it goes into a lot more detail than he's sharing with us here right now. And it's a lot more and it really expands on his whole life and his personality and stuff like that. I highly recommend this film. We'll be right back with the after these messages with more of Eric Auday and now

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It's the Opferman Report and now here is investigator at Opperman.

Okay, welcome back to the Opperaman Report. I'm your host, private investigator at Opperman we're here with Ericauday. Fascinating, incredible story. Three years in Pakistan, the Ericauday story. Now, we were talking about the conditions inside the pres One thing, I mean, what were saying. We had Billy Hayes on the show

Oh, for sure, I'm sure there's people having it way worse than I had it. Probably there's people who you know, can't adjust to the situation, or who aren't used to pain, or who aren't big enough to defend themselves, or who aren't smart enough to learn the language.

You know, there's you know, there's there's there's there's all kinds of bad things happening on this planet everywhere.

I mean, even people think, oh, Pakistan's terrible, I'm like, well, would you rather be in a Pakistani prisoner? Would you rather have been one of those three women that were stuck in that bus driver's house in Cleveland for ten years, you know.

Eryl Cashro, Yeah, we've done shows about that too as well. Yeah, you're right. There's so much hard going on in the world. Do you how do you cope with this man? Any PTSD, any kind of therapy when you got when you get out of this.

Oh man, I'm messed up. Pick a top.

I got all kinds of issues. I mean, people think it's funny, you know. And I did the show Locked Up Abroad, and I didn't want to do that show. For every season, that kept contacting me to be on the show. And the reason I want to be on the show is because the few episodes I had watched were always people that were guilty, people that.

Had knowingly done it. And I didn't want to be looped in with guilty people. And then I kept acting. You know, I was an actor since I was a kid.

And people think, oh, well, you're just trying to get fifteen minutes of fame.

Like I wanted to be famous.

I wanted to be a successful actor. I wanted to be a successful stump man. But you know, this is what I did before I went to jail, and when I got out, that's you know, my dreams didn't change. I still wanted to be in the entertainment industry and then finally locked up abroad.

Like we saw some shows you did, you were good? What if we let you play yourself?

And so that's how they enticed me to do an episode. And the problem with that episode was they only took the exciting stuff out of it. They only I mean, they did a rushed thirteen hour interview of what happened to me in the three years there, and all they did was tell the first one year two months of the story, and by doing that, they left out a

That I was getting, and.

She's like, we need to tell your story. And she'd just done a documentary called When the Bow Breaks.

And it was good.

And so it was because of all the headache that I was getting from locked up abroad and how bad of a job locked up abroad did and telling my story that I had to go out of my way to produce and tell my story in my own words. And so three years in Pakistan answers all those questions.

So I just want to say I'm sorry. That was nice to know.

People who've watched three years in Pakistan have been a lot more compassionate, considerate, whereas I've been getting a lot of bull from locked Up Abroad. So that's why the second documentary was absolutely necessary, simply to kind of get the haters to back off.

So if there's one misconception, like the biggest one you want to clarify from the locked Up Abroad thing, what would you want to clarify in it?

Locked Up Abroad thinks like all of a sudden, everyone likes me, Like, oh likes them all of a sudden. You know, well there's another you know, twenty months that's not spoken of. You know, how I started to make friends in prison, how I started to have a job in prison, how people started to see me as a human being in prison.

You know, the Locked of Abroad didn't show that.

Locked of Abroad didn't show the pain and suffering that I went through before I.

Even went to Joe. They didn't.

They didn't describe me as a person. They just said, Okay, there's a story, and then here you have it, and now figure it out.

Hey, you know, you want to see the sensational stuff, you know, the rats and the bugs and you know all that kind of stuff. That's what you want to you know, that's the business we're in. Okay, But now in the movie, though, it describes about how you met some terrorists in there, some got some hijackers.

Yeah, I was friends with the PANDAM hijackers of eighty six.

Those guys were. Those guys were some of my best friends in jail.

And they're still in there.

No, they're not.

Actually they're They're out in the world and they're worth five million dollars each on the FBI's Most wanted list. I know that one of them is dead for sure, but I don't know where they're at.

I don't know what they're up to. I guarantee though.

They're probably watching SpongeBob SquarePants and making smoothies and just trying to live life as simply as possible.

Really, now, how did you become friends with these guys? What was it about that?

Well, they were foreigners too, and foreigners in prison have to stand together because they're outnumbered by Pakistanis. And doesn't you know, if you got a friend in jail, it doesn't matter what they did before.

You're lucky to have them.

If you have someone you can rely on in prison, someone that has your back, you should be fortunate because that is something that is very rare in prison, you know.

And these hijackers. What country were they from?

Well, they're a Palestinian, but there is no Palestine, so I guess Lebanon.

Yeah right, okay, so you and they were even trying to help you get out. They were referring you to their lawyer.

It was their lawyer that helped work on my case.

Yeah, the hijackers, you know, we're you know, these guys are my friends, my brothers. Now, the reason why they were so loyal to me was because I was the reason they were able to speak to their family for the first time in seventeen years. I was the first person to get his phone smuggled into prison.

And because it was you know, it was a huge gamble.

If there was no there was no guarantee that the phones would even work. We were so far out there in rawal Pindi, which is about an hour southeast of Islamabad, and I took a huge gamble. I saved up money. I paid a guard to two hundred dollars or just twelve thousand rupees to get a phone in for me, and I was able to find a signal and by doing that, the hijackers, you know, I would give books to one of the hijackers all the time.

A guy named Ali, and I gave him.

A Harry Potter book, The Goblet of Fire, because inside it I had carved out a page big enough to it was the It was the biggest Harry Potter book at the time, and I carved out a page big for a cell phone. And when I gave it to him that night, he spoke to his family and he asked if the other guys could speak.

I was like, sure.

And the reason I did this is because the hijackers in jail were considered like legends. Pakistani's thought it was hilarious that they killed a bunch of people in an American airline and treated And they'd known these guys since they'd been in that prison. They were there since the prison first opened up. They were the first actually, they were the first prisoners that prison had had in nineteen eighty six. So the guards grew up with these guys.

Man, did you stay Have you stayed in contact with anybody still in there?

No? No one?

Uh?

And I was brought in by the FBI after I got out that to ask me if I knew where the hijackers were. So the hijackers aren't hiding, Okay, I mean I would. I would love to talk to him, But if they talked to me, they're, you know, probably gonna get a missile at their house.

My god. No, wait, and there was a guy, the story about a guy who did a bunch of revenge murders was in there. You were telling that story that year. He was a friend of yours or an enemy of yours.

We'll start that he was. He was my best friend. He's a good guy.

It's you know, they watched the documentary Menory, they'll understand.

But with my friend Maraud, who taught me how to play poker, oh h he uh.

You know, he had a bad situation. It was like Romeo and Julia. His his family was not friends with his what with his uh, his wives family, and in order for them to be together, they had to go into hiding because they weren't they weren't given consent by their families to get married. But in Pakistan they have arranged marriages and unfortunately for Maraud, him and his wife wanted to or him and his girl wanted to get married, and their families weren't weren't weren't, weren't okaying, and so

So and he ambushed them like what an automatic way and something like that.

There was more to it, but I mean I wasn't there, and we didn't we didn't. I never asked them for details.

Oh my god. All right, all right, man, So how'd you get out of this situation?

Well, a little bit of luck and a lot of a lot of reading. I became a lawyer in Pakistan. I did correspondence courses through the Alamaic Ball Open University, and while I was working on my case, I was working on several other foreigners cases. And I was able to prove to the judges that the I was able to prove to the judges that I was innocent by destroying the lower courts points of you know, the lower

That's stupid.

Obviously they were trying to frame me, set me up, and I'd never lied. I said that suitcase isn't mine. It's not my suitcase. And and so they they said, we believe that you're innocent, but we can't say we kept an American in jail for three years.

It makes us look bad. So they gave me time served.

And how was Bill Richardson involved in all this?

Bill Richardson the governor of New Mexico. He at the time, you know, he's he was part of the UN and he would he would, you know, when prisoners were in other countries, even if they were guilty. He was trying to trying to get him out because the conditions were suer terrible. Well, Bill Richardson talked to some people he was friends with. Bill Richardson somehow was friends with the President General M. Sheriff's brother, and by by the I'm

Just do your job. That's it.

And by letting them just simply do their job, it gave me a fighting chance to actually get out of jail, whereas the lower court judge wanted one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars to let me out because it's all about.

Bribes, it's all about corruption.

So I simply using his influence to talk to President General Miccherriff's brother, who was a surgeon in Chicago, so that he was able to talk to Miss Sheriff and through the political grapevine, it's I mean, I don't know who they spoke to, but they basically let the judges know that they're watching, and the judges knew that other people with political influence were watching, so instead of trying to get paid, they just did their job.

I think I'd say it. I listened to the story. I'm telling you not to curse. I want to curse. I want to like ramble up a bunch of sending his here myself. This is just fascinating, man. How did you get a hold of richardson there? What kind of connection did you have to get to him?

One of the casting directors from a show that I did called On the Ropes and also That's a Raven, her name.

Was Joey Paul. Joey Paul because.

In Hollywood I was making waves. I was working on different TV shows. All the casting directors knew me. My friend who I'm out here in Vegas with right now, Sean McNamara, the director of Soulcerer for He would have Joey Paul cast all his shows. And it was on his show that I was a lead on, called on the Ropes, where.

I played a high school wrestler named the Mighty Thrasher.

They they knew my situation and so they were trying to help my mom out anyway they could.

Joey Paul knew some I'd have to ask her again.

Either it's some guy who was either he was in the CIA or he was he was involved in the government, like as in a way that they're not allowed to describe, so not too much details. He somehow had connections.

To Bill Richardson.

So it was through Joey Paul's friend that she happened to know who I guess wanted to be an actor at one point, because that's how that's how she knew and was a guy auditioned for something. They became friends, and then he used his connections to get a hold of Bill Richardson. So it was a lot of people who just happened to know the right people.

But basically it was a friendship deal. But people liked you and they wanted to help you. Yes, fascinating, man, fascinating. Okay, one more question to now, did you when you were in there going through this kind of hell? I guess everybody in there's Muslim, right, but did you any faith, any kind of religious rebirth in your life, any kind of faith in your life?

Well?

I converted, oh well, in order to get people to stop trying to kill me with rakes and knives and everything, I converted to Muslim when I was in prison, and also.

Because you can get time off.

I did it for a smoke screen, and people who were trying to kill me one day were calling me brother the next. So I went through the There was these things called remissions, like if you can read in the Koran passages, every three months you got like fifteen days off your sentence. And I was always looking for ways to get days off my sentence in case I had to stay there for the long haul. So becoming Muslim and getting another two months every year off your sentence, Oh yeah, sounds good to me.

Are you Muslim?

Now?

No, I don't want to.

It was I I did it.

I did it to get these guys off my back and get days off my sentence. Now it was now I'm not Muslim now I and and but I did get to pick my own Muslim name, and it was Muhammad Ali.

Oh there you go. Okay, great, the greatest, the greatest? Why not Eric good?

Hey?

Now what happened to a ray Gazarian? This guy? What happened to him?

He was never punished for what he did to me?

He he he made a deal with the with the he made a deal with the DA out here for his information. His information led to one of the bigger drug busts in Glendell, and a lot of guys got taken down. So he was only put in jail for four and a half years, which is lenient, way lenient, and in exchange, he doesn't get punished for anything else

Have you tried to look for his assets?

Of course I have.

If I knew where he was right now, I drive to his house and kick his door in. Really, no, that guy got away with what he did to me.

He was never punished.

And yeah, that's one of the things that sucks the most is that this guy gets away with it, which makes no sense to me.

But you went to all the trouble of a civil suit. I mean, even though he didn't have an insurance company or anything like that behind him.

The ass the government got all his assets, and then since then he's put.

Everything into everyone else's name.

Sure, and I keep renewing the I keep renewing the judgment, though I just renewed it in twenty seventeen, after I knew it every ten years.

Sure, but then you paid for a lawyer even though there was no insurance company to go after. You paid out of pocket for an attorney soon Yep, really how much your de costs you?

Uh, it wasn't cheap. I don't remember exactly that.

The attorney I I, well, no, the attorney I had, they were taking it. They were taking it on uh actually know they were taking it on contingency. And then and the and my attorney died right before our judgment happened. She died from a heart attack, but someone in her office took over with all the work she had done and was still able to get us our judgment. And then but I have to pay every I had to pay for an MRI, which costs seven thousand dollars at

Dollars an MRI for your attorney's MRI.

Or yeah, because the attorneys were after she died, the law for disbanded, and so when the collections came, they were you know, it was in my name, and I had to take care.

Okay, so originally I wasn't supposed to pay for it.

It was an MRI for me that the attorneys made me get for my hands and my feet.

For the injuries. Okay, yeah, all right, man, listen, what do you got planned next? What do you know? Wait? How long ago was this? Did you get out of there?

I got out in December twenty third, two thousand and four.

Two thousand and four. Okay, So and if you have had a great, successful life since then, I see where I am dB page. You got all this work going on. You were telling me off the air, you're producing this comedy show. You're trying to sell that and stuff. Great stuff going on, you see. And when you look at the documentary to three years in Pakistan, very happy, go lucky guy. Okay, Now, what do you got planned for the future.

I'm just going that's my goal, you said, I'm just trying to be happy. I don't really I don't really have goals.

I mean, I just trying to move along. You know. I played poker, I hang out with my girl, I travel.

I do a lot of travel, and I rescue animal I help out with charities, and I just try to be as happy as I can.

And did you get treatment for PTSD?

Uh, you know, with the therapy and that kind of stuff. But that's that's pretty much it. Man. What about everyone? Everyone deals with things the wrong way, And.

If you think about all the bad things that happened to you, it just, you know, it just makes you angry. So I try to create new happy memories and hopefully they will overcloud the bad memories.

And what about a day like today when you have to tell the story again? They don't have to, but you did, you wanted to. You told the story again. When you walk away from this and just go on to the next thing, you won't think about me at all? Or will this stick with you for the rest of the day.

We'll see. I don't know. Definitely, not, hopefully not. I mean, but I mean, but the only reason.

I tell the story is because I've had people who had you know, PTSD. I've had people who've been suicidal, cops, veterans, people in law enforcement who have seen what I've gone through, and they contact me and they say, you know what, it helped them. It helped them know that they can through their situation. If I can get through my situation, and that in turn helps me because it lets me

Yeah, and people really got to check out this film three years in Pakistan because we're just touching the surface. Man, We just really really just touching on the surface here.

They can watch it on Amazon Prime for free, but it's on thirty different streaming platforms. You can rent it on iTunes, on on demand, on Vimeo, but if they got Amazon Prime, they can watch it for free. And if they have any questions, they can contact me on Eric Iday on Instagram or Twitter, and I'll try to answer them as long as they're cool. Like people are asking stupid questions like how many men raped me and that kind of stuff.

I probably won't answer those questions, you know, because because it's it's just people being jerks.

But if people have serious, you know, you know, authentic question, I'll try to answer them as best as I can.

Yeah, people. If you don't realize when you have a lot of exposure to the general public, you run into a lot of folks you'd rather not Eric, what day? What do you want to leave us with?

Men?

We got like two minutes left? Wait, what do you want to leave us with? Very inspire story.

And I just want people to know that, hey, you know, whatever you're going through, it could absolutely be worse, all right, And if you're feeling you know, you know, like you're at your last end and you're hanging on by a string, just know that this moment will pass. Every day I was in jail, that I was in pain, and I was sad, and I wanted to kill myself.

I just I told myself, this will pass.

Just get through the next five minutes, and five minutes would come and go, and then I'd set another goal, get through the next five minutes, and before I knew that an hour had come, and then the day had come, and I'd feel.

I just feel a little bit better.

And eventually I would tell myself, you know what, I would remember the good moments in my life because I knew that those were just around the corner. So just no matter how bad it gets, it could always be worse and just get through the day.

That's all you have to do.

Did you always know you were going to get out? Did you always in the back of your mind say, I know I'm getting out.

Yeah, because I was innocent and I knew there was And it wasn't just me who knew. My whole family knew, all my friends knew. So absolutely I was.

Getting out innocent.

People who do this doesn't happen if if it was just me, Okay, I'm screwed. How am I going to prove my innocence? But so many people knew I was innocent. Six months in the DEA knew I was innocent, and you know, the South American government knew I was innocent. They just kind of do anything for me.

So yeah, I was getting out.

It was just going to be a little bit of time and it was gonna suck doing it, but I was going to get out.

Eric, Man, I can't thank you enough, okay, and I hate to put you through the story again, but thank you so much. Really inspiring story. The movie is great. Three years in Pakistan, the Eric or it's Eric is a E R I K And Oday is au D. So you can find it really easily, Eric, Thank you so.

Much, man, Hey, thank you for taking the time.

No, thank you man, good night. Whoosh. Okay, So then we had a Eric Oorday incredible story. The movie is called once again Watch three Years in Pakistan. A fascinating story. Fascinating guy and he's done a lot of great work to other film work besides this as well. But you really get an idea of his personality. It's amazing how he talks about just get through the day, endurance, you know, perseverance.

Man.

I totally agree. It's all those struggles I've been through in my life too, my custody battles, my divorce and stuff like that. Just get endurance, keep perceiving one foot in front of the next man, and don't give up. So true man, really inspiring story. And I can tell he's got a real serious tip on his shoulder to about a few things here. From the minute I contacted him. Right away he says, hey, to just see three Years in Pakistan and not this other thing. They hates this