- I would go the jail in Pakistan
just a few months after 9/11.
- [Narrator] This just in,
you are looking at obviously a very disturbing
live shot there.
That is the World Trade Center
and we have unconfirmed reports this morning
that a plane has crashed into one of the towers.
- And me being the only American there wasn't easy.
Someone put a 5000 rupee bounty on my head.
People would try to collect all the time.
I was in more fights than I can count.
I've been stabbed.
Someone firebombed my cell.
Hi my name is Erik Aude.
I'm a poker player producer-actor
stunt coordinator and stuntman.
My life is a little different than most.
I'm the youngest of six boys,
yet all my brothers consider me their big brother.
When I was in third grade
I was run over by a school bus.
I was told that I wouldn't make it through the night.
Then I was given a very small chance
of making it through the week.
My pelvis was shattered like a glass jar.
I've had over 50 surgeries from the age of eight
to the age of 15.
When I was 12, I did my first movie.
I was an extra on a movie with Christina Applegate
called Across the Moon.
I knew I wanted to be in Hollywood.
I knew I wanted to be in the entertainment industry.
As soon as I turned eighteen I knew I wanted to get out
of the Antelope Valley and I moved to L.A.
as soon as I could.
I live in this place called Eagle Rock
and even though I was working as an actor,
I was getting small parts on Nickelodeon shows, CW shows.
Work wasn't full time for me,
so I had to pick up jobs,
side jobs and one of my side jobs
was a personal trainer at the World Gym in Burbank.
One of my clients was
a very successful Armenian businessman.
He would hire young people to travel around the world
for him importing expensive leather goods.
And he'd pay them for it.
I knew this guy for a while before
I would finally agree to take a trip for him.
And it would be one of these trips right after 9/11
that I would find out
that I was really being used to smuggle narcotics.
A few months after 9/11 happened
no one wanted to make trips understandably
and the trip that would end up sending me to jail
wasn't even supposed to be my trip,
it was supposed to be one of my older brother's trips.
And he backed out when he found out it was to Pakistan.
Normally the trips would be to Turkey.
I always say I'm glad it was me that it happened to.
And I know I'm glad it was me
that it would have happened to
because I don't think my brother would have been able
to get through it.
I would go the jail in Pakistan
just a few months after 9/11.
I would be the only American in a prison
meant to house only 1800,
but it was overcrowded.
There were over 6000 prisoners there.
Hundreds coming and going every day
and me being the only American there wasn't easy.
The first nine and a half months
that I was in jail,
I spent on death row and the reason I was on death row
is because of the bounty that somebody had
put on my head and people kept trying to collect it.
The superintendent at the time
I figured that was the safest place for me.
So while on death row I met some prisoners
who were there for mostly murder.
One of the prisoners I would meet though
and he was there for killing
11 of his wife's family members.
Him and his wife fell in love without their family's consent
and they had to go into hiding.
While they were in hiding
their families were feuding with each other.
They were blaming each other for hiding the other
and they were killing each other.
What brought Murad out of hiding was his mother and sister
were gang raped by his wife's family members
and killed by having their breast cut off
and bleeding to death.
So Murad set up an ambush
and killed 11 of his wife's family members.
On death row
Murad was very kind to me.
One day I get called early in the afternoon and Murad
had planned this whole meal for us.
He'd had chicken, he had Pepsi, he had sweet dishes.
Everything wasn't spicy.
In Pakistan they love spicy food.
I personally have always not liked spicy food.
I asked Murad what's the occasion.
He said no occasion just hanging out.
He would have had to bribe a lot of guards
to get this kind of meal into jail.
I hang out in his cell, all day that day.
And when I went back to,
I was called back to my two cell
I said hey Murad, I'll see you next week,
he said (foreign language).
And he ended up being hung the next day.
He shared his last meal with me.
He had it prepared so that I'd enjoy and not him
and he didn't tell me.
After 6 months,
I had a DEA agent come to the prison and talk to me about
the man that set me up.
Up until this point they hadn't been able to find him.
They couldn't find him because of the name
and the only reason they were able to find him
was because six months after I was arrested
a Swedish woman working for him doing the same thing
I was doing, which was importing expensive leather goods,
and beating the import tax by claiming it as their own,
she was arrested.
She lost her luggage at JFK Airport
but she continued on her itinerary to LAX.
They found professionally sown in the walls
of her suitcase narcotics.
Basically what happened to me.
And when he told me that story about the Swedish girl
I felt relieved.
I figured, okay, now that you guys
got the real drug smuggler
what are you gonna do to help me get out of here?
And he says that if this was happening in America
you'd be going home tonight,
but because it's here in Pakistan
you still have to go trough the legal system.
11 1/2 months goes by and I've been going back and forth
to court so many times.
Sometimes the judge wouldn't show up.
Most of the time
the other lawyer wouldn't show up or my own lawyer
wouldn't show up, the witnesses wouldn't show up.
The embassy figured okay well Eric's innocent
so this is what we're going to do to help him out.
They'd somehow talked to the judge.
The judge was going to give me a two-year prison sentence
and with time and good behavior and some remissions
I was only going to spend about one year two months in jail,
but here is the catch,
I would have to plead guilty for a crime I didn't commit.
Now I thought about this.
I had some time to think about it.
And I didn't want to plead guilty
for a crime I didn't commit.
I had already been made fun of.
I've had my life stripped from me
and I knew that if I plead guilty for a crime
I didn't commit, it would eat at me.
The interpreter for the embassy a guy named Masul,
who came with the consulars usually,
he says to me Eric what's worth more to you?
Your pride or your freedom?
That made my decision very easy for me.
Because my pride is worth a hell of a lot more to me
than my freedom.
I refused to plead guilty
knowing that I was facing life or death.
The judge gave me seven years, but seven years I could do.
7 years I was mentally prepared for so I was happy.
I was.
I became friends with a lot of different people.
I became friends with the future Prime Minister of Pakistan.
I became friends with the hijackers
from the Pan Am hijacking of '86.
The people that were responsible for 23 deaths in prison.
But in jail, you can't really pick your friends.
You're just grateful for having them.
Because we were foreigners
that's what we had to, we had to bond
because of that.
It's really just you against the Pakistanis.
But the Palestinians,
those guys would become my brothers in jail.
They would end up saving my life more times than one.
When riots would happen,
they would stand side-by-side with me
and they would fight.
I had a knife in my stomach and one in my shoulder
because there was a hit on me.
And it was the hijackers that helped
to keep anyone else off of me,
so at least the fight was more fair.
It would also get me a lawyer.
It would help represent my case and get me out of jail.
December 16th comes around
and I'm presented in front of the courts
and I tell the judges using
all the lower court's points against them.
I'm able to convince the judges that I'm innocent.
And the judges say to me,
they believe that I'm innocent but they can't say
they kept an American in jail for three years
for a crime he didn't commit.
It makes them look bad.
So they said they would have to decide.
On the 16th, I find out they decided to give me time served
which is fine.
I never plead guilty
and I got to leave that prison with my head high.
I know how bad it can be
and my whole life has never been a cakewalk.
It's never been a picnic.
Everything's amazing, everything.
It's the little things
you're gonna miss when they're all gone.
If you go to jail tomorrow
you don't know when you're going to get out
I guarantee you're going to miss being able to say hello
to someone that you thought would always be there.
You're going to miss being able to watch a sunset.
You're going to miss being able to go to the beach
and just feel the ocean on your feet.
You're going to miss
being able to grab a taco or a hot dog or.
You're going to miss
being able to go and watch a matinee.
You're going to miss
being able to pet a dog.
All that stuff is what you're going to miss.
You're not going to miss your money.
You're not going to miss your job.
You're not going to miss what car you have,
or how big your house is.
You're going to miss the little freedoms
that you've always taken advantage of.
(solemn piano music)