Last year, Pete and Janelle O’Keefe set off on an epic drive that would take them 11,000 miles across the world.

Having spent the past decade living in Belvedere Close, Faversham, the grandparents decided to travel by car back home to New Zealand.

But nine months in, disaster struck.

They had been cruising through the “unbelievably beautiful and friendly” Iran in their Toyota RAV4.

However, what initially appeared to be a routine stop near the border with Iraq turned out to be the stuff of nightmares.

They were detained by armed officials, blindfolded and left fearing the worst.

But after more than 50 hours of questioning, they managed to make a great escape thanks to a personal locator beacon and are now recovering from the ordeal in Mumbai.

Speaking exclusively to KentOnline, Pete and Janelle recalled the terrifying events that unfolded three days before the New Year.

Stopped at checkpoint

“I didn't really believe they’d just take people off the street and put them somewhere,” said Janelle.

“I thought surely they must have done something for them to actually be taken by police over in Iran, but that’s not the case.

“We had done nothing, absolutely nothing, that would have been considered wrong in any sense of the word. We were seriously scared.”

On the afternoon of December 28, 64-year-old Pete and 58-year-old Janelle were driving near the Iraq border when a checkpoint was set up.

Iranian officials alleged the O’Keeffe’s had entered a forbidden zone, though they argue this was not the case and say there were other vehicles in the vicinity.

After being held for almost an hour, with one officer repeatedly saying “Tourism, Terrorism” to Pete, they were instructed to follow a “screeching Jeep” to an Army base.

“There was no major issue at that stage; we thought this is going to be a routine stop,” said Pete.

“All of a sudden we were told to park to the side of the road and two of the soldiers cocked their rifles.

“I thought this is possibly a little bit more serious than the adventure I was thinking it was going to be.

“You’ve got some guys with firearms loaded. It seemed to me it would be a good idea to follow them.”

The interrogation

After being taken to the “very basic” camp, they were told to surrender their phones, money, passports and other personal items.

They were denied access to the outside world, and efforts to contact the New Zealand embassy were thwarted.

When police arrived soon after, the blindfolds were put on, and the questioning began.

Janelle said: “Some of the questions they were asking, they were asking us one at a time.

“I think they were just trying to catch us out. At one point they wanted us to recite all the countries we’d been to.

“I missed out going to the Netherlands. Pete was acutely listening to everything and he picked up on this so when he was asked, he put that back in.

“They were asking multiple times and I think this was to see if it was truth or not.”

Pete added: “I put that in to show, and as I said to them, ‘You can tell we’re not corroborating our story’.”

Diversion techniques

As a former officer himself, Pete was well aware of the tactics being used and had trained his wife on how to deal with such a situation before the trip.

They used classic diversion techniques called ‘disruptors’ such as pretending not to understand questions or requiring the toilet.

It was one such visit Pete fell and seriously injured his ribs, leaving him on the floor in agony “squawking like hell”.

“They must have thought my bladder was just absolutely atrocious because every five minutes I wanted to have a bathroom break,” joked Pete.

“However, it was a ‘disruptor’, and when we came back, they normally started on a new branch of questions.

“We talked about all the serious situations [before the trip]. We knew that if something had happened, we’d planned for it so we could try and mitigate it as much as possible.

“Make no bones about it, you can do all the training and you can do all the scenarios - but in Iran, we had no idea what the outcome was going to be.

“That was probably the most scary thing - not knowing. Fear of the unknown.”

The Toyota’s ‘surveillance cameras’

A lot of the questions centred around the RAV4’s cameras. While they are simply driving aids, Iranian officials expressed concern over them, believing they were being used for surveillance.

“They are very nervous over there of people taking pictures and security,” said Pete.

“Two of the soldiers spent an hour with their finger over the camera at the front and the back until they got some tape.”

After about 24 hours in custody, they were told they would be guided to a nearby town and set free – but this did not happen.

Instead, halfway through the journey in pitch black, “big, burly” Iranian officials got out and alleged a signal was being emitted from the car, asking to look inside the engine.

“I thought this could really go south, depending on what they want to do and no-one on the outside world would know – I was really frightened at that stage,” said Pete.

Beacon of hope

However, a miracle – and the fruits of excellent planning – was on its way to the O’Keeffe’s, as a personal locator beacon had notified their daughter Louisa they were in grave danger.

Upon realising they would not be released as promised, the couple decided to activate the device, having previously been reluctant to do so in case it aggravated the situation.

“It was my reticence to set it off because I still felt we would be released,” explained Janelle.

“Having it go off and the people we had entrusted to act on our behalf should it go off, it’s a pretty big strain of worry.”

“We’d said to our daughter Louisa if this beacon goes off, we are seriously in the s**t,” added Pete.

A signal was emitted to police in New Zealand, who contacted Louisa and set the wheels in motion for the end of their ordeal.

However, they were still under investigation and the Iranian authorities continued to probe and order Pete and Janelle to follow their instructions.

“They told us they were taking us to a hotel, and then we went down all these back roads,” said Janelle.

“I said to them, ‘Why should I answer your questions?’ and they said it will go bad for us if we don’t,” added Pete.

“That’s a fairly decent wake up call to answer questions. It just went on and on – again they couldn’t find anything in the car.”

Staff at the hotel they stayed at were ordered not to talk to the couple and to keep tabs on them, though the kindness of the Iranian public shone through when workers offered breakfast and refreshments.

Kindess of a stranger

During a break in the interrogation, the pair were able to sneak out and a stranger in the street took them to his home and let them call Louisa. It was their first contact with the outside world for two days.

“We said, ‘No way, we do not want to get you into trouble’ but he said it will be okay,” Pete said.

“We then got a message out to Louisa. She said the embassy had been in contact with the security services which we then realised the beacon had been working.

“They put in a diplomatic note that went through to the Iranians, they came back and said you’ll be free to go in the morning.”

On New Year’s Eve, Pete and Janelle were released - though they were forced to stay one final night before being let go.

Exhausted and overwhelmed, the pair were about five miles into Iraq when they pulled the car over and held each other as they “howled and howled with tears”, grateful to have come out of the experience relatively unscathed.

Why did they ignore Foreign Office advice?

Pete accepts that many people will ask why they even tried to drive through Iran.

The Foreign Office advises against all travel to the country due to the tense political situation in the Middle East.

But Pete’s answer is: “Quite simply, how do you get through that area without going through Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan?”

In order to drive from the UK to New Zealand, the only other available route is through Russia, which the government also warns people not to visit.

The Foreign Office warns that in Iran, British nationals are at significant risk of arrest, questioning or detention. Having connections to the UK can be reason enough to be detained by the authorities.

Pete and Janelle are not the only UK residents to experience this.

Craig and Lindsay Foreman, formerly of East Sussex, were arrested in the city of Kerman in January and have now been charged with espionage.

Iran is accusing the couple, both aged 52, of having “entered under the guise of tourists" and "gathered information in multiple provinces of the country".

Pete said: "My heart goes out to the UK couple that are still being detained.

“Some of the stuff they put on social media, I kind of winced. That was another great factor that looked after us - when they were looking through our computers, they saw nothing about Iran.

“When we hit Iran, we went dark.

“We said we’re not going to be using social media so they can’t put anything on us.

“We thought we’d mitigated all the risks as much as possible. Obviously, we hadn’t but we’re one of the lucky ones.”

The journey continues

Pete and Janelle, who also spent a year living in Canterbury during their stint in Kent, are now recovering peacefully as they reach the final stages of their global tour.

While they had initially planned to travel to Iraq and Saudi Arabia and then return via Kuwait, Iraq and Iran again before heading towards India, naturally, this plan had to change.

They instead travelled into Oman and to the UAE where the car was put on the boat to Mumbai in India.

With six kids and four grandchildren between the couple of 17 years, when they reach their native land they plan to build a house.

“We have no money but we’re alive and have each other, and this year is going to be a great one,” said Pete.

“This was a New Year’s Eve we will never forget—a harrowing ordeal that taught us the true value of life, love, and the strength of the human spirit.”