A BBC bodyguard has admitted to burning the body of a baby boy killed in Indonesia during the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004.
Craig Summers found the body of the child, aged between 1 and 2, outside the house in Banda Aceh where he was staying with a BBC journalist and production team as they covered the aftermath of the disaster, The Mail on Sunday reported.
Mr Summers, a former commando and now head of security at Sky TV, was employed by the BBC to provide advice on deploying to hostile or dangerous environments and spent ten years accompanying journalists to war zones and scenes of natural disaster.
In his recently published book, Bodyguard: My Life on the Frontline, Mr Summers, 52, said he burnt the child’s body because he considered it a health risk to the BBC team, comparing it to an obstacle such as a “blocked toilet”.
He said he found the body on January 7, 2005 — 12 days after the tsunami. With matted black hair and closed eyes, it was lying on the doorstep of the house.
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Instead of telling the BBC team or contacting local authorities, Mr Summers decided to dispose of the remains himself.
“I picked it up with my bare hands and looked around,” he wrote in his boigraphy.
“Nobody was watching. I walked over to the rubbish, which night after night would pile high in the streets waiting for the authorities to burn the next day by the side of the roads to stave off the threat of rats. Removing some cardboard from the tip, I covered the baby with it.”
He described how an Australian paramedic staying near by approached him and asked what he planned to do with the child’s body, to which he responded that he planned to burn it.
“My response was instant and came from the mouth of a soldier in the zone and on autopilot. My sole priority was to protect the BBC crew from infection.”
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After the fire burnt down, Mr Summers said that he and the paramedic bagged up the smouldering rubbish.
“I didn’t look to see the remains of the baby,” Mr Summers wrote.
“Nothing was said. We just got on with it. We may have left a skull on the floor — I can’t recall. I just wanted it done.”
Mr Summers wrote that the incident was also witnessed by Peter Lang, a BBC producer.
“I had no choice but to come clean,” he wrote. “I told him we had to keep this to ourselves — I didn’t want anyone else to find out.”
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In defence of the act, Mr Summers said that even if the child’s parents were alive, he would not have been able to find them.
“I couldn’t give the parents that closure because there were no clues on the baby. I didn’t know how it got here but I felt sure it was orphaned and deliberately dumped. I couldn’t change its fate. I did what I had to do. There were no alternatives but to cremate the baby.
“It was the most humane thing to do before it became riddled with maggots and was left to rot in the street. I couldn’t put a sign up outside the house saying: ‘One ex-baby here — please knock’.’’
There is no suggestion that the attendant BBC journalist, Ben Brown, knew of the incident, the Mail reported.
Last night Mr Summers told the newspaper that the baby had been “completely unidentifiable”, adding that “there were a quarter of a million dead people there and the majority were being dumped in open pits”.
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BBC executives reportedly tried to persuade Mr Summers not to publish the biography. The bodyguard was asked to abandon the project in January after he submitted a draft manuscript to the broadcaster.