'They stripped me naked, beat me up, threatened me,' Stuart Macgill recalls kidnapping incident

Former Australia leg-spinner Stuart Macgill has opened up about the time he was kidnapped, about 15 months ago. The cricketer said he was thrown into a car, taken to an unknown location stripped naked and beaten up.

The incident happened on April 14 and four people, including his partner Maria O’Meagher's brother, were arrested in connection with the kidnapping.  As the case would not go to court before October next year, Macgill was instructed by the authorities to not go public on certain details. 

“It was not something you’d even like to happen to your worst enemy,” MacGill said recalling the horrific incident to SEN WA Breakfast.

“Later in the day, it was getting quite dark, I was bundled into a car. 

“I didn’t want to get into the car, I said to them twice, ‘I’m not getting in the car,’ but then it became obvious they were armed, and they said, ‘We know you’re not involved, we just want to have a chat,’ then they put me in the car and I was in the car for an hour and a half.”

Macgill, who played 44 Tests and three ODIs for Australia between 1998 and 2008 said he had no idea about the location he was taken to. “I didn’t know where we were, I didn’t know where we were going and I was scared,” MacGill said. 

“From that point, they stripped me naked, beat me up, threatened me and then just dumped me. That was over the course of maybe three hours out in the middle of nowhere in a little shed.

“I was scared, I was humiliated and I really didn’t know what was going to happen. Then they chucked me back in the car and dropped me in Belmore, and I didn’t really know where I was then either, to be honest.”

Fearing his safety, Magill was on the run for six weeks after this incident. “I basically ran away for a month afterward,” MacGill said.

“Maria chucked me in the back of her car, I was in the boot, I got out of my unit, then I had a couple of mates who very generously put me up in hotels around Sydney for two or three weeks, and then I went away with (a friend).

“We ended up driving up the coast of New South Wales and through Queensland and ended up on Fraser Island, so all up I was probably away for six weeks or so.

“By the time I got home most of the guys had been arrested, which was good.”