Amanda Lindhout responds to charges against her alleged captor

WATCH ABOVE: Amanda Lindhout is speaking out for the first time since the arrest of Ali Omar Ader for allegedly abducting her. She reveals that Ader tried to contact her last year and threatened her family. Reid Fiest reports.

CANMORE – Amanda Lindhout is breaking her silence about the charges laid against a Somali man RCMP say was a “main negotiator” in her hostage taking.

“I literally fell to my knees,” she said about the moment RCMP told her about the charges. “I immediately began crying and I think I just kept thanking them over and over again.”

“Part of me never believed it was really going to happen,” she added. “They were always really confident.”

Lindhout, a freelance journalist, and Australian photojournalist Nigel Brennan were kidnapped by Islamic extremists near Mogadishu on Aug. 23, 2008.

For fifteen months, she was chained, starved, beaten and raped before their families paid a ransom – reportedly around $600,000.

READ MORE: Were Amanda Lindhout’s Somali captors the product of a failed state?

Lindhout has detailed the ordeal in her best-selling book A House in the Sky, but hadn’t, until now, responded to news of the arrest.

Ali Omar Ader, a Somali national alleged to have been part of the kidnapping was arrested and charged in Ottawa by RCMP Thursday.

In an interview with Global News Sunday, Lindhout said Ader contacted her on Facebook after she returned home, which she was very upset by.

“He has had the audacity, as I have said, to reach out over the last few years.”

“Of course I would be worried if he was free in Canada,” said Lindhout, “but I also have a lot of faith in our justice system and I just really don’t think that’s what’s going to happen.”

Lindhout posted the following statement to social media Sunday morning:

“On the evening of Thursday, June 11, I learned that the RCMP had arrested a man named Ali Omar Ader and that the following morning he would be formally charged in connection with my kidnapping in 2008. I was at my home in Canmore when the call came in. My understanding is that it was a few hours after the arrest was made.

For more than five years now, I’ve met regularly with a team of investigators from the RCMP as they’ve worked on this case. They’ve been confident all along that they would eventually make an arrest, though it was always clear they were facing difficult and dangerous conditions. I’m not sure I ever quite believed it would happen.

There is one agent in particular who has been my point of contact throughout the process, who has invested himself in every step along the way and visited me many times. I can’t reveal his name, but his kindness and committment to the cause has meant more to me than I can adequately express.

On the phone on Thursday evening, calling from Ottawa, he said to me, “Are you sitting down?” There were several RCMP officials on the line as he delivered the news. I was stunned that they’d made the arrest. I was even more stunned that the accused kidnapper was in my home country. I had forgotten to sit down, and my knees gave out. I lay on the floor crying, saying the words, “Thank you, thank you, thank you so much,” again and again.

I told them that night how proud I felt to be Canadian. I was, and will always be, humbled by the fact the RCMP has worked so hard on my case all these years, never wavering in its pursuit of my kidnappers. This operation was large and complex and involved many people across several continents. I’m grateful to Canada Border Services Agency, the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development and the Australian Federal Police for their assistance.

I did not see a photo of Ali Omar Ader until the next morning. I find it difficult to describe what it felt like to see his face again. It brought up anger, fear, confusion, and also—knowing that he no longer poses a threat to me or to anyone else—a sense of relief.

In Somalia, I knew this man as “Adam.” He introduced himself to me and my colleague, Nigel Brennan, on the day we were taken hostage. He struck me as educated and comparatively well-off. He spoke English better than most of our other captors and was based in Mogadishu. He was erratic and bullying and fully complicit in my suffering. It was he who collected the contact information for our families and who made most of the calls to them over the course of the next 14 and a half months, demanding that a ransom be paid. He terrorized my mother, phoning her multiple times a day and at all hours. He also revealed things about himself, speaking to her about his desire to visit Canada, for example. At different points, he expressed interest in marrying both me and my mother. His children could sometimes be heard playing in the background of his calls.

I’m grateful that this man has been arrested. I am happy that he will be called upon in court to answer for his role in the kidnapping. My healing and recovery, however, has never been contingent on this form of justice. I’ve spent the last couple of days feeling extremely emotional about the arrest, contending with the brutal memories it calls up. But losing my freedom in Somalia taught me a lot about how to get it back. Every day, I make the choice to move forward and to remember that true power is derived from kindness. In the end, Ali Omar Ader’s fate has nothing to do with mine.”

Lindhout turned 34 the same day RCMP announced Ader’s arrest.

Ader, 37, has been charged under the Criminal Code for hostage-taking. He made a court appearance by video conference Friday morning.

His next court appearance is scheduled for Friday. Ader remains in custody in Ottawa.

WATCH: Amanda Lindhout speaks to Global News’ Reid Fiest about RCMP arresting her alleged captor.