I first heard Philippe Bogaerts extraordinary story a week ago, after I met him via Deborah Campbell, a mutual friend of ours. She introduced him as the “Hostage in Qatar”, a name that would stick in the days to come.

Philippe was stranded in Doha because his employer was refusing to grant him an Exit Permit to leave the Country. Like most Gulf states, Qatar requires foreigners who wish to work in the country to have a local sponsor. However, unlike other Gulf countries, Qatar give sponsors the authority over whether their employee is allowed to leave the country or not. A law which some western organisations say is akin to modern day slavery.

When I met Philippe he had been stuck in Qatar for nine months and had been living at the residence of the Belgian Ambassador to Qatar for six. He had seen his multiple efforts to get out of the country blocked at every turn and, after staying out of the public eye for so long, he seemed ready to tell his story to the world.

Deborah, who is an author and journalist (and also Tweets), had already persuaded Philippe to set-up a Twitter account and we decided to help him get his story out over Twitter and on a Blog. A few late nights later, Phillipe was prepared - He had a Blog set-up, he’d put together a Press Release and he had got the hang of Twitter and started putting some teasers out about his story.

Last night he flipped the switch and today there has been a number of articles about his case in the Belgium press, a huge interest in his Blog and a slew of followers on Twitter where, inspired by Dan Baums strategy, he is telling his story 140 characters at a time. It has been great to see the story spread over Twitter and watch Phillipe take phone call after phone call from journalists and politicians just 24 hours after getting the ball rolling. His friends have even put together a Phillipe Liberation Front group on Facebook after he updated his status with links to his Blog and Twitter feed

@hostageinqatar on Twitter Search

It really is a testament to the power of social media that by using Twitter, Wordpress and Facebook, Philippe has been able to make enough noise to attract the attention on international media within a matter of hours. Every one of those services is completely free as well. It goes to show that, as long as you have a compelling story to tell, the tools are out there for you to reach a large, international audience, if you use them wisely.

Warren Ellis once wrote “Journalism is like a gun. You’ve only got one bullet, but that’s all you need, if you aim it right. Aim it right, and you can blow a kneecap off the world.” I think the same goes for Social Media. I hope we’ve managed to aim this right to help Philippe get home to his wife and kids.

You can read all about Phillipes story at his blog and through the press release. Personally I’d reccomend you follow the story on Twitter as that will have some more details and will give you an idea of his personality and what he has gone through.