Survival as a Hostage (Part
I)
By
Richard Clutterbuck
Being
Mentally Prepared
Before
considering contingency planning and crisis management,
it is important to understand the ordeal of the hostage,
because the negotiator must all the time try to
visualize what is happening to him, and how he may be
reacting.
The
hostage will have more chance of survival if he is
mentally prepared. The shock of being kidnapped will
probably be the worst he ever has to endure. A busy,
comfortable, gregarious and secure existence, in which
he is always exercising options and getting a response,
will suddenly be transformed into a forced inactivity
and isolation, with no options at all, and great
discomfort and degradation. The transformation will have
been violent, and he will have been pushed around and
possibly injured. He may have seen his driver or
bodyguards killed trying to defend him. He will find
himself stripped to his underwear, forced to ask for a
bucket in which to perform his bodily functions in full
view of people who seem to take a conscious delight in
humiliating him. Worst of all will be fear, and
particularly fear of the unknown. He does not know
whether he will be tortured or killed, or if so, when.
The ordeal is open-ended. And it will be made worse by
self-pity or reproach:
'why
me?', 'if only...' The first few hours will perhaps be
the most horrible hours in his
life.
He
will endure the ordeal better if he has thought about it
rationally, but not morbidly.
Depending
upon how seriously he regards the threat and the
character of those involved, he will gain from having
discussed the possibility of kidnap with his wife or his
colleagues.
Geoffrey
Jackson did so with both, and with the Foreign Office in
London.
His book is truly valuable reading for anyone facing a
high risk.
The
more the victim knows about kidnapping, the less will be
the fear of the unknown. He will be able to remind
himself that only about 3 per cent of kidnap victims
have been killed in cold blood (though more have been
killed during the snatch or in rescue attempts); and
that, though some hostages are held for a long time (one
was held for twenty-two months before being released on
payment of a ransom), the majority of kidnaps have ended
in under five days. And � albeit cold comfort � he can
recall that, if it does last longer, the human body and
spirit have remarkable powers of adaptation, and that
the great majority of hostages have survived without
permanent damage.
Soldiers
with duties classed as 'prone to capture' (e.g. in
stay-behind parties, parachute units or deep penetration
patrols) go through a basic program of training to
prepare them for the ordeal. This includes simulation of
treatment at capture (often painfully realistic),
isolation, acute discomfort, degradation, and mental
disorientation. All who have done this testify to its
value. Even if the ordeal has only been faced mentally,
the victim at least knows what to expect, and it will be
easier to bear.
The
Snatch
The
moment of kidnap offers the best � and perhaps the only
� chance of escape. Evasive driving has already been
mentioned. A high-risk potential victim (or his driver)
is more likely to grasp this fleeting opportunity if he
has run through some scenarios in his mind, perhaps as
he drives to and from work. The basis of these scenarios
should be to do what the kidnappers least expect, as the
best way of throwing them off their
stride.
Curtis
Cutter, US
consul general in Porto Allegre,
Brazil,
thwarted a late-night kidnapping attempt outside his
home in April 1970, when a car blocked his path and four
armed men jumped out. He drove straight at the men,
carrying one of them along on his bumper for several
yards. The others fired and Cutter was wounded, but he
escaped.
It
was perhaps with this in mind that, when Hanns-Martin
Schleyer's car was blocked by the terrorists' minibus in
September 1977, the 'gap' was filled by a girl terrorist
pushing a pram off the pavement. She knew that few
drivers would run down a baby, and the hesitation proved
fatal to the driver, the body guards and, in the end, to
Schleyer himself.
Sometimes,
particularly in a more lawless society, in which they
know that witnesses will not dare to come forward, the
kidnappers may deliberately pick a crowded street for
the holdup, to give themselves more time and cover. Few
policemen or bodyguards would fire unhesitatingly at a
man amongst a crowd of innocent bystanders. In one
Latin-American capital the victim's car was rammed by
another in a long, narrow, crowded shopping street.
The
two drivers both got out and a long altercation ensued.
The victim got out and joined in. By this time a large
crowd had gathered round, amongst which were the other
kidnappers (who had meanwhile signalled their other cars
to block both ends of the street). Only when they were
quite sure that all was set up and that they had got the
right man did they produce their guns and bundle him
into a car.
Once
his car has been stopped and the victim finds himself
facing armed men, there is little he can do. Unless
police or bodyguards are still fighting to open an
escape route, the only sensible course is usually to
surrender and do what the terrorists say. Heroics
achieve nothing unless there is a real chance of
success.
The
First Few Days
The
victim should, from the moment of his capture, make a
determined effort to recover his calm and alertness so
that he can start making mental notes of any details
likely to help the police. He will be able to compose
himself more quickly if he avoids provoking his
kidnappers. He should do his utmost to fix in his mind
their faces, voices, dress and characteristics; how many
they were; and the particulars of any vehicles that were
involved. If psychologically prepared, he will be better
able to discipline himself, to concentrate on these
things rather than on agonizing over why it
happened.
He will probably
be forced face down on to the floor of the car so that
he cannot see, and he may later be transferred into a
closed van, or have his eyes covered and his ears
plugged. Nevertheless, he should fix in his mind any
clues he can get about his route: time, speed, distance,
sharp turns, gradients, traffic lights etc.; and any
sights or sound he is able to detect, such as crossing a
railway or passing close to the airport; also the
direction of the sun. If he has an idea whether he went
north or south, he may possibly find a way of
communicating this during negotiations, or in written or
taped messages he is ordered to send out; even if he
cannot do that, the information may help in arresting
the gang later.
He
should also try to detect the kind of place into which
he is taken: e.g. into a garage with inside access to a
suburban house, the car park under a block of flats, the
back entrance of a shop, or a workshop or a warehouse.
If the gang is a professional one, the likeliest
eventual hideout (probably after at least one transfer
between vehicles, and perhaps also after a brief spell
in a transit lockup) will be a house, flat or garage in
a quiet, prosperous suburb, which may offer more choices
of getaway route than an isolated farmhouse. Again, the
victim should consciously store sights, sounds and
smells in his memory. At least one hostage contributed
to the eventual capture of his kidnappers because he
could hear aircraft taking off from a small and
recognizable airfield; and another by remembering
details of the wallpaper.
The
treatment of the victim in the first few days after
capture is likely to be at its most brutal, calculated
to humiliate and demoralize. He may be injected with
some drug such as scopolamine, designed to relax
resistance and loosen the tongue. Geoffrey Jackson
countered this drug by disciplining himself to talk
fluently to the point of verbosity on unimportant issues
and, if cornered on important ones, to attempt to blur
his answers with more verbosity, in such a way as to
make the two indistinguishable.
Interrogators
are likely to use Pavlovian techniques of contrasting
brutality and kindness, light and dark, noise and
silence; and to attempt mental dis-orientation by
sensory deprivation, probably keeping the victim
permanently blindfolded, with ears plugged, without any
means of telling the time of day, with deliberately
irregular and unpleasant food (perhaps none at all for a
time) and repeated interruption of sleep (if any). He
can only steel himself to endure it, knowing that this
is probably going to be the worst time of all, reminding
himself again and again that the great majority of
hostages survive.
He
must be particularly careful not to reveal, unwittingly,
anything about the likely reactions to his capture. He
will probably be asked for a telephone number to ring;
and he should think about who is likely to react best to
the first message � because this first reaction can
influence all subsequent negotiations. He should also
avoid discussion about how ransom money might be raised,
or to give any clue which will help the kidnappers to
gauge the level at which to pitch their first demand.
The only exception to this is that he could consider
feeding in any genuine reasons why the sum the
kidnappers are demanding could not conceivably be found
� but this is a dangerous subject, and he may do better
to avoid it if he can.
He
must do his utmost to restore his own morale.
Post-kidnap shock is a major physiological and
psychological problem; and the fact that (unlike a
soldier or a pilot in war) he may be wholly unprepared
for it makes it worse. The kidnappers will do their
utmost to exploit this in order to establish total
dominance over him; and he must consciously resist that,
not by heroics and provocation, but by battling to
retain his self-respect and sense of humor. Geoffrey
Jackson had his kidnappers laughing within minutes of
his kidnapping by accusing them of trying to tattoo the
Tupamaro emblem on his hand as they tried to inject him
with a drug during the first bumpy car ride. He also
took the offensive, though not provocatively, by telling
them that he had already agreed with the British and
Uruguayan governments that they would make no
concessions of any kind to secure his
release.
To
be continued�