January 10, 2006

Freed Hostages We'd Like to Meet: Bernard Planche Freed by Troops, Helps them Hunt Down Captors

He's French and he tried to help U.S. troops hunt down his captors! It just goes to show that while France generally sucks, there is a large minority that I'd love in my corner when fit hits the shan. Army News Service:

Soldiers from 3rd Brigade, 6th Iraqi Army Division and Task Force Ironhorse Soldiers liberated a French hostage Jan. 7 in the Abu Ghraib area of western Baghdad.

The Iraqi Army Soldiers were searching farm houses for weapons caches while U.S. Soldiers from Task Force Ironhorse manned a checkpoint as part of an outer cordon. As the Iraqi Army closed in on their location, the kidnappers fled from a nearby farmhouse and left the French hostage.

After the kidnappers fled, the hostage, Bernard Planche, a 52-year-old employee of a French non-governmental Organization, ran up to a checkpoint manned by Soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, 22 Infantry.

It's in Le Monde that we learn Planche tried to help U.S. soldiers hunt his captors down. No Pasaran has this:
Even though his kidnappers allowed him to listen to the radio and keep a personal journal — how thoughtful of the dears — Bernard Planche is one Western hostage who did not give in to the Stockholm Syndrome, helping in turn the United States army troops who freed him.
Great News!

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January 09, 2006

Hostage Susanne Osthoff Was German Intelligence Agent

From United Press International (via The Reid Report):

WASHINGTON, Jan. 9 (UPI) -- Susanne Osthoff, the German archeologist kidnapped by Iraqi gunmen on Nov. 25 and released before Christmas was connected with her country's intelligence service, the BND, and had helped arrange a meeting with a top member of the terrorist organization al-Qaida, possibly Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi himself, according to well informed German sources Sunday.

The sources confirmed German press reports that the 43-year-old woman had worked for the BND in Iraq on a freelance basis, and had for some time even stayed in a German intelligence safe house in Baghdad.

A convert to Islam and a fluent Arabic speaker, Osthoff had lived in Iraq for over a decade, and was at one time married to an Iraqi. Archeology is a classic intelligence cover: T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) posed as an archeologist in the Middle East in the early part of the last century. But archeology is Osthoff's real profession. One Washington-based German source said Osthoff had been working on arranging a rendezvous with an al-Qaida member on behalf of a German intelligence agent in Iraq. Whether the meeting ever took place has not been revealed, but another source in Berlin, reached by telephone, said experts believed that the kidnapping may have been the work of a rival group, possibly within the same organization.

A day after Osthoff's release, the Germans had quietly freed and sent home to his native Lebanon Mohammed Ali Hamadi, a Hezbollah militant serving a sentence for killing a U.S. Navy diver in a hijacked TWA jetliner in 1985.

The UPI story also says that new German Chancellor Angela Merkel paid a ransom for Osthoff in addition to releasing Hamadi. Supposedly German intelligence is "cooperating with U.S. counterparts", but, given German duplicity in the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal, and near total intransigence in the GWOT, it begs the question how much cooperation is actually taking place.

Also posted at The Dread Pundit Bluto.

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American Reporter Jill Carroll Held Hostage by al Qaeda in Iraq

UPDATE Jan 17th: Jill Carroll hostage video emerges. For more background on Jill Carroll visit the Jill Carroll archives.

As posted on The Jawa Report on January 7th, an American reporter named Jill Carroll has been kidnapped by Abu Musab al Zarqawi's al Qaeda in Iraq. The Jawa Report was the first American media to report the hostage's name. Today, the Christian Science Monitor confirmed that Jill Carroll had been kidnapped.

After Tim's first post on Jill Carroll, we had an e-mail conversation about whether it was appropriate to name hostages before the U.S. State Department or other official sources released her name. The long standing policy of The Jawa Report has been that the more publicity given to hostages while they are still alive, the greater the chances of their survival. The U.S. State Department's policy of not-naming hostages publicly is borderline insanity and serves no rational purpose.

Let us keep Ms. Carroll in our prayers. Christian Science Monitor:

Jill Carroll, a freelance journalist currently on assignment for The Christian Science Monitor, was abducted by unknown gunmen in Baghdad Saturday morning. Her Iraqi interpreter was killed during the kidnapping.

"I saw a group of people coming as if they had come from the sky," recalled Ms. Carroll's driver, who survived the attack. "One guy attracted my attention. He jumped in front of me screaming, 'Stop! Stop! Stop!' with his left hand up and a pistol in his right hand."

One of the kidnappers pulled the driver from the car, jumped in, and drove away with several others huddled around Carroll and her interpreter, said the driver, who asked not to be identified. "They didn't give me any time to even put the car in neutral," he recounted.

The body of the interpreter, Allan Enwiyah, 32, was later found in the same neighborhood. He had been shot twice in the head, law enforcement officials said. There has been no word yet on Carroll's whereabouts.

The kidnapping occurred within 300 yards of the office of Adnan al-Dulaimi, a prominent Sunni politician, whom Carroll had been intending to interview at 10 a.m. Saturday local time, the driver said.

Mr. Dulaimi, however, turned out not to be at his office, and after 25 minutes, Carroll and her interpreter left. Their car was stopped as she drove away. "It was very obvious this was by design," said the driver. "The whole operation took no more than a quarter of a minute. It was very highly organized. It was a setup, a perfect ambush."

The Christian Science Monitor article states that no group has claimed responsibility for Jill Carroll's kidnapping, but other sources claim that al Qaeda was behind it. Times Online:
Attempts were being made last night to locate an American journalist who was kidnapped in Baghdad yesterday after a meeting with a senior Sunni politician. Her Iraqi translator was killed, writes Ali Rifat.

Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the kidnapping in a statement posted on the internet.

The Left's 'Freedom Fighter's' at work........

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January 01, 2006

13 Middle East Hostages Released

The New Year brings some positive news for the friends and families of 13 hostages kidnapped recently in Iraq, Yemen, and the Gaza Strip.

From TheStar.com:

Those released yesterday include Juergen Chrobog, a former German foreign minister, his wife and their three children, who had been held in Yemen by tribesmen for the past three days.

Also released yesterday were five Sudanese embassy staff -- including Abd al-Munim al-Huri, the Sudanese embassy's second secretary -- who were seized by kidnappers in Baghdad Friday.

And on Friday, kidnappers in the Gaza Strip released Kate Burton, a 25-year-old British human rights worker, and her parents. The three were abducted Wednesday in the chaotic southern town of Rafah on the Egyptian border.

While both Yemen and Sudan complied with the kidnappers' demands, the Palestinians released abducted Britons as a purported gesture of goodwill.

The Yemeni government agreed to the demand to hold talks with tribal leaders regarding release of five members of the tribe currently being detained. Sudan agreed to the demand to close its embassy to free the abducted diplomats and allow them to leave Iraq.

Britons Kate Burton, her father Hugh, and mother Helen were abducted by a group called the Brigades of the Mujahideen-Jerusalem with demands that,

Britain and the rest of Europe apply pressure on Israel to end the "no-go" zone it imposed in northern Gaza last week to stop rocket fire. The group also wants Israel to free prisoners, pull back troops in the occupied West Bank and end the assassination of militant leaders.
Presumably with considerable unofficial negotiation, Burton and her parents were released unharmed "as a gesture of goodwill." The masked, armed kidnappers released a video in which the following statement was read.
"We have decided to pardon the three Britons as a gesture of goodwill in return for a seriousness in answering our demands."
So, they kidnap and threaten the lives of three people, only to release them in return for a promise of "seriousness." Personally, that's a steamy pile of used oats. What are we going to be asked to believe next? The bus full of Israelis was bombed because there was insufficient seriousness? Not likely.

Although it's good news that the hostages were released, it comes at a price. In two of the three cases, the message was clearly sent to the thug terrorists that kidnapping works. Yemen and Sudan rolled over like trained dogs.

Companion post at Interested-Participant.

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