The complicated reality of paying ransoms
I thought I had it bad during my unjust incarceration in 2013 in Egypt’s Scorpion maximum-security prison while facing fabricated accusations of aiding the Muslim Brotherhood, a group designated as terrorists.
The little news I received through the prison’s grapevine during my 438 days left me feeling lucky as I learned about fellow journalists being kidnapped and killed across the Middle East.
Some hostages won their freedom but it came with a price — a ransom.
Halfway through my senseless detention I watched, on TV, a Daesh commander in Syria brutally beheading my friend, freelance American journalist Steven Sotloff. I remember jolting toward the screen and focusing on Sotloff’s facial gestures for any clues about his state of mind as the knife touched his throat.
Was he disappointed that the government of the United States of America does not make concessions, negotiate with or pay ransoms to terrorists?
It’s easy for us in the civilized world to debate the U.S. and Canada’s no-ransom-no negotiation policy from the comfort of our living rooms.
The dilemma is real and torturous for the families of many victims, including Canadian hostage Joshua Boyle, his American wife, Caitlin Coleman, and their two babies held in Afghanistan since 2012 by the Taliban-linked Haqqani terrorists.
Governments who refuse to pay understand that terrorist groups — such as Daesh, also known as ISIS or ISIL, Al Qaeda, and its affiliate Al Nusra Front, operating mostly in Syria — raised hundreds of millions of dollars from kidnapping for ransom.
Another such Islamist radical group is the Daesh affiliate Abu Sayaff, which is responsible for the kidnapping and beheading of Canadian citizens Robert Hall and John Ridsdel in the Philippines last year. The terrorists reportedly demanded $6.5 million in ransom per hostage.
Last week, I stopped in Paris for several hours to interview American journalist Theo Padnos, who was taken hostage in 2012 by Abu Marya Al Qahtani, a senior commander of Al Nusra Front in Syria.
The one video shot and uploaded by his captors on the Internet months before his release showed a frail Padnos wearing a scruffy beard while sitting cross-legged on the floor, his wrists bound on his lap, a Kalashnikov rifle aimed at his head as he pleaded for his life.
The Padnos who lived was full of life as he pranced around his flat making me coffee with a contagious smile drawn on his face.
“We lost Kayla Mueller because the U.S. government refused to pay a € 5 million ransom. That is the price of a car, a golf course, or what we pay for some baseball players,” Padnos told me with a tone of disappointment in his voice.
Mueller, an American aid worker, was kidnapped and raped in 2013 by Abu Bakr Al Boghdadi, the leader of Daesh, before she was reportedly killed in a coalition airstrike.
Padnos was constantly tortured, sometimes by kids who shocked him with Tasers. He expected death at any moment and almost got used to the feeling.
“At times I contemplated suicide. It was my only path after two failed escape attempts. The U.S. government did nothing.”
At first his captors requested the cash equivalent of a quarter of a kilogram of gold (about $400,000 U.S.) — not a hefty ransom. It wasn’t until a year later when the terrorists upped their demand to $3 million and later increased it to $22 million.
Padnos is one of many noble aid workers, human rights advocates and journalists who are selflessly drawn to conflicts in the Middle East to help victims of war.
The resistance to paying ransoms is understood. Who wants to indirectly fund those heavily bearded monsters when they burn people alive, behead journalists, and drown non-believers in acid and fish tanks?
Despite their official stance against paying ransoms Italy, France, Spain and Germany have paid million of dollars and caved in to free their citizens. The solution is complicated and never black or white in that region’s fog of war.
In the case of Padnos, his family obtained help from a third party — the oil rich state of Qatar in the Arabian Gulf — a government with strong contacts and influence on the Al Nusra front terrorists.
He was released days after the slaying of James Foley, another American journalist slain by Daesh in Syria in 2014.
“I cried for days after my release and sprinted on the beach like a deer. I am proud I stayed alive,” he told me with a glare of hope in his eyes — a feeling I slightly tasted after my own release in 2015.
In captivity one’s mind can be your worst enemy. Padnos rose above an unbearable situation and survived Al Qaeda. Whether a ransom was paid or not for his release, it is a history Padnos will write himself one day.
It’s easy for us in the civilized world to debate the U.S. and Canada’s no-ransom-no negotiation policy from the comfort of our living rooms
Mohamed Fahmy is an awardwinning journalist and war correspondent. He is the author of The Marriott Cell: An Epic Journey from Cairo’s Scorpion Prison to Freedom.