Tag: hostages
Families Plead For Release Of Islamic State Hostages As Deadline Passes

Families Plead For Release Of Islamic State Hostages As Deadline Passes

By Nabih Bulos and Patrick J. McDonnell, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

AMMAN, Jordan — As another reported deadline passed Thursday, Jordanian authorities said they were seeking proof that a captive air force pilot was alive before releasing a female militant as part of a proposed prisoner swap.

Islamic State extremists have threatened to execute the Jordanian pilot, Lt. Moaz Kasasbeh, if authorities do not release Sajida al-Rishawi, who sits on death row in Jordan for her role in a series of hotel bombings in 2005.

In a recording released late Wednesday, Islamic State was said to have set sunset Thursday as the deadline for the Jordanians to deliver al-Rishawi to the Turkish-Syrian border. But there was no public indication late Thursday that any handover took place.

“We want to confirm that the pilot Kasasbeh is alive,” a government spokesman, Mohammad Momani, told reporters.

Also in the balance is the fate of Kenji Goto, a Japanese journalist held hostage by Islamic State. The extremists have threatened to execute him too if al-Rishawi is not released.

The complex drama has resounded in both Jordan and Japan. Rallies have been held in both nations in support of the hostages.

The families of both hostages issued new statements on Thursday urging Islamic State to release the men.

Speaking at a hall in Amman, Safi Yusef Kasasbeh pleaded for the life of his son, saying to the militants, “Your forgiveness for your Muslim brother Moaz will have a great positive reaction and much admiration from all the Jordanian and Palestinian tribes that share the creed and passion for Islam.”

Goto’s wife, Rinko, broke her public silence Thursday, urging the Jordanian and Japanese governments to do everything possible to help win the freedom of her husband and the captive Jordanian pilot.

“I fear that this is the last chance for my husband and we have only a few hours left to secure his release and the life of” Kasasbeh, Goto said in a statement released via the Rory Peck Trust, a nonprofit group that supports freelance journalists.

She said the kidnappers had sent her “what appears to be their latest and final demand,” informing her that the pilot would be executed “immediately” if al-Rishawi was not released by sunset Thursday.

Goto said she first became aware that her husband was in trouble on Dec. 2, when she received an email from his kidnappers. Reports indicate that her husband, a freelance journalist, entered Syria in October on his latest trip to the war-ravaged nation.

Since then, his wife said, she has exchanged several emails with his captors “as I have fought to save his life.” She said she had been “working tirelessly behind the scenes for his release.”

“My husband and I have two very young daughters,” she said. “Our baby girl was only 3 weeks old when Kenji left. I hope our oldest daughter, who is just 2, will get to see her father again. I want them both to grow up knowing their father.”

She added, “My husband is a good and honest man who went to Syria to show the plight of those who suffer. I believe that Kenji may have also been trying to find out about Haruna Yukawa’s situation.”

Yukawa, a Japanese hostage who was apparently held for a time with Goto’s husband, is believed to have been beheaded, according to statements on the Internet attributed to Islamic State and the captive Japanese journalist.
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Los Angeles Times special correspondent Bulos reported from Amman and Times staff writer McDonnell from Beirut.

AFP Photo

Police Storm Cafe Where Hostages Held In Sydney; Gunman Said To Be Radical Cleric

Police Storm Cafe Where Hostages Held In Sydney; Gunman Said To Be Radical Cleric

By Andrea Booth and Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

SYDNEY — Police stormed a cafe in downtown Sydney, bringing a violent end to a 16-hour siege in which a gunman held more than a dozen people hostage.

A police spokesman told reporters early Tuesday local time that “the operation is over,” but would not release any further details about the fate of the gunman – widely reported to be a self-styled Muslim cleric — or any of those who were inside.

However, Australian television reported that two people, including the gunman, were dead and that three others were seriously injured. Police did not immediately confirm the reports.

Television caught the images of the police attack, which began with a flurry of loud bangs after which police could be seen swooping into the Lindt Chocolat Cafe. Local media reported that the decision to storm the darkened cafe was unplanned and was taken after the gunman opened fire.

Explosions could be heard shortly after six hostages emerged from the cafe, one of them being assisted by anti-terrorism forces. More were removed on gurneys a short time later as police stormed the building.

After the police moved in, one weeping woman was helped out by officers and at least two other people were wheeled out on stretchers.

It was not immediately clear whether the gunman in the siege had any links to international militant groups or was acting alone.

Australian media reported that the gunman is believed to be Man Haron Monis, an Iranian-born radical who claims to be a Muslim sheik and has been charged in a series of violent crimes.

His former lawyer described him as disturbed, and said he was not acting in concert with any terrorist organization.

“This is a one-off, random individual. It’s not a concerted terrorism event or act. It’s a damaged-goods individual who’s done something outrageous,” the lawyer, Manny Conditsis, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

“His ideology is just so strong and so powerful that it clouds his vision for common sense and objectiveness,” Conditsis said.

Haron arrived in Australia in 1996 as a refugee, and if he is implicated in the crime, it may inflame local sentiment against refugees arriving by boat, a hot-button issue in Australia.

Haron had been facing charges as an accessory to the murder of his ex-wife, and was also charged earlier this year with dozens of counts of sexual assault, allegedly carried out when he claimed to be a spiritual healer and was treating women. Haron was due in court in February to answer the charges.

Haron gained notoriety in Australia in recent years over a hate-mail campaign targeting the families of soldiers who died serving in Afghanistan, comparing their bodies to pigs.

He was charged and convicted for using the postal service to harass people. He appealed that conviction, claiming he was a peace activist whose rights to freedom of speech had been infringed.

Haron has repeatedly attacked Australian politicians, including Prime Minister Tony Abbott, on social media, calling them racists and terrorists. He claimed he was under constant attack by the authorities and had been investigated by the national intelligence agency.

He responded bitterly to recent comments by Abbott that migrants who moved to Australia should be willing to join “Team Australia.”

“Shame on Team Australia and shame on those racist and terrorist Australians who support the governments of America and its allies including Australia,” Haron said on Facebook, before his page was taken down late Monday. He described his Facebook page as “Team Islam against Australian oppression and terrorism.”

Haron also posted a letter on his Facebook page attacking Abbott over Australia’s military involvement in Afghanistan, saying this had made the world — and Australia — more dangerous.

His website bears a photograph of a dead woman and three children, all bleeding, with the words: “This is an evidence for the terrorism of America and its allies including Australia. This result of their air strikes.”

Haron accused the “barbaric” Australians of torture and last week praised the Islamic State over its actions in Iraq and Syria.

The drama in Sydney began around 9:45 a.m. Monday in Martin Place, a plaza in the capital’s financial and shopping district. The area was packed with holiday shoppers as well as workers from the nearby buildings taking a midmorning break.

The cafe is not far from courts, the parliament of New South Wales state, the U.S. Consulate and the Reserve Bank of Australia. Once the siege began, businesses and courts in the neighborhood were evacuated and closed for the day. The iconic Sydney Opera House, less than a mile away, also was evacuated.

Aside from the chop-chop sound of helicopters overhead, there was an eerie quiet, pierced with the sound of sirens. Surrounding streets were filled with police cars, ambulances and fire trucks.

Though police have refused to say how many captives were being held inside the cafe, a local news station with a view through the window reported that it appeared to be as many as 15.

New South Wales Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione told reporters earlier that police negotiators were working to defuse the crisis, though he would not say whether they were talking to the gunman directly or through intermediaries.

As the siege passed its seventh hour Monday, five hostages went free — three after 4 p.m. local time, and two more about 5 p.m. As with the later hostages who left, it was unclear whether they escaped or were released.

One of those freed then was treated at a hospital, but that care was for a preexisting condition rather than for any injuries sustained during the hostage-taking, Scipione said.

As night fell Monday, one of the women still being held hostage turned the cafe lights off, local media reported.

Abbott confirmed late Monday that the gunman appeared to have “a political motivation,” and local media reported that the gunman was trying to obtain an Islamic State flag in exchange for some of the hostages.

Two people inside the cafe had been seen pressed up against the window holding a black flag with Arabic writing early in the siege, which began about 9:45 a.m. The flag appeared to say: “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of God.”

As the day wore on, Australia’s Network Ten Eyewitness News reported that two female hostages in the cafe had phoned the station and spoken of two bombs planted in the cafe and two other bombs elsewhere in downtown Sydney. Police declined to confirm that.

“I can’t speculate on what may or may not be, and that would be very unhelpful at the moment,” Deputy Police Commissioner Catherine Burn said at an evening news conference. “At the moment we know that the person we are dealing with is armed.”

The women were “hysterical” and believed that their lives were in immediate danger, according to the network.

The hostages also conveyed the demands of the gunman, who called himself “The Brother,” according to the network: to speak to Abbott and to have an Islamic State flag delivered to the cafe. In return for the flag, one hostage would be freed, they reportedly said.

The network said on Twitter that police listened in to the network’s talks with the hostages, and “advised every step of the way.”

Burn declined to call the incident a terrorist act. “We still don’t know what the motivation might be,” she said, adding that authorities “want to resolve this peacefully.”

But authorities in New South Wales did call up the local counter-terrorism unit, Task Force Pioneer.

“This is really about setting up command and control,” Burn said.

The attack came the same day police filed terror charges against two men, one accused of terror financing. Both had been arrested in Australia’s biggest series of terror raids in Sydney and Brisbane in September; one had been freed but was rearrested Monday. Police said there was no connection between the morning arrests and the siege, Fairfax media reported.

In the September raids, Australian authorities arrested a Sydney man who they said planned to seize a random passerby in Martin Place — the same location where Monday’s attack took place — behead the victim and drape the body in the Islamic State flag. At the time, Abbott told Australians that the beheading was planned within days of the raid.

Most hostages likely were detained when they stopped for morning coffee.

One waiter at the cafe told local media that he had arrived at work minutes after the siege began to find the door locked.

“I saw a guy who looked like he was overseeing everything,” the waiter, who gave his name only as Bruno, told Fairfax Media. “He was standing up while everyone else was sitting down. That’s when the police came and everyone started putting their hands against the window. There was a whole lot of people in there.”

Hours later, Bruno told The Times, “I would rather be in there with them than being out here and not knowing, you know.”

A cafe customer who declined to give her name told reporters: “I literally walked up to the Lindt cafe to get my coffee, but for some reason I went somewhere else. It’s hard to believe that this is happening in our own backyard.”

If the siege is confirmed to be the result of a terror attack, it would be the first major terrorist incident on Australian soil since a bomb was planted in a rubbish bin outside Sydney’s Hilton Hotel, where various world leaders were staying, in 1978, killing two garbage men. The terror attacks that have killed more Australians than any other were the 2002 twin Bali bombings by violent Islamist militants, which killed 202 people including 88 Australians, 38 Indonesians, 27 Britons, seven Americans, six Swedes and three Danes.

Dozens of young Australians are reported to have left the country this past year to join the Islamic State and other terror groups, while authorities have canceled the passports of many other suspects.

Late Monday, a group describing itself as “Asawirtimedia” said on Twitter: “Who started the war? Do not weep now!” The tweet attached a photograph of the Australian flag and comments from Abbott as he announced that Australia had joined a coalition of forces against the Islamic State and was launching airstrikes in Iraq. The tweet highlighted Abbott’s quote, “IS has effectively declared war on the world.”

In October, Australia’s government deployed six fighter jets to carry out strikes against Islamic State positions in Iraq.

There was no way to confirm whether the “Asawirtimedia” group had any relationship with the gunman in the cafe, however.
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(Booth, a special correspondent, reported from Sydney and Dixon from Kenya. Staff writers Michael Muskal and Lauren Raab in Los Angeles contributed to this report.)

This story has been updated.

AFP Photo/William West

Family Credits Qatar For Negotiating U.S. Journalist’s Release

Family Credits Qatar For Negotiating U.S. Journalist’s Release

By Christi Parsons, Tribune Washington Bureau

EDGARTOWN, Mass. — An American journalist and author who spent almost two years in the hands of al-Qaida-linked captors in Syria was released Sunday after a successful negotiation for which his family credits the Qatari ruling family.

Exactly what, if anything, was promised to the group was not disclosed. Both the Obama administration and the family said they did not pay a ransom, although their careful language appeared to leave room for the possibility that someone else did.

Peter Theo Curtis was turned over to U.N. peacekeepers on Sunday morning in a Syrian village in the Golan Heights. After a medical checkup, he was delivered into the hands of the U.S. military on a journey that will eventually lead back home to Massachusetts.

As rumors of his release were followed by an official announcement, Curtis’ mother thanked the U.S. and Qatari governments along with what she said were “many individuals” who helped to negotiate the release of the 45-year-old, who was held for 22 months.

“While the family is not privy to the exact terms that were negotiated, we were repeatedly told by representatives of the Qatari government that they were mediating for Theo’s release on a humanitarian basis without the payment of money,” Nancy Curtis said in a statement issued from her home in Cambridge, Mass.

In announcing the release, the State Department and White House hinted at a long and complex effort to bring Curtis home.

“Over these last two years, the United States reached out to more than two dozen countries asking for urgent help from anyone who might have tools, influence, or leverage to help secure Theo’s release and the release of any Americans held hostage in Syria,” said Secretary of State John F. Kerry, a native of Massachusetts who said he knew Nancy Curtis from back home.

There was a breakthrough this week, though U.S. officials did not say what prompted it.

Family members said Curtis was overcome with joy. But the day was tinged with sadness, too, they said, as the family of slain American journalist James Foley gathered for a Mass of remembrance in his hometown of Rochester, N.H., grieving the son who was killed by a different and more radical group in the same region.

The Curtis family and the Foley family have become close, sharing uncertainty and worry. Before retreating into her home and asking to be left alone, Nancy Curtis urged the captors of other hostages in Syria and Iraq to “release them in the same humanitarian spirit that prompted Theo’s release.”

Foley was slain by the Islamic State, which has emerged as the strongest and most militant extremist group in Syria and Iraq. Curtis was held by Al Nusra Front or a splinter group allied with it. Al Nusra Front is a Syria-based al-Qaida affiliate that has been active in the civil war against Syrian President Bashar Assad.

It has been designated as a terrorist organization by the Obama administration, although it does not have the same reputation for brutality as the Islamic State, which has terrorized a wide swath of Syria and Iraq with tactics that include crucifixion and, as in the case of Foley, beheading.

President Barack Obama monitored the delicate negotiations for Curtis’ release while spending the final weekend of his vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, surrounded by national security staffers who were also monitoring a series of airstrikes in Iraq as well as intelligence efforts to track down the identity of Foley’s killer.

As intent as Obama was on garnering Curtis’ release, advisers said, the administration still refused to pay ransoms or make any other concessions to terrorists.

“We did not do so in this case,” said Caitlin Hayden, spokeswoman for Obama’s national security staff, when asked about making payments. “We also do not support any third party paying ransom, and did not do so in this case.”

Extremist groups in the region frequently use ransom as a major source of income.

The son of Nancy Curtis and Michael Padnos, who lives in Paris, Theo Curtis adopted his mother’s name but writes under the name Theo Padnos. His path to Syria started with an interest in disaffected young men that he developed while teaching in the Vermont prison system. His first book was about such men, said one of his cousins.

Curtis, who holds a doctorate in comparative literature from the University of Massachusetts, later traveled to Yemen to learn Arabic and to delve into the culture enough to understand the disenfranchised men around him there. In an effort to do so, he told one interviewer from Middle East Quarterly, he converted to Islam. The story of his experience was published in the book “Undercover Muslim” in 2011.

He wrote several pieces for the New Republic magazine in 2011 and 2012.

“Theo has a deep concern and regard for the people of Syria, which is why he returned during the war. He wanted to help others and to give meaning and to bear witness to their struggles,” Nancy Curtis said Sunday.

She hadn’t had any direct communication with her son since he emailed her from Antakya, Turkey, in mid-October 2012.

The family believes that he was captured shortly after he crossed into Syria that month, and that he had been held since by Al Nusra Front.

At one point during his captivity, his family saw a video of Curtis in which he begged for his life but said that the people holding him had treated him well.

But a photojournalist who was held in the same cell with Curtis managed to escape, and he described starvation and other harsh treatment at the hands of the captors in an interview a year ago with The New York Times.

Rumors about Curtis’ pending release began to surface Sunday morning. By midday, Obama’s top national security advisers confirmed that the American was free.

“Theo is now safe outside of Syria, and we expect he will be reunited with his family shortly,” national security advisor Susan Rice announced shortly after noon.

United Nations peacekeepers in Al Rafid village in the Golan Heights took custody of Curtis at 6:40 p.m., the U.N. said. Doctors examined him before he was turned over to the U.S. government.

“After a week marked by unspeakable tragedy,” Kerry said, “we are all relieved and grateful.”

As of Sunday afternoon, Curtis’ family didn’t know when he would return to the United States or when his mother would see him, said Betsy Sullivan, Curtis’ cousin.

AFP Photo

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Jihadist Captors Sent Taunting Letter To Foley Family: Employer

Jihadist Captors Sent Taunting Letter To Foley Family: Employer

Washington (AFP) — Journalist James Foley’s jihadist captors sent his family a taunting and rambling email threatening to kill him, just a week before making public a video of his execution, the American reporter’s employer said Thursday.

GlobalPost said it released the full text of the email from Islamic State (IS) militants “in the interest of transparency and to fully tell Jim’s story.”

“We believe the text offers insight into the motivations and tactics of the Islamic State,” it added.

The release comes after the GlobalPost told AFP that Foley’s captors had demanded a ransom of 100 million euros — $132 million — for his release.

The email claims that “other governments” had accepted “cash transactions” for the release of hostages and says that the militants had offered prisoner exchanges for Foley’s freedom, naming Aafia Siddiqui, the scientist jailed for 86 years for attempting to murder U.S. military officers.

IS, which has marauded across large areas of Iraq in recent months, on Tuesday published a video showing one of its members beheading Foley.

Foley, a photojournalist, was reporting from Syria for GlobalPost and other outlets including AFP when he was abducted in November 2012.

Prior to disclosing the email, GlobalPost CEO Philip Balboni said the captors made contact with GlobalPost and the Foley family fewer than half a dozen times, and “the kidnappers never really negotiated” over their huge sum, but simply made their demand.

“We never took the 100 million (euro) figure seriously,” Balboni told CNN.

The U.S. government opposes paying such ransoms, arguing that it only encourages more hostage-taking.

“We do not make concessions to terrorists. That includes: We do not pay ransoms,” State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters Thursday.

Such payouts, she added, would only serve to “fund and finance exactly the groups (whose capabilities) we are trying to degrade.”

Balboni referred to the release of several European hostages by the extremist group earlier this year, likely upon payment of ransoms that were “dramatically less” than what the group sought for Foley.

The family and GlobalPost were seeking to raise money “in the range” of the amount paid for the other hostages, Balboni added, without mentioning a dollar amount.

Harf referenced the other countries’ ransom payments to the group, saying that in 2014 alone, they amounted to millions of dollars, although she too did not provide a figure.

And she stressed that the U.S. government “does not have contact with ISIL.”

Balboni said he and the family provided all information about their search for Foley and their contact with his captors to authorities at the FBI and State Department.

After initial messages and the ransom demand, he said, the line of communication with the jihadists went cold until August 13, when they sent the terrifying message telling the Foleys that their son would be killed.

The Pentagon revealed Wednesday that U.S. special forces were sent into Syria earlier this year to try to rescue American hostages but they came up empty-handed as the captives were not at the targeted location.

“This operation was a flawless operation, but the hostages were not there,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told reporters.

AFP Photo/Aris Messinis

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