Taken Hostage Stories and Strategies

Taken Hostage Stories and Strategies
Author: Larry Busch
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2016-04-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1514489368

Written by a former hostage negotiator, Taken Hostage provides specific daily behavioral, situational, and long-term psychological strategies used successfully by hostages who survived months and years of mental and physical torture by terrorists, religious extremists, and criminal gangs. The book describes in detail the five stages of a hostage taking. Whether taken hostage for ransom, political leverage, or as a human shield, the book suggests what treatment the hostage can expect during each stage and how to best counter them. Taken Hostage describes how a hostage can moderate the physical and mental effects caused by physical tortures such as binding, suspension, beatings, starvation, and sexual assault and against mental tortures such as social deprivation, false executions, and brainwashing. The book identifies the mental hazards of depression, suicide, and barbed-wire psychosis and how to combat them. Particular strategies such as passive compliance and humanizing will instruct the hostage on how to apply recognized psychological strategies to the hostages advantage, and as such, play a more active role in their day-to-day physical treatment and sustain positive mental health. The book stresses safer travel planning as the most important strategy against being kidnapped in the first place. It details hotel security, insider accomplices, finding the right hotel and the right taxi, and how to use countersurveillance techniques to identify and thwart a potential kidnapping. The book coaches the hostages family and employers back home how to effectively manage the media and one another, thereby reducing the incidence of hostage and family PTSD and reintegrating a changed person back into their changed family. The detailed survival strategies will inspire a hostages will to live and sustain a familys hope. It is written for domestic and international travelers, UN and NGO volunteers, military personnel, and anyone in harms way.

Kidnap

Kidnap
Author: Anja Shortland
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 309
Release: 2019-01-24
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0192547518

Kidnap for ransom is a lucrative but tricky business. Millions of people live, travel, and work in areas with significant kidnap risks, yet kidnaps of foreign workers, local VIPs, and tourists are surprisingly rare and the vast majority of abductions are peacefully resolved - often for remarkably low ransoms. In fact, the market for hostages is so well ordered that the crime is insurable. This is a puzzle: ransoming a hostage is the world's most precarious trade. What would be the "right" price for your loved one - and can you avoid putting others at risk by paying it? What prevents criminals from maltreating hostages? How do you (safely) pay a ransom? And why would kidnappers release a potential future witness after receiving their money? Kidnap: Inside the Ransom Business uncovers how a group of insurers at Lloyd's of London have solved these thorny problems for their customers. Based on interviews with industry insiders (from both sides), as well as hostage stakeholders, it uncovers an intricate and powerful private governance system ordering transactions between the legal and the criminal economies.

We Want to Negotiate

We Want to Negotiate
Author: Joel Simon
Publisher:
Total Pages: 189
Release: 2019-01-08
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 9780999745427

"A wise and thorough investigation." - Lawrence Wright, author ofThe Looming Tower andThe Terror Years Starting in late 2012, Westerners working in Syria -- journalists and aid workers -- began disappearing without a trace. A year later the world learned they had been taken hostage by the Islamic State. Throughout 2014, all the Europeans came home, first the Spanish, then the French, then an Italian, a German, and a Dane. In August 2014, the Islamic State began executing the Americans -- including journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, followed by the British hostages. Joel Simon, who in nearly two decades at the Committee to Protect Journalists has worked on dozens of hostages cases, delves into the heated hostage policy debate. The Europeans paid millions of dollars to a terrorist group to free their hostages. The US and the UK refused to do so, arguing that any ransom would be used to fuel terrorism and would make the crime more attractive, increasing the risk to their citizens.We Want to Negotiate is an exploration of the ethical, legal, and strategic considerations of a bedeviling question: Should governments pay ransom to terrorists?

Hostage at the Table

Hostage at the Table
Author: George Kohlrieser
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2011-01-06
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1118047117

George Kohlrieser—an international leadership professor, consultant, and veteran hostage negotiator—explains that it is only by openly facing conflict that we can truly progress through the most difficult business challenges. In this provocative book, he reveals how the proven techniques and psychological insights used in hostage negotiation can be applied successfully to any personal or business relationship. Step by step, he outlines the seven key factors that anyone can use to remove the blocks that stand in the way of resolving tough problems and shows how business leaders, in particular, can develop and access the skills they need to create trust and a positive mind-set in their companies.

Prisoner

Prisoner
Author: Jason Rezaian
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2019-01-22
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0062691597

The Inspiration for the New Podcast Featuring Jason Rezaian. “544 Days” is a Spotify original podcast, produced by Gimlet, Crooked Media and A24. The dramatic memoir of the journalist who was held hostage in a high-security prison in Tehran for eighteen months and whose release—which almost didn’t happen—became a part of the Iran nuclear deal In July 2014, Washington Post Tehran bureau chief Jason Rezaian was arrested by Iranian police, accused of spying for America. The charges were absurd. Rezaian’s reporting was a mix of human interest stories and political analysis. He had even served as a guide for Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown. Initially, Rezaian thought the whole thing was a terrible misunderstanding, but soon realized that it was much more dire as it became an eighteen-month prison stint with impossibly high diplomatic stakes. While in prison, Rezaian had tireless advocates working on his behalf. His brother lobbied political heavyweights including John Kerry and Barack Obama and started a social media campaign—#FreeJason—while Jason’s wife navigated the red tape of the Iranian security apparatus, all while the courts used Rezaian as a bargaining chip in negotiations for the Iran nuclear deal. In Prisoner, Rezaian writes of his exhausting interrogations and farcical trial. He also reflects on his idyllic childhood in Northern California and his bond with his Iranian father, a rug merchant; how his teacher Christopher Hitchens inspired him to pursue journalism; and his life-changing decision to move to Tehran, where his career took off and he met his wife. Written with wit, humor, and grace, Prisoner brings to life a fascinating, maddening culture in all its complexity. “An important story. Harrowing, and suspenseful, yes—but it’s also a deep dive into a complex and egregiously misunderstood country with two very different faces. There is no better time to know more about Iran—and Jason Rezaian has seen both of those faces.” — Anthony Bourdain “Jason paid a deep price in defense of journalism and his story proves that not everyone who defends freedom carries a gun, some carry a pen.” —John F. Kerry, 68th Secretary of State

Psychological Responses to the New Terrorism

Psychological Responses to the New Terrorism
Author: Simon Wessely
Publisher: IOS Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2005
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1586035541

Terrorism is to create a state of terror and fear. This book is concerned with the consequences of acts of terror, and their impact on populations. It describes what citizens, professionals and governments can do to mitigate the consequences. It focuses more on culture and place specific reactions than the timeless or universal trauma reactions.

Strategic Review

Strategic Review
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 364
Release: 1990
Genre: Strategy
ISBN:

... dedicated to the advancement and understanding of those principles and practices, military and political, which serve the vital security interests of the United States.

Taken Hostage

Taken Hostage
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2008
Genre:
ISBN:

On November 4, 1979, Iranian militants stormed the United States Embassy in Tehran and took sixty-six Americans captive. Thus began the Iran Hostage Crisis, an affair that captivated the American public for 444 days and marked America's first confrontatio.

The Freedom Broker

The Freedom Broker
Author: K J Howe
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2017-02-23
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1472240332

WINNER of the Best First Novel 2018 Award at the International Thriller Writers Awards. The first in a brand new series featuring Thea Paris, a kidnap and ransom specialist. Lee Child calls THE FREEDOM BROKER a 'superb thriller', Lisa Gardner says it's 'clever and gritty' and Peter James calls it 'spellbinding'. If you like the thrillers of James Patterson and Lee Child, or are a fan of Jason Bourne, you will love this. At eight years old, Thea Paris watched her brother being snatched from his bed. Her inability to save him has haunted both their lives ever since. Twenty years later, the unthinkable happens when her billionaire father is abducted. But this time, she is prepared. Now, Thea is at the top of her game as a freedom broker, negotiating for the release of kidnap victims around the world. And she has only one objective: Find him or die trying...

Rescue Mission Report

Rescue Mission Report
Author: United States. Joint Chiefs of Staff. Special Operations Review Group
Publisher:
Total Pages: 184
Release: 1980
Genre: Hostages
ISBN:

In May 1980, the Joint Chiefs of Staff commissioned a Special Operations Review Group to conduct a broad examination of the planning, organization, coordination, direction, and control of the Iranian hostage rescue mission, as a basis for recommending improvement in these areas for the future. The Review Group consisted of six senior military officers three who had retired after distinguished careers, and three still on active duty. The broad military experience of the group gave it an appropriate perspective from which to conduct an appraisal. Details on the participants, the Terms of Reference they operated under, and their approach to the subject are contained in this document. The Review Group has made its final report to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Copies have been forwarded to the Secretary of Defense, as have the related, early recommendations of the Joint Chiefs. A highly classified report also has been transmitted to appropriate committees in the Congress. Because it is important that as much detail as possible be made available to the American public, the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has conducted a declassification review to produce this version. The issues and findings have been retained in as close a form as possible to the original, classified version. In particular, the Executive Summary, Conclusions, and Recommendations remain virtually the same as in the original.