August 15, 2007

Hostaging For Dummies

Apparently it takes a lot of instruction for terrorists to conduct a successful kidnapping. Accordingly, jihadists set up a website in Texas to instruct their minions and wanna-bes on how to prepare for abduction and hostaging. MEMRI gives the Cliff Notes version (via the Jawa Report and Memeorandum):

The popular Islamist-jihadist forum www.alhesbah.org, hosted by RealWebHost in Texas, U.S., recently posted an anonymously written document from 2003 titled "The Excellent Summary of the Rules of the Art of Kidnapping Americans." The 60-page guide describes each stage of the kidnapping, explaining how to select the target and then how to follow him, seize him, transport him to a safe location, and hold him there, as well as how to conduct negotiations. The guide also explains how to execute the hostage should negotiations fail. ...

Next, the guide explains how to transport the hostage to the hideout. It recommends using a vehicle of a type that is common in the locale, and that it be prepared by removing the handle on the inside of the door where the hostage will sit. As for the hideout itself, it must be a large apartment with several exits, and the hostage must be kept in a windowless room. The apartment must not be on a road where there are checkpoints.

The last section of the guide deals with the demands stage, and states that after stipulating their demands and setting a deadline, the kidnappers must conduct negotiations using a mobile phone registered under a false name, or else a pay phone (a different one for each call). The guide also explains that if it becomes necessary to execute the hostage, this is best done by hanging or poisoning rather than by shooting. This is because soldiers regard death by shooting as an honorable death, and because shooting leaves considerable bloodstains at the scene.

What? No beheadings? The guide also advises that jihadists select their target carefully. It should be a person of significance, such as a high-ranking government official or a prominent businessman. However, they shouldn't pick on someone their own size, but someone physically weak who won't kick their ass when they try to kidnap him.

Yeah, these guys are tough, aren't they?

The "Excellent Summary of the Rules of the Art of Killing Americans" seems a bit wieldy, and also a little too explicit. Thanks to MEMRI and others, the host has kicked them out of their account. The note at the top now reads, "Oops. There may be an issue with the URL Forwarding service for this domain, in which case our technical staff is currently working the situation." I'd say they solved it already.

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/tabhair.cgi/11437

Comments (8)

Posted by NeoconNews.com | August 15, 2007 3:26 PM

Oh don't be so hard on them; haven't you ever seen those hollywood comedies? Kidnapping is hard... and wacky.

Posted by Kentucky Packrat | August 15, 2007 4:05 PM

It looks like Google never got a chance to index the document. I wouldn't mind reading it, to see how best to counter the procedures proposed. (Of course, permanent "condition yellow" helps a lot, and a firearm never hurts...)

Without seeing the details, I suspect that rule #1 to surviving the brethren is: don't go peacefully. Number 1 Son and Little Miss have been told in no uncertain terms to never go peacefully. They are to run first, and then if that's not possible to fight back, even if threatened with death. There are worse things in this life than dying.

The namby-pamby "Don't fight back" stuff just gets you the Daniel Pearl treatment with this crew.

Posted by docjim505 | August 15, 2007 4:21 PM

Kentucky Packrat is right. It's a hard thing to say, and I don't know whether I'd have the guts to go out like a man on my feet or whether I'd cower on my knees like a Frenchman, but I know which course I SHOULD take if, God forbid, it ever happens.

I wonder how CAIR and their liberal pals would react if somebody wrote and published "The Excellent Summary of the Rules of the Art of Avoiding Being Kidnapped and Murdered by Islamic Terrorists" or "The Excellent Summary of the Rules of the Art of Taking As Many Islamic Terrorists With You As You Can"?

And, yes, a firearm certainly doesn't hurt.

Posted by filistro | August 15, 2007 5:17 PM

The neocons have to make a choice here.

These guys can be justly mocked as the swaggering, dimwitted, wannabe terrorists they generally appear to be... or the free world can spend all its time cowering in fear and tailoring foreign policy to cope with the dire and dastardly threat posed by them.

Alas, though... not BOTH.

Posted by pk | August 15, 2007 5:39 PM

i didn't see anything about the hazards of kidnapping children in the united states of america.

about how they take it quite seriously there.

about how if they are successful they might wind up with grandmothers drawing and quartering them with ford 250 pickup trucks.

keep in mind that there alwayse will be a father, uncle, grandfather that can take osama wannabes with head shots at 1300 yards.

or that serial child killers have been caught in neighborhoods running screaming to police patrol cars for protection even though they knew they faced the death penalty.

or it might turn into one of those times where a policeman/patrolman pulls them over for something stupid and it gets bloody fast.

maybe the first sentence should be: Don't try this in America. They'll bury you half alive out by the hog trough."

C

Posted by NahnCee | August 15, 2007 8:10 PM

Kidnapping is an old and valued method making money in the Middle East. Until recently, there were fairly strict rules on who could be kidnapped, and how the exchange for filthy lucre would be handled. ANd not only in the sandboxes of the birthplace of humanity, but we see it happening in Nigeria and the rest of Africa, as well as in France and other countries of Yurp, and most definitely throughout South America and Mexico.

In fact, citizens of most of the world would read these excellent instructions with a great deal of interest (1) if they could read, (2) if they had electricity, (3) if they had an internet connection, and (4) if they had a car to pile their victim into.

I wonder why kidnapping catches on as an "in thing" to do in some countries and not in others. Must have something to do with the success ratio and how hard the cops and/or survivors come down on you after you've done it.

I do love the title, though. I wonder if that's an accurate translation.

Posted by docjim505 | August 16, 2007 5:33 AM

fillistro,

Just because the person who wants to kill you may be a moron doesn't mean that you're not in grave danger and shouldn't take precautions... even while you laugh at him. If I understand the research correctly, the average criminal has below average intelligence, yet we pay quite a lot of money for police, courts, home security systems, etc. to keep us safe from such swaggering idiots.

Americans during World War II yucked it up at the movies watching Bugs Bunny or the Three Stooges lampoon the Germans and the Japanese even while they were working in arms plants or sending their brothers, sons and fathers off to fight desperate battles against those same Germans and Japanese.

As I and others have often written, if somebody had told us on 9-10-01 that a bunch of thugs were going to use box cutters to hijack jets, crash them into buildings and kill 3000 Americans, I'd have rolled my eyes and told them that they'd been watching too many Steven Seagal movies. When I read about Atta and his weird aversion to women, he seems an object of ridicule... until I remember what he did.

Posted by filistro | August 16, 2007 10:34 AM

doc, I completely agree. We certainly should take precautions.

That means skilled international police action: surveillance, infiltration, interdiction, disruption, fund tracking, arrests, punishment. It doesn't mean conventional warfare. Tanks and troops are not an intelligent precaution against a scattered, amorphous enemy without any national affiliation.

Besides, to mock what you fear is childish bravado. To fear what you mock is cognitive dissonance.

(OR cynical manipulation of a gullible electorate.... but that's a whole other debate :-)

Post a comment