by Shaun Clarke
The stated purpose of their mission was to publicize the plight of Arabs in Iran and to demand the freedom of ninety-two political prisoners held there. The hostages included the embassy’s British caretaker and chauffeur, Ron Morris; a Diplomatic Protection Group constable, PC Trevor Lock; and five visitors to the embassy, four of whom were journalists, including Chris Cramer, a BBC news organizer, and Sim Harris, a BBC sound recordist. PC Lock was know to have had a standard police-issue .38 Smith & Wesson pistol concealed on his person when he was captured, which could prove to be dangerous.
So far no one had been seriously harmed, though PC Lock’s face had been cut by flying glass and Dr. Ali Afrouz, the embassy’s charge d’affaires, had badly bruised his face and sprained his wrist while attempting unsuccessfully to make his escape. Ninety minutes after the seizure of the embassy, the terrorists had asked for a female doctor to be sent in. Though at first it was assumed that she needed to attend to PC Lock, she was in fact required to attend to the embassy press officer, Mrs. Frieda Mozafarian, who had suffered a series of fainting fits combined with muscular spasms.
At hour ago, at approximately 1500 hours in a basement office in Whitehall, a top-level management team known as COBR, representing the Cabinet Office Briefing Room but including the police, MI5 and the SAS, had discussed the issue and decided on a preliminary course of action. First, the Metropolitan Police would call in specially trained police psychologists to negotiate with the terrorists, using their undoubted desire for media coverage as a bargaining chip. Having met them halfway with this demand, the police negotiators would then try to talk them out of the building, letting the affair stretch out as long as necessary. During that period, they would soften the terrorists up with food, medical attention, communications, more access to the media, and the involvement of their own ambassadors and those with other friendly Middle Eastern states. The negotiators would then ask for the release of certain hostages, particularly those ill or wounded. This would not only reduce the number of hostages to be dealt with, but also encourage the terrorists to feel that they were contributing to a positive dialogue.
In fact, all of this was simply a way of buying enough time for the police and MI5 to plant miniature microphone probes inside the building by drilling quietly through the walls. It would also enable them to scan it with parabolic direction microphones and thermal imagers that would show just where the hostages were being held.
Should negotiations fail, or if the terrorists should kill a hostage, clearance would be given for the SAS to attack the building.
Codenamed ‘Pagoda’, the SAS operation would use the entire counter-terrorist (CT) squadron: a command group of four officers plus a fully equipped support team consisting of one officer and twenty-five other ranks. A second team, replicating the first, would remain on a three-hour standby until the first team had left the base. A third team, if required, would be composed of experienced SAS troopers. The closequarter support teams would be backed up by groups of snipers who would pick off targets from inside the embassy, and specially trained medical teams to rescue and resuscitate the hostages.
As Marty had discussed many times with Diane and Paddy, London had gradually become a battleground for numerous Middle East terrorist groups; so given Paddy’s disapproval of covert action against them, Marty was delighted to be tackling them on home ground with official approval.
Convinced that this particular group of terrorists would not come out voluntarily, he left the briefing room in a state of exhilaration, then went directly to the spider in Bradbury Lines, to put together his two CT teams. After selecting his most experienced men, including Taff, TT and Alan Pearson, he briefed them on what was known to be happening and what was required of them in the event of an SAS assault. The assault, if it came, would have a single objective: to rescue the hostages from the embassy. The assault force would be divided into three teams: Red Team, tasked with clearing the top half of the building, from the second to the fourth floor; Blue Team, tasked with clearing the lower half from the basement and garden, upwards to the first floor, and also to handle evacuation procedures; and the perimeter containment group, or snipers, to be codenamed ‘Zero Delta’ and placed in position along the front and sides of the building.
The assault teams were to be insinuated into the Royal College of Medical Practitioners at 14 Princes Gate, next door to the embassy. To avoid the media, they would be transported in Avis vans from Hereford to the Regents Park Barracks of the Household Cavalry, in Albany Street. When required, they would be smuggled into the grounds of the college in the same Avis vans. From there, they would make their way to the Forward Holding Area (FHA) in the college by clambering unseen over the walls and rear garden. Once in the FHA, they would have to be ready for an assault on the embassy at ten minutes’ notice. If the terrorists threatened to start killing the hostages, the SAS would launch the Immediate-Action Plan, which would involve breaking in through the windows to clear the building room by room with CS gas and firearms, trusting that they could reach the hostages before the terrorists started their killing spree. Their second task was the Deliberate Assault Plan, only to be put into motion at a time chosen by the CO, which would not be until the location of the hostages was known and the terrorists were believed to be exhausted.
Once briefed, the men were transported from Hereford to London in the hired Avis vans, all wearing civilian clothing like that of factory workers, none of them armed. Their weapons and equipment were transported separately in crates stacked high in furniture vans. Arriving at the Household Cavalry Barracks in Albany Street, Regents Park, they were given camp beds in a cold and dusty unused barracks, then made to unpack the crates of weapons and equipment that arrived shortly after.
When the crates had been unpacked, the men stripped off their civilian clothing and put on their operational gear: black CRW assault suits with felt pads in knees and elbows; flame-resistant underwear; GPV 25 wraparound soft body armour with hard ceramic composite plates front and rear; NBC hoods for protection against heat, dust and smoke (they would not be wearing helmets); and the 800-gram respirator with nosecup filter for protection against gases, aerosols and smoke; scratch-resistant, polycarbonate eyepieces resistant to chemical or solvent attack; tinted lenses for protection against the flash from stun grenades; and microphones mounted in front of the mouthpiece, to be linked by means of a communication harness to the assault team’s radio transmitter.
Leaving their temporary bashas, they proceeded to the lecture hall where they were divided into three teams – Red, Blue and the perimeter containment group
– then allocated their weapons. Though previous hostage-rescue operations had favoured the Ingram submachine gun, this time they would be given the Heckler & Koch MP5, which was small and compact, could fire eight-hundred rounds per minute with uncommon accuracy, and had an effective range of nearly two hundred metres. More importantly, though firing rapidly and precisely, it did so at a low velocity; this meant that the bullets would hit the intended target without going through it and striking one of the hostages. Each man would also have a Browning High Power handgun and some would be armed with Remington 870 pump-action shotguns that would be used to blast the locks from the doors of locked rooms.
The two assault teams would also carry flash-bangs (ISFE and MX5 stun grenades) for their shock effect during the first few seconds of the assault, CS grenades to choke and temporarily blind the terrorists, and a variety of explosive devices, including frame charges for the blowing out of windows and the skylight. The perimeter containment group, led by Sergeant Tommy ‘TT’ Taylor, would be given the L42A1 bolt-action sniper rifle with tripod. Finally, the equipment was distributed according to each man’s assigned role in the operation. This included W. J. Crow lightweight aluminium assault ladders, sledgehammers, axes, wrecking bars, glass-cutters and grappling hooks.
Lieutenant-Colonel Osborne personally gave them another briefing in the Regents Park Barracks, where diagrams of the emba
ssy, including the layout of each room, were pinned to blackboards. When the men had been informed in detail about the tasks of each team, they packed their kit, piled back into the Avis vans, and were driven to the Royal College of Medical Practitioners, adjoining the embassy, where they moved into the rooms designated as the Forward Holding Area.
Once settled in the FHA, the men of Red Team clambered up onto the roof in full CRW gear, made their way stealthily across to the adjoining roof of the embassy, and quietly tied abseiling ropes to the chimneys, leaving the rest of the rope coiled up beside each chimney. When this task was completed, they crossed back to the college and made their way back down to the FHA.
They were now officially on standby and ready to go.
Marty was bitterly disappointed that his age had precluded him from taking part in the actual assault, but at least he was part of the command group led by the CO and a special controller liaising between the SAS and the Metropolitan Police, operating from a sixthfloor apartment overlooking the rear of the embassy, out of sight of the journalists, photographers and television crews at the front. However, they could view the embassy building from all sides with the aid of their highly advanced audio-visual surveillance equipment, including multi-role IR (infrared) thermal imagers, which could scan outside walls, track body heat, and reveal the positions of those inside the building, by day or by night; image-intensifiers connected to cameras with interchangeable binocular lenses; and thermal imaging cameras that produced high-quality video pictures that could be displayed automatically on an integral video monitor for direct viewing while also being recorded on another monitor for retrospective visual analysis.
The building had, furthermore, been subjected to the implantation of SGT laser surveillance systems, including miniature audio surveillance probes coupled to a combination of tape recorders, 35mm cameras and CCTV (closed-circuit television). Thus, while Marty and the rest of the command group were at one side of the building, they could not only see what was happening on all sides, but also hear some of what was going on inside.
Being out of sight of the media, Marty thought, was all to the good. Certainly, when earlier that evening he had gone for a walk around to the front of the building, he had been shocked to see the floodlit metal scaffolding and canvas marquee of the press enclosure hastily constructed in Hyde Park, near Exhibition Road, as well as the numerous vans, cars and trailers of the police and broadcast media, with television and communications cables snaking across the road. It looked like a circus – and Marty realized, with a sinking heart, that if his men had to go in, they would be doing so, for the very first time, in full view of the media, which meant that the whole operation would be seen not only by the local populace but virtually the whole world. If that happened, the anonymity of the SAS would end overnight. The thought of this shocked him.
Trying to adjust to this new kind of warfare, this highly public form of combat being treated as a media spectacle, he spent the next five days flitting between the command centre at the side of the building and the Forward Holding Area in the Royal College of Medical Practitioners. By now, the Metropolitan Police were communicating directly with the terrorists either by phone or through the embassy windows, in English and Arabic, using their skilled negotiators to buy more time. This was valuable to the police, but to the SAS men waiting on standby it was extremely frustrating.
If Marty at least found some distraction in his daily ‘high-tech’ surveillance of the outside and inside of the captured embassy, his assault teams in the FHA were not so lucky. For the next five days, as the negotiations continued, they were forced to endure a non-stop learning process in the frustrating periods between false alerts, known as ‘Hyde Park’ alerts, and being stood down again. This happened many times. Each time they were stood down, they had to strip off their heavy CRW outfits, put on casual clothing, and go back to familiarizing themselves with both the Immediate Action Plan and the Deliberate Assault Plan, as well as studying repeatedly every photograph, drawing and report that the SAS green slime and Metropolitan Police had dredged up on the terrorists and their hostages.
Then, as yet another terrorist deadline approached and they received the alert message ‘Hyde Park’, they had to get back into their CRW outfits and clamber back up to the roof, prepared to leap into action on the more important radio message, ‘London Bridge’, at four minutes’ notice. When that terrorist deadline also passed without incident, the frustrated assault teams were stood down again – and so it went on and on.
It was a cat-and-mouse game of gradually mounting tension and, inevitably, of horror.
At 1630 hours on the first day, the terrorists released a female Iranian hostage, wrongly thinking, because she had fainted, that she was pregnant.
At 1800 hours the terrorists stated that if their demands for the release of the prisoners in Arabistan were not met by noon the following day, the embassy and all inside it would be blown up.
At 2315 hours one of the hostages, the BBC news organizer, Chris Cramer, suffering from violent dysentery, was released, was seen to by a doctor, and then gave the police invaluable information about what was going on inside.
In the early hours of the second day the terrorists announced that the British hostages and other nonIranian hostages would not be harmed, though the deadline for the safety of the others was still valid. Shortly after, the audio-surveillance devices picked up the sound of a terrorist firing a threatening burst into the ceiling of Room 9A, second floor, where the hostages were all being held, causing some of the women to scream in panic.
Ten minutes after the noon deadline, the terrorist leader phoned to say in broken English that he was giving the Iranian government until two that afternoon to meet his demands, but when that deadline also passed, with no response from the Iranian government, the expected explosion did not occur.
Later in the afternoon, the terrorists again asserted that if the Iranian government acceded to their demands, the siege would end peacefully. When the Iranian government again failed to respond, the terrorists changed their tune and asked for three Arab ambassadors, from Jordan, Iraq and Algeria, to arrange for a plane to fly them out of Britain when they were ready to go.
That evening, while the terrorists were waiting for a response to their latest demand, the police were drilling holes in the walls of the embassy to insert more audiosurveillance probes. Even as they were doing this, two of the hostages appeared at a window, both covered by a terrorist gunman, to ask what the noise was. The police claimed not to know and another night passed without incident.
During the third day, shortly after the audiosurveillance team had confirmed that the hostages were being held in Room 9A on the second floor, the terrorist leader appeared at the window, pointing a pistol at the head of the embassy’s cultural attaché, Dr. Abul Fazi Essati, and threatened to kill him unless he was allowed to talk to the media by telephone or telex. When the police negotiator smoothly insisted that he could not do that just yet, the terrorist screamed abuse at him, though again he did not kill the hostage.
This incident, merciful as it seemed, was an indication to Marty that the terrorist leader was starting to crack and that the killing would start soon.
The terrorist leader then set another deadline, this time demanding a talk with someone from the BBC, which he would conduct through the BBC hostage, Sim Harris. The police negotiator tried refusing this demand as well, but acceded to it when more death threats were made.
Later that afternoon, a BBC TV news editor conducted a conversation with Sim Harris, who was standing at a first-floor window with a gun aimed at his head from behind the curtain. The demand this time, made through Harris, was for a coach to take the terrorists and their hostages, plus at least one unnamed Arab ambassador, to Heathrow Airport. The nonIranian hostages would be released there. The aircraft would then take the terrorists, their hostages and the unnamed Arab ambassador to an unspecified Arab country where they, also, would be released. The terrorist le
ader also wanted a communiqué about his aims and grievances to be broadcast by the BBC that evening.
The authorities met the demand only halfway. That evening the BBC gave the terrorists’ demands as brief a mention as possible, and again, though the terrorist leader expressed his outrage, no harm came to the hostages.
Later that evening, however, another hostage was released: the embassy secretary, Mrs. Hiyech Sanei Kanji. Any hope that this was a sign of capitulation on the part of the terrorists was dashed when Mrs. Kanji informed the police that she had been released only so that she could give them another message: If the terrorists’ demands were not broadcast in full, they would kill a hostage.
Learning of this, Red Team again clambered up onto the roof of the Royal College of Medical Practitioners and then made their way across to the roof of the embassy, where the abseiling ropes were still tied to the chimneys. Their hopes for action were then dashed once more when they were informed that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had just endorsed the agreed strategy of ‘maximum patience’. Frustrated again, the men of Red Team picked up their weapons and equipment, crossed back to the College of Medical Practitioners, and made their way back down to the FHA to continue their interminable, repetitive learning process and training, including abseiling from the roof of Pearl House, a police residence in Pimlico.
Day Four commenced with the terrorist leader announcing that because of ‘British deceit’ the British hostages would now be the last to be freed. He also demanded another talk with the BBC. When this request was refused, he said that a hostage would have to die.
