The ISIS Hostage

by Puk Damsgård

  ‘What happened to him?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied Pierre. ‘Daniel got those before I got to know him.’ He went on to address Anita, saying that he knew she had won the World Championship in bodybuilding.

  The most important message he had to pass on, however, was the wording of the questions that Arthur and the family had to formulate the next time the kidnappers asked them to send some. Pierre passed on the codes that he and Daniel had agreed about the red truck, the amber motorcycle and the apple-green car.

  ‘Daniel wants to know the truth,’ concluded Pierre. ‘Even if you send a question to which the answer is Kjeld’s red truck.’

  · * ·

  ‘Where’s the Danish boy?’

  The question echoed around the cell, where all the hostages were now together again. The converts, James, John, Peter and Toni, had been moved back.

  John was standing with a camera in his hands.

  ‘Are you ready to have your picture taken?’ he asked. Daniel felt that the British guard was staring at his body. ‘Have you been exercising?’

  ‘A little,’ said Daniel.

  ‘Then we can box with you,’ suggested John and began hitting and slapping Daniel’s body.

  ‘I’m not so good at boxing,’ Daniel said, trying to avoid being drawn in to the fight.

  John and Ringo threw punches at his shoulders and ribs until Daniel lay on the floor in the foetal position.

  ‘You’re bad at boxing … Would you rather dance?’ John took hold of Daniel’s clothes and pulled him to his feet. ‘Come on, let’s dance!’ he shouted.

  Daniel felt John’s hand on the upper part of his back. He stood face to face with the hooded Brit who was holding Daniel’s outstretched arm and forcing him over the floor in a stiff tango pose. Daniel didn’t dare look at John and instead stared down at his desert boots and his own bare feet, which were moving in tandem, back and forth in a fierce tango, while the rest of the Beatles laughed.

  John’s back felt broad and muscular under Daniel’s hand. Each time they turned, the Brit exaggerated the movements before again flinging Daniel across the floor.

  Stop, stop, stop! he screamed inside. Suddenly John stopped.

  ‘Look into the camera,’ he said and gave Daniel a few slaps. ‘Look unhappy,’ he continued, while he took pictures of his Danish prisoner.

  ‘Perfect, Daniel. That was well done.’

  Suddenly, one of the Brits tackled Daniel from behind while another pushed him forwards, so he toppled to the floor.

  ‘Do you like my boot?’ said John, sticking the toe end of his boot into Daniel’s mouth. ‘Taste the earth.’

  One of the other guards found a pair of pliers and, while holding his arms and legs against the floor, they put the pliers on Daniel’s nose, to their own great amusement. Then they clamped it on his fingers.

  ‘What do you think? Should we cut off his nose or his fingers?’ they teased.

  When the Beatles were finally done beating him up, Daniel sat back bruised and bewildered.

  ‘Is there anyone who can cut hair?’ asked one of the British guards.

  Daniel raised his hand.

  ‘Then come with me.’

  They let him walk out of the cell into the corridor without a blindfold or handcuffs. With his face to the wall, he sat cross-legged on a carpet with a trimmer, scissors and a comb and a bucket for the tufts of hair. John stood in the doorway and called James out from his place in the cell. James came out and sat down opposite Daniel with a document in his hands on which there were a series of statements he had to practise saying.

  The haircut was an attempt to get the three American and the three British hostages to look good on the video recordings the Beatles were preparing. Daniel trimmed James’s sideburns, cut back the length of his hair a little and trimmed his moustache, while James practised reciting a demand of €100 million in ransom – or the extradition of six Muslim prisoners from the United States. James had to talk about his brother, who was in the Air Force, and about his own trips as a reporter, when he had been with the US forces in Afghanistan. Daniel got a chill down his spine. The message sounded more like a death sentence than a real demand.

  ‘I’d like to keep it a bit long,’ said James about his hair and, while Daniel concentrated on fulfilling his wish, Ringo stood staring at them.

  ‘Is that OK?’ asked Daniel.

  It obviously was, because Ringo ordered James back to the cell to get ready to be filmed. Daniel subsequently gave a trim to the five other Americans and Brits, all of whom had also received a piece of paper with a message they had to recite. In the cell next door to theirs, George was rummaging around, preparing to film the hostages. But it turned out that it was too dark in the room and the Beatles postponed the video production until they had found some lamps.

  When Daniel’s fellow prisoners came back from the unsuccessful recording in the other cell, they said that Kayla Mueller was there with another western woman they hadn’t seen before. They decided to try to smuggle a message to the women when they had to go back and make the videos. The Beatles didn’t take long to get hold of lamps, cables and a Nikon camera, and talked elatedly about what they called their ‘new media centre’, where the two women were apparently staying. Six new orange jumpsuits were delivered to the British and American hostages, who disappeared into the room to be filmed.

  When they returned, they were told that they should put on their normal clothes and save the orange suits for later. While they had been away, they had managed to deliver a note to Kayla. It said that they could communicate through a small hatch in the toilet, which all the hostages shared.

  There was silence. Peter was in a panic and afraid. James tried to take care of his countrymen.

  ‘I know it doesn’t look good, but we just have to keep hoping until the end,’ he said to Steven and Peter. They were no longer united in hope. It was clear to everyone that the remaining prisoners held by ISIS were now in two different categories: those who made videos in front of a grave carrying messages about ransoms, to be used in negotiations, and those who, wearing orange jumpsuits, had to recite unrealistic demands to countries that didn’t pay ransoms or allow the families of hostages to raise money.

  Daniel had been told that a ransom of €1.3 million had now been offered for him, yet he feared that his family would never be able to collect the amount demanded, despite the list of potential sources of money he had given Dan when he and his MSF colleague left the prison in mid-May. Something suggested, however, that the two released hostages were still waiting somewhere in Syria to cross the border with Turkey, because suddenly the Beatles demanded that Daniel write a letter to his family. He felt that time was running out. Apart from the British and Americans, there were only Federico, Toni and himself left. Since the Beatles didn’t demand a specific wording in the letter, he wrote something more personal.

  ‘It’s hard to see people who have been here a much shorter time than me go home to their families,’ he wrote, and made suggestions about whom they could ask for help.

  I pray every day that this nightmare will soon have a happy ending […] I pray that Christina stays strong and will soon be finished with high school. Thinking of you makes me strong. Signe, I love you more than you can imagine and I am so sorry that I put what we have together at stake […] I pray that one day I can come home and see you all again.

  · * ·

  Arthur was in Lebanon when he received Daniel’s letter. If it had been possible, he would like to have delivered it to the family personally when he was back in Denmark, but he thought it would take too long. He wasn’t planning to go back soon. So he decided to call Susanne and read it aloud to her. The aim of the letter was to put pressure on the family, but the tone of it was different from the letters they had previously received from Daniel. This time Daniel had put his feelin
gs into it – and written it in his own words. In Arthur’s view, Daniel being able to write and express himself was a positive sign. Susanne was at work in Legoland when the phone rang. Since she couldn’t stand in the shop and talk, she took it with her outside to a courtyard.

  As Arthur read her son’s words, she hid behind some containers, because she couldn’t hold back the tears. Daniel was asking her to be strong and to fight. He missed her and was thinking of her.

  Hidden from her colleagues behind the container’s iron surface, she could no longer observe the proprieties of being an unworried mother and employee. She hung up, but sat there for a long time afterwards until her tears had dried.

  Hi Mum, It’s Daniel

  Anita had to think creatively. Even though she was grateful and proud that the family had been able to collect many millions of kroner, it still wasn’t enough and donations had dropped so much that she feared the family wouldn’t be able to pay to free Daniel. She had to get more people to take an interest in her brother.

  In the middle of May an anniversary celebration was held for Vesterlund Youth School’s former pupils and Anita set up a stand where she sold Daniel’s pictures and gave a speech, in which she quoted his recent more personal letter from Syria.

  But Anita had to admit that Daniel’s plight wasn’t attracting the attention it once had. Their network of contributors had given all they could, and the event only brought in a modest amount. The family had raised about 80 per cent of the ransom and Anita felt that the time was ripe to contact large companies and business people. Since they had already collected most of the amount, it seemed less presumptuous to ask wealthy people who didn’t know the family, whether it be individuals or companies, if they could help.

  She took the chance and went all-in with a new letter that described the details of Daniel’s situation, which she urged them not to bring to public attention while the case was unresolved. In the document, she included the first proof-of-life image of Daniel and she revealed the ransom amount, as well as how much the family had collected – and she described the video from the grave with the threat that Daniel could be killed if they didn’t pay.

  Within days, the donations began coming in. There were apparently some people in Denmark who were prepared to go to great lengths to help a person in need and, on 22 May, the family submitted a new offer to the kidnappers.

  ‘We really hope that you will consider this offer and respond,’ wrote Arthur and the family in the email. They offered €1,710,000 (£1,300,100), equivalent to more than 12.8 million kroner.

  Three days later the kidnappers responded, briefly and unmistakably: ‘Only 300,000 Euros left to go.’

  They enclosed an audio file in which Daniel said ‘Hurry up’ – and added that they would more than double the demand to €5 million. The negotiations, which in fact were not negotiations but an absolute demand, were going in the wrong direction.

  Anita checked her mobile every fifteen minutes for messages and answered calls, day and night. She couldn’t even sit and have dinner with her boyfriend for half an hour without being interrupted.

  In late May she took a day off from fundraising and went to the cultural festival in Odense Harbour. There were stalls with organic honey, folk dancing and a climbing wall, and Anita played a game of kayak polo. During the hour she was in the water, her mobile was in her bag in the judge’s tent. She let go of the battle between life and death for a moment and felt only her body moving around in the kayak.

  When she came ashore, her bag had gone. Thieves had zipped open the tent and snatched the bag containing her mobile – her lifeline to people who were trying to help the family. The latest letters she had sent out contained only her and their lawyer’s contact information, so as to spare Susanne and Kjeld.

  Anita took the situation with her usual stoic calm and did everything to get back up and running, but it wasn’t without obstacles, especially when it turned out that her email account had been hacked. She couldn’t get her Gmail account to recognize that it was she who was logging in and there was no customer service department to call. She got hold of someone who sold advertising for Google and berated him with her story of a younger brother who was being held hostage in Syria and would be killed unless they collected enough money. The employee put her in touch with the right people. When she was finally able to log on to her email account, everything was in Arabic and emails to her had been deleted or automatically forwarded to the thieves’ email address. The worst thing was that the thieves had sent an email out to all her contacts, including those she had emailed in recent months about the fundraiser, stating that Anita was in distress and needed the money.

  In the midst of this chaos, the family received a new email from Syria filled with threatening capitals.

  We hope for your sake that you’re checking this email frequently because AS OF THIS POINT ON you have 24 hours to have the FULL 2 Million EUROS CASH READY!!

  If the family didn’t pay the full ransom by the deadline, the kidnappers would add on another €5,000 for each day they had to wait. According to them, this punishment had been meted out by a sharia court and the daily penalty wasn’t negotiable.

  · * ·

  Daniel and his fellow prisoners had succeeded in exchanging brief messages with Kayla and the other woman who were in the cell next door. They developed a system where they hid small pieces of paper in the toilet. When the messages had been read, they tore them into pieces and ate them.

  Sometimes they were serious messages; other times they played Trivial Pursuit. The women would leave a piece of paper with a question such as ‘Who played the role of Aragon in Lord of the Rings?’ The men would hide the answer and a counter-question when they were next allowed to go to the toilet.

  Daniel considered these communications to be extremely dangerous, but it also felt right to try to keep everyone’s spirits up. He mostly just concentrated on his training, which was easier to do now, because there was more space in the cell. The Italian Federico had been the latest to leave the prison. Apart from the women the only ones left were Daniel, German Toni and the six Brits and Americans.

  On 2 June the Beatles launched a new cycle of violence. At four in the morning they came storming in without the usual warning and ordered the hostages to sit with their backs to them and their hands four inches from the wall. They had to go to the toilet one at a time. When it was Daniel’s turn, he put on his sandals and grabbed a piss bucket, but as soon as he came out into the corridor, he was struck several times with a truncheon. He ran into the toilet, emptied the bucket, peed, washed his hands and ran back towards the cell, the Brit with the truncheon close behind him. Daniel threw off his sandals and walked onto the blankets with the piss bucket in his hand.

  ‘Why are you doing that?’ cried the guard and hit him hard four more times with the truncheon as punishment.

  The Beatles introduced this new routine around toilet visits four times a day. The hostages woke up in a panic early in the morning, ready for the Beatles flinging the door open and beating them on their way to the toilet. It was worse still when the violence struck randomly and unpredictably outside the toilet visits.

  ‘Who is the Danish boy?’ shouted one of the Beatles. Daniel didn’t dare answer.

  ‘who is the Danish boy?’

  ‘Me,’ he whispered.

  ‘You’re from the country with the Muhammad cartoons!’ they shouted and hit him three times.

  This sort of thing happened at all times of day and night and the violence befell everyone. The Americans, James, Steven and Peter, sat in the corner of the cell and clung to each other. Everyone was beside themselves.

  And suddenly the Beatles were there again.

  ‘Who wrote these letters?’ shouted Ringo.

  He didn’t wait for an answer, but began clubbing everyone on the back of the head. They must have found the small pieces of paper w
ith the messages to the women in the toilet.

  Only a brief moment passed before they stomped into the cell again and gave Daniel and James thirty dead legs each. The dead legs weren’t like those Daniel and his friends had given each other in school. They came with such violent force that he feared they would break a bone. He lay on his blanket and wept, and neither James nor he could walk the following two days.

  The hostages moved their sleeping places as far away from the door as possible, and to overcome the fear that hung in the air Daniel told stories about the European Championships in gymnastics. He also invented a method of relaxation that he used on the others. He squeezed his fellow prisoners’ skin so hard between their thumb and forefinger that the pain was excruciating. He held on for one minute. When he let go, they relaxed. The Beatles were becoming more officious, searching the room regularly and forbidding the prisoners to do just about everything. Daniel wasn’t allowed to exercise any more.

  ‘You’ve gotten bigger!’ they shouted, and took away food and the card games from the prisoners.

  The daily routines that the hostages had built up and cherished despite everything were being irrevocably ripped to shreds by the Beatles.

  · * ·

  For the family, every hour – even every minute – counted. In the past week they had collected an additional €156,000. They now only needed €134,000 to reach €2 million, plus the daily fines. Even in a situation like this, when there was just a small amount of the required ransom missing, the authorities would do nothing. They wouldn’t step in and lend the family the balance.

  Fortunately, three individuals offered to cover the rest by lending the family the remaining money and on 4 June Susanne, Kjeld and Anita could finally send an email to the kidnappers, with Arthur’s help, explaining that they expected to be in possession of the full ransom sum the following week. They outlined the reason for the delay:

  Unfortunately, the banks here in Denmark are closed for the next few days – Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday – due to public holidays (Constitution Day and Whitsun). We give you herewith our guarantee that we have the required amount, but the money will not be available to us before next Tuesday (10 June).