Abu Sayyaf, officially known by the Islamic State as the Islamic State – East Asia Province, is a Jihadist militant and pirate group that follows the Wahhabi doctrine of Sunni Islam. It is based in and around Jolo and Basilan islands in the southwestern part of the Philippines, where for more than four decades, Moro groups have been engaged in an insurgency seeking to make Moro Province independent. The group is considered violent and was responsible for the Philippines' worst terrorist attack, the bombing of MV Superferry 14 in 2004, which killed 116 people. The name of the group is derived from the Arabic abu, and sayyaf. As of June 2021, the group is estimated to have less than 50 members, down from 1,250 in 2000. They use mostly improvised explosive devices, mortars and automatic rifles.
The Iranian Embassy siege took place from 30 April to 5 May 1980, after a group of six armed men stormed the Iranian embassy on Prince's Gate in South Kensington, London. The gunmen, Iranian Arabs campaigning for sovereignty of Khuzestan Province, took 26 people hostage, including embassy staff, several visitors, and a police officer who had been guarding the embassy. They demanded the release of prisoners in Khuzestan and their own safe passage out of the United Kingdom. The British government quickly decided that safe passage would not be granted and a siege ensued. Subsequently, police negotiators secured the release of five hostages in exchange for minor concessions, such as the broadcasting of the hostage-takers' demands on British television.
Ransom is a 1996 American action thriller film directed by Ron Howard from a screenplay by Richard Price and Alexander Ignon. The film stars Mel Gibson, Rene Russo, Gary Sinise, Delroy Lindo, Lili Taylor, Brawley Nolte, Liev Schreiber, Donnie Wahlberg and Evan Handler. Gibson was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor. The film was the 5th highest-grossing film of 1996 in the United States. The original story came from a 1954 episode of The United States Steel Hour titled "Fearful Decision". In 1956, it was adapted by Cyril Hume and Richard Maibaum into the feature film, Ransom!, starring Glenn Ford, Donna Reed, and Leslie Nielsen.
Joseph Gallo, also known as "Crazy Joe", was an Italian-American mobster and Caporegime of the Colombo crime family of New York City.
Along Came a Spider is a crime thriller novel, and the first novel in James Patterson's series about forensic psychologist Alex Cross. First published in 1993, its success has led to twenty six sequels as of 2021. It was adapted into a film of the same name in 2001, starring Morgan Freeman as Cross.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) is a decentralised militant group in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. MEND's actions – including sabotage, theft, property destruction, guerrilla warfare, and kidnapping – are part of the broader conflict in the Niger Delta and reduced Nigeria's oil production by 33% between 2006-07.
The Dos Palmas kidnappings was a hostage crisis in southern Philippines that began with the seizing of twenty hostages from the affluent Dos Palmas Resort on a private island in Honda Bay, Palawan, by members of Abu Sayyaf on May 27, 2001, and resulted in the deaths of at least five of the original hostages. Three of these hostages were American citizens, Guillermo Sobero, and a married missionary couple, Gracia and Martin Burnham. At least 22 Filipino soldiers were killed in attempts to apprehend the captors and free the hostages in the 12 months following the initial hostage taking. An unknown number of captors were killed by government forces.
The Atlanta prison riots were a series of prison riots that occurred at the U.S. Penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia, United States in November 1987. The riot coincided with a similar riot at the Federal Detention Center in Oakdale, Louisiana.
Jurijus Kadamovas and Iouri Gherman Mikhel are Soviet-born American serial killers who immigrated to the United States from Lithuania and Russia, respectively. They are currently on federal death row for five kidnappings and murders. The kidnappings occurred over a four-month period beginning in late 2001, in which the kidnappers demanded ransom.
Kyle Craig is a fictional character and antagonist in James Patterson's series of novels featuring Washington, D.C. detective Alex Cross. Craig, a Special Agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is initially a close friend of Cross and assists the detective in his high-profile investigations, and also occasionally asks Cross for help with his own cases. However, in the 2000 novel Roses Are Red, Craig is revealed to be a criminal who calls himself "The Mastermind", having organized a series of brutal bank robberies and murders. He is eventually brought to justice by Cross. From Violets Are Blue onwards, Craig is one of Cross' most formidable adversaries. In the film adaptations of Patterson's novels Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider, Craig is played by Jay O. Sanders.
The following is a list of known foreign hostages captured in Somalia, particularly since the start of the Ethiopian intervention and the 2009–present phase of the civil war.
Worst Case is the third book in the Michael Bennett series by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge. It was published on February 1, 2010, by Little, Brown and Company.
This is a list of known foreign hostages in Pakistan.
On 21 September 2013, four masked gunmen attacked the Westgate shopping mall, an upscale mall in Nairobi, Kenya. There are conflicting reports about the number killed in the attack, since part of the mall collapsed due to a fire that started during the siege. The attack resulted in 71 total deaths, including 62 civilians, five Kenyan soldiers, and all four gunmen. Approximately 200 people were wounded in the massacre.
The 2014 rescue mission in Syria was an American led effort to locate and rescue hostages being held by ISIS forces. Plans to rescue the hostages were accelerated after the execution of journalist James Foley, Steven Sotloff, and Kayla Mueller by ISIS militants. A total of 14 hostages were held hostage by the IS at an undisclosed location. Though no soldiers were killed, the mission failed to locate and rescue the hostages.
Michael Bennett is a series of thriller books by James Patterson. It follows Michael Bennett, an Irish American New York City detective, as he solves crimes and raises his ten adopted children.
Harvey Schlossberg was a New York City Police Department (NYPD) officer, Freudian psychoanalyst, and the founder of modern crisis negotiation. He founded the Psychological Services Department in the NYPD, where he pioneered treatment for violence-prone police. In the Handbook of Police Psychology, Schlossberg was called a "father of modern police psychology" for his role in changing the tactics police employed in hostage situations.
On January 15, 2022, Malik Akram, a 44-year-old British Pakistani armed with a pistol, took four people hostage in the Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, United States, during a Sabbath service. Hostage negotiations ensued, during which Akram demanded the release of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani national and alleged al-Qaeda operative imprisoned in nearby Fort Worth for attempted murder and other crimes. He released one hostage after six hours, and the remaining three hostages escaped eleven hours into the standoff. Tactical officers from the FBI Hostage Rescue Team subsequently entered the synagogue and fatally shot Akram.
The 1982 seizure of the Polish embassy in Bern, Switzerland was a politically and financially motivated hostage situation. The embassy was seized by a group of four Polish exiles, led by a former employee of the Służba Bezpieczeństwa (SB) security service, Florian Kruszyk. After seizing the embassy and taking 14 hostages, the group made several broad political demands including the abolition of martial law in Poland. They also requested several million Swiss francs, threatening to destroy the embassy with explosives if their demands were not met. The group's financial demands, and Kruszyk's previous conviction for an armed robbery involving hostage-taking, led some experts to cast doubt on the group's motives being primarily political.
The apparent success and instant notoriety of the hijacker known as D. B. Cooper in November 1971 resulted in over a dozen copycat hijackings within the next year all using a similar template to that established by Cooper. Like Cooper, the plan would be to hijack an aircraft, demand a ransom, and then parachute from that aircraft as a method of escape. To combat this wave of extortion hijackings, aircraft were fitted with eponymous "Cooper Vanes," specifically designed to prevent the aft staircase from being lowered in-flight. The Cooper Vane, as well as the widespread implementation of other safety measures such as the installation of Metal detectors throughout American airports, would spell the end of the Cooper copycats.
