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Israeli MIA are members of the Israel Defense Forces who are missing in action. Despite efforts to locate them and bring them home, their whereabouts remain unknown. Every year, a state ceremony is held at Mount Herzl, Israel's military cemetery in Jerusalem.
The Bureau of Counterterrorism and Countering Violent Extremism (CT) is a bureau of the United States Department of State. It coordinates all U.S. Government efforts to improve counter-terrorism cooperation with foreign governments and participates in the development, coordination, and implementation of American counterterrorism policy.
A beheading video is a type of snuff video depicting a live murder in which a hostage or victim is shown to be graphically decapitated. Such videos are typically distributed mostly through the Internet, and are often employed by groups seeking to instill shock or terror into a population. Although beheading has been a widely employed public execution method since the ancient Greeks and Romans, videos of this type only began to arise in 2002 with the beheading of Daniel Pearl and the growth of the Internet in the Information Age, which allowed groups to anonymously publish these videos for public consumption. The beheadings shown in these videos are usually not performed in a "classical" method – decapitating a victim quickly with a blow from a sword or axe – but by the relatively slow and torturous process of slicing and sawing the victim's neck, while still alive, with a knife. Despite the number of groups and ideologies that employ this form of propaganda, the process is overwhelmingly associated with Islamist extremists.
Ahmad Sa'adat, also known as Abu Ghassan, is a Palestinian militant and Secretary-General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a Marxist–Leninist Palestinian nationalist organisation. Sa'adat graduated in 1975 from the UNRWA Teachers College, Ramallah, specializing in Mathematics. Sa'adat was elected General Secretary of the PFLP by its Central Committee in October 2001, to succeed Abu Ali Mustafa after his assassination by Israel during the Second Intifada.
Gilad Shalit is a former MIA soldier of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) who on 25 June 2006, was captured by Palestinian militants in a cross-border raid via tunnels near the Israeli border. Hamas held him captive for over five years, until his release on 18 October 2011 as part of a prisoner exchange deal.
Ron Arad, was an Israeli Air Force weapon systems officer (WSO) who has officially been classified as missing in action since October 1986. Arad was lost on a mission over Lebanon and is believed to have been captured by the Shiite group Amal and later handed over to Hezbollah.
Pidyon shvuyim is a religious duty in Judaism to bring about the release of a fellow Jew captured by slave dealers or robbers, or imprisoned unjustly by the authorities. The release of the prisoner is typically secured by a ransom paid by the Jewish community. It is considered an important commandment in Jewish law.
The 2006 Gaza cross-border raid was an armed incursion carried out by seven or eight Gazan Palestinian militants on 25 June 2006 who attacked Israel Defense Forces (IDF) positions near the Kerem Shalom Crossing through an attack tunnel. In the attack, two IDF soldiers and two Palestinian militants were killed, four IDF soldiers were wounded, one of whom was Gilad Shalit, who was captured and taken to the Gaza Strip.
The Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange, also known as "Wafa al-Ahrar", followed a 2011 agreement between Israel and Hamas to release Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in exchange for 1,027 prisoners — almost all Palestinians and Arab-Israelis, although there were also a Ukrainian, a Jordanian and a Syrian. Two hundred and eighty of these had been sentenced to life in prison for planning and perpetrating various attacks against Israeli targets.
Ahlam Ahmad al-Tamimi is a Jordanian national known for assisting in carrying out the Sbarro restaurant suicide bombing in Jerusalem, in 2001. She was convicted by an Israeli military tribunal and received multiple life sentences, but was released in 2011 as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange. She hosts a television show about Palestinians in Israeli prisons.
James Wright Foley was an American journalist and video reporter. While working as a freelance war correspondent during the Syrian Civil War, he was abducted on November 22, 2012, in northwestern Syria. He was murdered by decapitation in August 2014 purportedly as a response to American airstrikes in Iraq, thus becoming the first American citizen killed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
Mohammed Emwazi was a British militant of Kuwaiti origin seen in several videos produced by the Islamist extremist group ISIL showing the beheadings of a number of captives in 2014 and 2015. A group of his hostages nicknamed him "John" since he was part of a four-person terrorist cell with English accents whom they called "The Beatles"; the press later began calling him "Jihadi John".
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.
Beginning in 2014, a number of people from various countries were beheaded by the Islamic State: a radical Sunni Islamist group operating in Iraq and parts of Syria.
The Beatles was the nickname for an Islamic State terrorist group composed of four British militants. The group was named after the British rock group the Beatles by their hostages, and the group's members were even nicknamed after the band's members: "John", "Paul", "George", and "Ringo".
Executions by ISIS refers here to killing by beheading, immolation, shooting, or other means of military and civilian people by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). ISIL has released a number of propaganda/publicity videos of beheadings or shootings of captives. Houtat Sulūk is reported to be a mass grave.
Kenji Goto was a Japanese freelance video journalist covering wars and conflicts, refugees, poverty, AIDS, and child education around the world. In October 2014, he was captured and held hostage by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants after entering Syria in the hopes of rescuing Japanese hostage Haruna Yukawa. On 30 January 2015, he was beheaded by his captors led by Jihadi John following the breakdown of negotiations for his release.
Qatar has been accused of allowing terror financiers to operate within its borders, which has been one of the justifications for the Qatar diplomatic crisis that started in 2017 and ended in 2021. In 2014, David S. Cohen, then United States Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, accused Qatari authorities of allowing financiers who were on international blacklists to live freely in the country: "There are U.S.- and UN-designated terrorist financiers in Qatar that have not been acted against under Qatari law." Accusations come from a wide variety of sources including intelligence reports, government officials, and journalists.
The 2018 As-Suwayda attacks were a string of suicide bombings and gun attacks that took place in and around As-Suwayda, Syria on 25 July, killing at least 258 people and injuring 180 others. The attacks were committed by the Islamic State and largely targeted Syria's Druze minority.
References
- 1 2 Meyer, Josh. "Why the G8 pact to stop paying terrorist ransoms probably won't work—and isn't even such a great idea". Quartz. Archived from the original on 2017-02-26. Retrieved 2017-02-26.
- 1 2 3 "Where Exactly Is the Rule That Says Governments Can't Negotiate with Terrorists? - VICE". Vice. Archived from the original on 2017-02-26. Retrieved 2017-02-26.
- ↑ Callimachi, Rukmini (2014-07-29). "Paying Ransoms, Europe Bankrolls Qaeda Terror". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 2017-03-08. Retrieved 2017-02-26.
- ↑ U.S. Department of State Public Affairs Bureau (October 17, 1995), Fact sheet: International terrorism–American hostages, p. 1076, ISBN 9780275995300, Public Affairs Bureau file B91219207B, retrieved 2017-03-22– via Evolution of U. S. Counterterrorism Policy by Alexander Kraft (2007)
- ↑ Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism (November 2001). "Fact Sheet: International Terrorism: American Hostages". U.S. Foreign Policy Agenda. 6 (3): 32–33. Retrieved 22 June 2020.
- ↑ Powell, Jonathan. "We must negotiate with terrorists: The dirty secret our government does not want to admit". Salon. Archived from the original on March 16, 2017. Retrieved February 26, 2017.
- 1 2 3 4 Neumann, Peter R. (2007-01-01). "Negotiating With Terrorists". Foreign Affairs. Archived from the original on 2017-02-26. Retrieved 2017-02-26.
- ↑ "ISIS Beheads Haruna Yukawa: Why The Japanese Hostages Were In Syria". International Business Times. 2015-01-24. Archived from the original on 2016-10-06. Retrieved 2017-02-26.