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Sir Terence Hardy Waite is an English human rights activist and author.
Humanitarian aid workers belonging to United Nations organisations, PVOs / NGOs or the Red Cross / Red Crescent are among the list of protected persons under international humanitarian law that grant them immunity from attack by belligerent parties. However, attacks on humanitarian workers have occasionally occurred, and become more frequent since the 1990s and 2000s. In 2017, the Aid Worker Security Database (AWSD) documented 139 humanitarian workers killed in intentional attacks out of the estimated global population of 569,700 workers. In every year since 2013, more than 100 humanitarian workers were killed. This is attributed to a number of factors, including the increasing number of humanitarian workers deployed, the increasingly unstable environments in which they work, and the erosion of the perception of neutrality and independence. In 2012 road travel was seen to be the most dangerous context, with kidnappings of aid workers quadrupling in the last decade, reaching more aid workers victims than any other form of attack.
Paul Marshall Johnson Jr. was an American helicopter engineer who lived in Saudi Arabia. In 2004, he was taken hostage by militants and his murder was recorded on video tape.
Kenneth John Bigley was a British civil engineer who was kidnapped by Islamic extremists in the al-Mansour district of Baghdad, Iraq, on 16 September 2004, along with his colleagues, U.S. citizens Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong. Following the murders of Hensley and Armstrong by beheading over the course of three days, Bigley was killed in the same manner two weeks later, despite the attempted intervention of the Muslim Council of Britain and the indirect intervention of the British government. Videos of the killings were posted on websites and blogs.
Margaret Hassan was an Irish aid worker who had worked in Iraq for many years until she was abducted by unidentified assailants in Baghdad during the Iraqi insurgency. Her captors subsequently filmed and released a video of her stating that she was living her "last hours" before she pleaded for the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq; she has not been seen since, and her remains were never recovered.
Members of the Iraqi insurgency began taking foreign hostages in Iraq beginning in April 2004. Since then, in a dramatic instance of Islamist kidnapping they have taken captive more than 200 foreigners and thousands of Iraqis; among them, dozens of hostages were killed and others rescued or freed. In 2004, executions of captives were often filmed, and many were beheaded. However, the number of the recorded killings decreased significantly. Many hostages remain missing with no clue as to their whereabouts. The United States Department of State Hostage Working Group was organized by the U.S. Embassy, Baghdad, in the summer of 2004 to monitor foreign hostages in Iraq.
The Lebanon hostage crisis was the kidnapping in Lebanon of 104 foreign hostages between 1982 and 1992, when the Lebanese Civil War was at its height. The hostages were mostly Americans and Western Europeans, but 21 national origins were represented. At least eight hostages died in captivity; some were murdered, while others died from lack of medical attention. During the fifteen years of the Lebanese civil war an estimated 17,000 people disappeared after being abducted.
Kidnapping and hostage taking has become a common occurrence in Afghanistan following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Kidnappers include Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters and common criminal elements.
The 1998 abduction of foreign engineers took place when four United Kingdom-based specialists were seized by unidentified Chechen gunmen in Grozny, the capital of the unrecognized secessionist Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (ChRI). After more than two months in captivity, all four men were found brutally murdered, reportedly following a failed rescue bid. As of 2022, no one has been tried in this case.
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.
The kidnapping of Sharon Commins and Hilda Kawuki was an international hostage crisis which lasted from 3 July until 18 October 2009. Sharon Commins, an aid worker from Clontarf, Dublin, Ireland, and Hilda Kawuki, a Ugandan colleague, were abducted from a compound run by the GOAL aid agency in north Darfur, Sudan. They were thought to have been abducted by the Janjaweed.
On 26 September 2010, British aid worker Linda Norgrove and three Afghan colleagues were kidnapped by members of the Taliban in the Kunar Province of eastern Afghanistan. She was working in the country as regional director for Development Alternatives Incorporated, a contractor for US and other government agencies. The group were taken to the nearby Dewegal Valley area. United States and Afghan forces began a search of the area, placing roadblocks to prevent the group from being moved east into Pakistan.
This is a list of known foreign hostages in Pakistan.
Rachel Briggs OBE was Founding Executive Director of Hostage US, the first Director of Hostage UK and was awarded an OBE in the 2014 Honours List for services to hostages and the families of victims kidnapped overseas. She is the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Global Center on Cooperative Security, an expert on foreign and security policy and an Associate Fellow of Chatham House.
Harmeet Singh Sooden is a Canadian-New Zealand anti-war activist who volunteered for the international NGO Christian Peacemaker Teams in Iraq. He was held captive in Baghdad with three others for almost four months until being freed by multinational forces on 23 March 2006.
Mohammed Emwazi was a British militant of Kuwaiti origin seen in several videos produced by the Islamist extremist group Islamic State (IS) 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".
Beginning in 2014, a number of people from various countries were beheaded by the Islamic State (IS), a radical Sunni Jihadist group operating in Iraq and Syria as well as elsewhere. In January 2014, a copy of an IS penal code surfaced describing the penalties it enforces in areas under its control, including multiple beheadings. Beheading videos have been frequently posted by IS members to social media. Several of the recorded beheadings were conducted by Mohammed Emwazi, whom the media referred to as "Jihadi John" before his identification. The beheadings received wide coverage around the world and attracted international condemnation. Political scientist Max Abrahms posited that IS may be using well-publicized beheadings as a means of differentiating itself from Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and identifying itself with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the al-Qaeda member who beheaded Daniel Pearl. The publicised beheadings represent a small proportion of a larger number of total people killed following capture by IS.
David Haines was a British aid worker who was captured by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in early 2013 and beheaded in early September 2014.
Alan Henning was an English taxicab driver-turned-volunteer humanitarian aid worker. He was the fourth Western hostage killed by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) whose killing was publicised in a beheading video.
Executions by ISIS refers here to killing by beheading, immolation, shooting, or other means of soldiers and civilians 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.
References
- ↑ "Honours for the best of Britain overseas". GOV.UK. Retrieved 2023-06-23.
- ↑ CASE STUDY REPORT, Hostage UK, CounterExtremism.Org, Last accessed 03/10/2014 https://www.counterextremism.org/resources/details/id/470/hostage-u.k Archived 2014-10-14 at the Wayback Machine .
- ↑ JAMIE BUCHAN, Memorial service for murdered hostage David Haines to be held in Perth, The Courier, 30 September 2014 "Memorial service for murdered hostage David Haines to be held in Perth - Perth & Kinross / Local / News / The Courier". Archived from the original on 2014-10-09. Retrieved 2014-10-06.
- ↑ "Perth memorial to be held for aid worker David Haines". BBC News. 2014-09-30. Retrieved 2023-06-23.
- ↑ Sally Hind, David Haines: Family of murdered aid worker ask wellwishers to donate to charity that supported them through his abduction, Daily Record, Sep 25, 2014, http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/david-haines-family-murdered-aid-4320596
- ↑ David Haines: Family of murdered aid worker ask wellwishers to donate to charity that supported them through his abduction, http://www.newsrt.co.uk/news/david-haines-family-of-murdered-aid-worker-ask-wellwishers-to-donate-to-charity-that-supported-them-through-his-abduction-2643087.html%5B%5D
- ↑ Colin Adwent, Ipswich: Brother of murdered hostage Ken Bigley speaks of distress over “inhumanity” of IS beheadings Wednesday, EADT24, September 17, 2014 http://www.eadt.co.uk/news/ipswich_brother_of_murdered_hostage_ken_bigley_speaks_of_distress_over_inhumanity_of_is_beheadings_1_3773410 Archived 2014-10-09 at the Wayback Machine
- ↑ "Judith Tebbutt: My six months held hostage by Somali pirates". BBC News. 2013-07-25. Retrieved 2023-06-23.
- ↑ Staff (2007-03-13). "Embassy hostages kidnapped in Ethiopia released". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 2023-06-23.