INDEPTH: HOSTAGE TAKING
Major hostage-taking incidents
CBC News Online | April 14, 2004
There have been many types of kidnappings in the world in the past few decades, including such high-profile hijackings as the airplane at Entebbe in 1976, the cruise ship Achille Lauro in the Mediterranean in 1985 and the TWA airliner that same year.
The taking of hostages during a civil conflict also has a lengthy history. The current wave of kidnappings of foreigners in Iraq is only the most recent example of this tactic:
1964: Several thousand Simba rebels storm the defences of Stanleyville, a city of 300,000 in the newly independent Republic of the Congo. The rebels take more than 1,600 European residents hostage and announce that they will kill the captives if the Congolese government tries to recapture the city. Most of the hostages are rescued in a joint American-Belgian operation.
1972: Eight Palestinian "Black September" terrorists seize nine Israeli athletes in the Olympic Village in Munich. In a bungled rescue attempt by West German authorities, all the hostages and five terrorists are killed.
1977: Angered by denunciations from U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Uganda strongman Idi Amin takes 240 Americans hostage, sending a letter to Carter telling him to stop interfering in Ugandan affairs. Six days later, Amin frees his hostages (mostly pilots and airline workers) and assures Carter that they are in no danger.
1979 - 81: After U.S. President Jimmy Carter agrees to admit the Shah of Iran into the U.S., Iranian radicals seize the U.S. Embassy in Tehran Nov.4 1979, and take 66 American diplomats and embassy employees hostage. Thirteen hostages are soon released, but the remaining 53 are held until their release on Jan. 20, 1981.
1985 - 1991: Shia militiamen in Beirut take Terry Anderson, an Associated Press reporter, hostage in 1985. They demand the release of Shia extremists convicted of bombing the U.S. and French embassies in Kuwait. Anderson spends six years in captivity — the longest period of any of the 18 U.S. hostages kidnapped in the latter stages of the civil war in Lebanon.
1987 - 1991: Terry Waite, envoy of the Archbishop of Canterbury, is taken hostage after he travels to Beirut in 1987 to negotiate the release of two American hostages. Waite remains captive until November 1991.
1996: Peru's Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement takes several hundred people hostage at a party given at the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima in December. Among the hostages are several U.S. officials, foreign diplomats, Peruvian government members and Japanese businessmen. The revolutionary group demands the release of all its members currently in prison, as well as safe passage for them and the hostage-takers. The kidnappers release most of the hostages that month, but hold 81 Peruvian and Japanese citizens for several months. Peruvian commandos stage an attack in April 1997, freeing the remaining captives.
1997: Near the end of a civil war in Tajikistan, a paramilitary group abducts eight United Nations officials, two Red Cross members, four Russian journalists and the Tajik security minister, Saidamir Zukhurov. The kidnappers demand safe passage for their supporters from Afghanistan to Tajikistan. The group releases the hostages when the Tajikistan and Russian governments comply with their demand.
1999: 150 armed Hutu rebels attack three tourist camps in Uganda and abduct three U.S. citizens, six Britons, three New Zealanders, two Danish citizens, one Australian and one Canadian. Eight of the hostages are killed by their abductors.
2000: In Sierra Leone, Revolutionary United Front militants kidnap 300 members of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Sierra Leone. Fifteen days later, the kidnappers release 139 hostages in Liberia. Two weeks later, the militants release the last of the UN peacekeepers.
2002: Chechen separatists hold more than 800 people captive in a Moscow theatre for three days in October. They demand an end to the war in Chechnya. Russian special forces storm the building after first filling it with gas. All 41 terrorists are killed, and 129 hostages die as a result. A Canadian, Vesselin Nedkov, is among the survivors.
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