Hiiraan Online

Sunday, December 04, 2016
By MITCH POTTER, MICHELLE SHEPHARD

To Pay or not to Pay, Part 5 of the eight-part Held Hostage series. After John Ridsdel was killed, with Robert Hall still held, Justin Trudeau reaffirmed Canada will not pay ransom to terrorists. But there are always negotiations.

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October 1970 versus April 2016. Crisis versus crisis. Kidnap versus kidnap. A Trudeau then, tougher than nails. A Trudeau now, tougher than nails.

Unfair though it may be to compare father to son, there’s no looking back at Justin Trudeau’s staunch stand against ransom this year without seeing the ghost of Pierre Elliott.

Canadian hostage John Ridsdel was dead, the prime minister acknowledged in words that seethed contempt for his killers, the Philippines-based Abu Sayyaf Group, whose death threats loomed over a second Canadian, Robert Hall.

But Trudeau the Younger wasn’t done. Shifting to the complicated question of ransom, he pledged total opposition to the movement of dollars for lives. Trudeau left no doubt: “Canada does not — and will not — pay ransom to terrorists, directly or indirectly.”

Rewind to 1970, when Trudeau the Elder met his own first serious test as Canada’s prime minister — the kidnappings in Quebec by the separatist FLQ — with similarly blunt messaging. With three era-defining words — “Just watch me” — Trudeau proceeded to invoke the War Measures Act, bringing a swift, if controversial, end to the October Crisis.


Prime Minister Justin Trudeau makes a statement about the death of John Ridsdel in the Philippines, on April 25, 2016. Fellow hostage Robert Hall was still alive, but would be executed a few weeks later.  (JEFF MCINTOSH / THE CANADIAN PRESS FILE PHOTO) 

Margaret Trudeau, his wife and Justin’s mother, detailed in her memoir Beyond Reason a conversation she had with her husband where he warned that even if she, or their baby, was kidnapped there would be no negotiations.

“Do you understand that?” he asked.

“No, I don’t. I can’t,” writes Margaret. “You mean you would let them kill me, rather than agree to terms?”

“Yes,” the Trudeau the Elder said. “Yes. I would.”

Asked what he planned to do in response to FLQ kidnappings in Quebec in 1970, Pierre Trudeau said "Just watch me."

Nobody was watching Justin Trudeau more closely than the siblings of Robert Hall, who saw in him their last hope to bring back their brother, trapped in the Philippine jungle since September 2015 with an $8-million ransom on his head.

The truth of the matter: there had been negotiations for the Abu Sayyaf hostages. But the talks had failed.

The Hall and Ridsdel families, like others before them, describe how needling guilt lingers, a creeping internal monologue that won’t go away: Did I do enough? Did I do everything I could to save him?

Says Robert Hall’s sister Trudi Shaw: “It’s hard to talk about. They’re asking for this extraordinary amount ($8 million). They might as well have been asking for the moon.

“The reality: if we liquidated all our assets we wouldn’t be able to come up with $500,000, let alone several million. Here’s my husband and I on the verge of retirement with very limited resources and I’m thinking, ‘Should I remortgage my house?’ If it was just me, I might. But I can’t do that to my husband. I can’t do that to my children.”

The family was hoping for a rescue. Philippine commandos, Canada’s special forces, or some combination.

But there was an added dimension to Hall’s sisters’ torment. Left in the dark by the RCMP’s reluctance to spell out what, if any, rescue plans were underway, the sisters interpreted Trudeau’s anger as a sign that their final, desperate prayers would be answered.

Though his lips were saying what he would not do, Trudeau’s fury suggested a furious response to Hall’s plight, the sisters reasoned. Surely anger on this scale would translate into action — military action — to save the last Canadian in the jungle. The prime minister is going to order a rescue.

“We understood rescue was a high-risk scenario,” Shaw says. “As much as I abhor violence, we felt better a small chance than no chance at all. The family agreed, military intervention was the only hope.”

They waited. And waited. And then Robert Hall was dead.

Justin Trudeau’s statement was not entirely true.

Canada may not outright pay ransoms the way some European countries do, but there are always negotiations. Always. There are, in fact, a thousand shades of grey when it comes to how Canada handles hostages abroad, despite Trudeau’s black-or-white rhetoric. An uneven playing field, at best. Something nearer to hypocrisy, at worst. It’s a post-partisan problem, one that has vexed the Trudeau and Harper governments alike.

There’s a surfeit of evidence to suggest that Canadian diplomat Robert Fowler was bought out of Niger in 2009, despite the Harper government’s claims to the contrary. The price: $1.1 million, sparked fury among Al Qaeda leaders as disastrously low, according to a letter obtained by The Associated Press.

Separately, a top-secret U.S. diplomatic cable obtained by WikiLeaks showed the Fowler case triggered soul-searching in Ottawa, with the Canadians signalling intent to reform hostage protocols to align more closely to U.S. policy. The reform effort sputtered to a halt, however, when Parliament was prorogued.

The Fowler case contrasts with that of Calgary’s Amanda Lindhout, whose mother, Lorinda Stewart, faithfully took advice from the RCMP for a full year before the Mounties abruptly pulled out, washing their hands of the case. Stewart had to scrounge up the $600,000 ransom to buy her daughter’s freedom in Somalia and an equal amount for the security firm and intermediaries she hired.

“What made me really angry — and I suffered a lot of guilt after Amanda came home — was that I trusted the government for a whole year only to be dumped by them,” Stewart told the Star. “I was played for a full year ... I wish they would have dumped us a lot sooner because we would have been free then to raise ransom, and Amanda’s freedom could have potentially come much, much sooner.”

In previous kidnap cases, RCMP officials have been known to warn families they could face up to 10 years in prison for financing terrorist groups.

Stewart was aware of the risk. But she took comfort in one officer’s assurance that the likelihood was remote: Never before had a relative been charged. “If I hadn’t had that and the only knowledge I’d had was that it was a criminal offence, then yes, that would have terrified me.”

The U.S., under Barack Obama, solved this dilemma for American families in June 2015, by rewriting the rules, taking the empty threat of prison off the table. If we have no intention of actually imprisoning families who pay ransom, the White House reasoned, why subject them to the stress of thinking we might? “I think Canada would do well to follow suit,” Lindhout told the Star.

Amanda Lindhout, who was kidnapped in Somalia. Her mother, Lorinda Stewart, took advice from the RCMP for a year before they pulled out, and she scrounged up the ransom herself.

Canada has not announced a similar policy change. But in practice, it appears some RCMP officials may have improvised a “hear-no-evil, see-no-evil” approach. The Ridsdel family tells the Star that whenever they discussed the subject of paying ransom to the Abu Sayyaf Group, the Mounties would stand up and leave the room.

Critics say that paying ransom increases the risk to Canadians. Trudeau said so after Hall’s death: “We will not turn the maple leaf worn with pride by over three million Canadians abroad into a target.”

But there is scant proof that kidnappers target specific nationalities. Any foreigner looks like a dollar sign. “It never ceases to amaze me how many people simply accept without question the premise that letting bad guys know you won’t pay ransom causes them to not target you,” says Gary Noesner, who spent the last 10 years of his career as chief of the FBI Crisis Negotiation Unit before retiring in 2003. “If this were remotely true why would so many hostages from western countries with a no-ransom policy get taken every year?”

Even when actual dollars aren’t in play, there’s still a price. Canada, for example, is currently indebted to the state of Qatar, which last January was instrumental in brokering a deal with the Taliban that returned Canadian traveller Colin Rutherford to his family in Toronto after more than five years as a hostage in Afghanistan. Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion offered Canada’s “heartfelt thanks to the government of Qatar for its assistance in this matter.‎”

“No matter what cover story they use, everybody ultimately negotiates with kidnappers and terrorists,” writes Loretta Napoleoni, in her book examining the financial impact of kidnappings, Merchant of Men. “Some countries, like Italy, pay exceptionally high ransoms, while others, like the U.S., trade hostages for captured enemy combatants. For governments, hostages are political merchandise.”

A senior Canadian government official told the Star recently that although there was no “direct ask” from Qatar, there’s an unspoken understanding that Canada owes them one.

Last month, Canadian Frank Poccia was released by his Libyan captors after 48 days in custody, and, along with two Italian colleagues, was flown to Italy. Poccia is a technician for Aeronav Group, based in the Montreal suburb of Pointe-Claire and was taken near the Ghat airport on Sept. 19.

Poccia is a dual citizen and Italy took the lead on negotiations — there is little doubt a ransom was paid. “The policy of the Italian government has been to pay a ransom for anyone holding an Italian passport, regardless of who they are: journalists, aid workers, and even tourists who reside abroad,” Napoleoni writes. “Naturally, the Italian public is told that no ransom has ever been paid.”

Germany, Spain and France are also among the governments that outright pay millions — although never admit to it — for their citizens, flouting a 2013 G8 commitment signed by all western powers to not pay ransoms to terrorist groups. (That accord was reinforced by a UN Security Council resolution a year later.) Continental Europe’s culture of leaving no citizen behind trumps everything, including the covenants of international summitry.

A 2014 New York Times investigation found that Al Qaeda and its direct affiliates amassed at least $125 million (U.S.) in revenue from kidnappings since 2008, including $66 million in 2013.

Trudeau may ultimately get yet another accord, but Europe’s tradition of “pay, don’t say” will endure.

But even if we assume the opposite, there remains one gigantic elephant in the room: Private corporations will pay ransom for their abducted employees, regardless of what their governments say.

It is a seldom discussed but very real — and, many argue, necessary — feature of the global economy: Upward of 75 per cent of Fortune 500 companies carry kidnap and ransom insurance for the highly skilled workers and executives they place in harm’s way. When an employee is snatched in Africa or the Middle East or the Philippines, the employer turns to its insurance underwriter, which mobilizes one of more than a dozen top-tier private risk-response teams.

The best of the best in this rarefied world have advanced military training. It’s a field crowded with former commandos and special forces soldiers — backgrounds that conjure the lethality of Liam Neeson in the movie Taken: “If you are looking for ransom I can tell you I don’t have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you.”

The real people who do this work are not from central casting. Yet they do have a very particular set of skills: negotiating. And, as one veteran of this world told the Star, “98 per cent of the time, negotiations work.”

Nobody but kidnappers will benefit from reporting extensively on the tricks of this very unusual trade. But there is one trick that needs to be shared — the trick of moving kidnappers away from the realm of terrorism, so that the negotiations can legally continue.

Criminal groups like Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines tend to enlist whatever flag of convenience will help generate fear. The flag of Daesh (also known as ISIS or ISIL) is what they choose today, but they would just as happily pose in front of the golden arches of McDonald’s, if it might scare you more.

Take it from Warren Rodwell, an Australian survivor, who spent 472 days in the same jungle where Canadians Hall and Ridsdel would later perish. He was released in March 2013 after his family successfully managed to raise a ransom of $100,000.

“These guys known as Abu Sayyaf are the most disorganized bunch of criminal gangs you could ever imagine,” Rodwell says via Skype.

“It’s a cottage industry. It is gangs, criminal gangs. The guys that held me — and I came in contact with more than 100 of them over time — they are 19, 20 years old, a local bunch who just want some excitement in their lives. It’s the equivalent of wanting to drive a big red fire truck.

“They will kidnap anyone, just to see who they can catch. It’s money. And they don’t care who they get.”

This much is clear: We are living in a world of ransom hypocrisy. And barring the end of globalization itself, it’ll probably get worse.

Though we like to think of Canada as a nation of equals, there is a pecking order. Senior officials and diplomats like Fowler rank uppermost because their governments will pay, even when they say they won’t.

Next in line are globalized hostages — employees representing companies that simply carry ransom insurance as the price of doing business where pirates roam.

Close behind are aid and development workers, charities and the media. But even that is changing. A decade ago, the world’s deadliest places were packed with reporters working for accredited, insured news organizations. Today, the continuing digital disruption is thinning the ranks of staff journalists working with the safety net of kidnap insurance, as Mellissa Fung of the CBC was when she was taken in Afghanistan — and ultimately freed in what amounted to a prisoner exchange — after 28 miserable days in 2008.

The media are slipping down the hostage pecking order because we are facing a future of fewer Fungs and more Lindhouts — self-starting freelance reporters who enter places like Somalia of their own accord, without a net.

And that brings us to everyone else — including that great swath of travel-loving Canadians and their worried families.

This world of haves and have-nots, the Star has learned, collided in the Philippine jungle last spring, as Ridsdel and Hall pleaded for their lives.

Hall, who self-financed his sailing expedition to the Philippines, was without a net. But Ridsdel, though semi-retired, came under the corporate protection of TVI Pacific Inc., a Calgary-based mining firm. A risk management company, NYA International, was hired. Advice was proffered. Contact with the kidnappers was made.

What should have ensued, according to several private risk response experts interviewed by the Star, is a series of deft negotiations, starting with an agreement that the kidnapping is a crime, not terrorism.

Private ransom negotiators go to the edge of the law and not beyond. Or they seek assurances they will not be prosecuted. The law says they cannot negotiate, or enrich terrorists. So negotiators often begin by getting the kidnappers to admit they only borrowed the flag of terrorism for its fear factor — because there won’t be any money without that admission.

Once that is complete, discussions proceed toward a cash payment that won’t be described nakedly as “ransom.” Instead euphemisms like “expenses” or “room and board” are used.

That fell apart with TVI and NYA, although exactly why remains unclear.

The Hall family, who were party to conference calls in the early discussions about ransom, said the company was never able to overcome the legal barrier, since Abu Sayyaf went online with a video showing the hostages, their kidnappers and the flag of ISIS, all in one image.

Yet that video was posted just weeks after Ridsdel and Hall were kidnapped. TVI did not pull out of the case until three months later, in December, and Ottawa again took the lead. The RCMP would help the families in coaching them how to speak with the kidnappers during calls. “Buy time,” is the usual advice. “Take notes.”

But when it became clear that the Abu Sayyaf Group just wanted money, the RCMP said their hands were tied.

Bonice Thomas says she feels both the private negotiators working for Ridsdel and the Canadian government team were ill-prepared. “They were caught with their pants down, and all they did was drop into the echo chamber of “We don’t pay ransom to terrorists.”