by Puk Damsgård
‘You should just know that when people like you disappear, the girls leave you. She’s probably screwing someone else already. That’s what they do in the country you come from.’
After two days the blindfold was removed and Daniel and Ayman were handcuffed together, Daniel’s left hand with Ayman’s right. The kidnappers weren’t taking any chances, pulling a set of shackles through the bars of a small basement window and putting them on their hostages’ feet.
Daniel and Ayman sat down together and cried.
· * ·
Arthur was in Ukraine and still awake when his mobile rang at 2 a.m. on Sunday, 19 May. He didn’t recognize the number on the display.
‘Hello, my name’s Kjeld Rye and I’m Daniel Rye’s father. Excuse me for calling so late.’
Kjeld explained that his son hadn’t come home from Syria on Saturday evening as planned.
‘Why do you think something has happened to Daniel?’ asked Arthur.
‘Because we haven’t had any text messages, as we agreed,’ said Kjeld.
Arthur knew there could be many reasons why Daniel hadn’t kept in touch. The telephone network was often down in Syria; the borders opened and closed without notice; Daniel could have been slightly injured and be lying in a hospital. But the matter had to be investigated, so Arthur asked Kjeld to send him all the information he had been given by Daniel.
A few hours later Arthur was contacted by Signe, who had left the airport, out of her mind with worry. She wrote:
I’ve just talked to Daniel’s fixer. Daniel has been arrested by the Jabhat al-Nusra faction just outside Azaz while taking photographs. He has been in their custody since 10 o’clock Friday morning. His fixer says they are negotiating and that Daniel will most probably be out again in a few days. He says that they aren’t violent, but very angry. Daniel’s parents can’t speak English, so right now I’m the one who has contact with the fixer. You are welcome to call me when you read this. And maybe call his parents, so they can be reassured.
First of all Arthur had to try to map out Daniel’s route into Syria and make contact with the people he had been with or spoken to on the trip. Signe’s exchange with the fixer Ahmed was a good start, although Arthur always approached sources critically.
Arthur had learned from the James Foley case how important it is to control information, so there were not more rumours than facts in circulation. If too many people became aware of Daniel’s situation, it would make collecting intelligence on him more difficult. It couldn’t be ruled out, either, that some of the people with whom Daniel had had contact were behind the kidnapping. So there was an important question buzzing in Arthur’s head: who was Ahmed?
In their chat, Ahmed had written to Signe:
‘Don’t worry, we’ll get him out. We’ll wait two more days and then they will no doubt find out, after looking at his camera, that there’s nothing to it – that there are only interviews with families in the area.’
‘OK,’ Signe had answered. ‘I understand. But is there money involved?’
‘No, it isn’t about money,’ said Ahmed. ‘It’s about whether there is anything suspicious about him. And besides, it could well be that they contact you or his parents, because he mentioned your name. He apparently told them that he wanted to leave the country and go back to his girlfriend.’ Ahmed had added that Signe – in case she was contacted – should say that she was going to marry Daniel in July. It would make things ‘easier’.
Arthur’s inner alarm bells rang whenever someone said ‘Don’t worry, we’ll fix it’, because it was usually hot air. He had to get hold of Ahmed as soon as possible, so he didn’t get involved any further. It could be that Ahmed was wrong, was being misinformed or was even part of the game.
Arthur knew that anything was possible in Syria – like, for example, making James Foley disappear without a trace for seven months.
The same thing mustn’t happen to Daniel.
· * ·
That night Kjeld spent several hours in his office, speaking alternately with Arthur and Signe. He wrote half-sentences and fragments of telephone conversations down on the note Daniel had left. ‘Jabnat almusra, Azaz,’ he wrote and framed it in a square, but corrected it later to ‘Jabhat al-Nusra’, which was written beside ‘three options’ and ‘closed border Syria’.
‘I’m afraid it’s not good,’ he remarked quietly to Susanne.
She cried, at a loss for words.
Just past 3 a.m. Christina came home from a friend’s eighteenth birthday party at Hedegård Community Hall.
‘Why aren’t you on Fanø – and why are you up?’ she asked, surprised.
Susanne told a white lie to spare her. She was about to take her high-school exams and they didn’t want to upset her.
‘So many people came over that we decided we would rather sleep at home,’ Susanne replied.
‘My God, you really have become old and boring,’ said Christina and went to bed.
A mountain of practical tasks were clamouring for attention and Arthur gave Daniel’s parents instructions as to what they should do. At 10 a.m. on Sunday morning Kjeld rang the family’s banker in Give and asked him for a printout of a statement for Daniel’s account, so that the family could see if he had paid his insurance and which company was insuring him. In addition, Kjeld requested that he call them if any money was drawn on the account. Arthur had experience of other cases in Syria in which the kidnappers had used credit cards to withdraw money or make purchases online.
Daniel had done what he was supposed to do and insured himself with an independent international insurance company. The sum insured was 5 million kroner (about £520,000), which would cover any expenses in connection with a kidnapping and the costs for a security consultant like Arthur to carry out an investigation.
Kjeld also rang the police. Arthur had already informed the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) about the matter. PET had to ensure that the police treated Kjeld’s report with discretion at every level. This was crucial, since the daily police report could be leaked and used as a resource for journalists. The authorities didn’t want news of the missing Dane to come out.
Arthur also informed the Danish government about Daniel’s disappearance. He contacted the Danish Embassy in Beirut and the Citizens Advice Bureau at the Foreign Ministry in Copenhagen, which assists and advises Danes who get into difficulties or have accidents while travelling abroad.
Arthur had emphasized to Daniel’s parents how vital it was that only the relevant authorities knew anything. Any media attention could hurt Daniel’s situation and, since it was still unclear what had happened and who had taken him, they had to keep it a secret.
Susanne and Kjeld told Christina, who was in the middle of her exams, that Daniel hadn’t come home yet because ‘the borders had been closed in Syria’.
On the other hand, they told Daniel’s older sister, Anita, the truth. She knew that Daniel was going to Syria, but in the months leading up to his departure she hadn’t had much contact with him. She lived with her partner in Odense and she was used to Daniel travelling a lot.
Three days after Daniel’s disappearance, Kjeld and Susanne drove to Signe’s apartment in Copenhagen, where they met Arthur, who was now back from Ukraine. They lied to Christina again, telling her that Kjeld had a meeting with the agricultural firm DLG and that in the meantime Susanne was going to do some shopping.
At the meeting, Arthur updated them on the situation in Syria.
‘It can take anywhere from a few days to … well, much longer,’ said Arthur and he told them briefly about the James Foley case and others.
He asked the family to keep an eye on Daniel’s Facebook profile.
‘Leave all channels of communication open,’ said Arthur. ‘The kidnappers must be able to check who Daniel is. If they encounter a black hole, they’ll become suspicious.
’
In addition, he sought information about Daniel, so that he could get an investigation going and so that he could get ‘proof of life’ on Daniel if the kidnappers made contact. A proof of life could come from Arthur asking the kidnappers a series of questions that only the captive could answer or from a photograph of the person they had kidnapped.
Kjeld, Susanne and Signe wrote a list of information: about a scar on Daniel’s lip, which he got when a spade hit him in the face as a boy; that he had worked on a pig farm while he was at the Free School; that he drank coffee without milk; that he had celebrated his twenty-fourth birthday with Signe at Flyvergrillen at Copenhagen Airport; that there was a black-and-white horse poster hanging over Signe’s bed; and that they were going to Morocco for a month in July.
Kjeld and Susanne went back home to Hedegård in a composed and hopeful mood, while Arthur boarded a plane to Antakya in Turkey to meet his contacts.
· * ·
Daniel woke up early because Ayman had to perform his morning prayers. They were chained together, so a routine had begun whereby they swept away the dust on the floor with their hands, folded the blankets they had been given and sat upon them to pray. Daniel prayed with Ayman five times a day and it felt reassuring. In those minutes of prayer Daniel shut out the world and explored Ayman’s faith. They were given bulgur wheat, bread and olives twice a day, and they shared a one-and-a-half litre bottle, which they filled with water when they were occasionally allowed to go to the toilet.
When Ayman told Daniel about his wife and two daughters, who were now living in Turkey, he began to cry. Daniel cried too when he talked about Signe and his family.
‘When we’re set free one day, you must come to Denmark to visit Legoland with your daughters,’ suggested Daniel.
Ayman taught him a few useful words in Arabic, so he could ask for water and to be allowed to go to the toilet. Sometimes new guards arrived and asked them who they were. Then they left again.
Time became endless. Daniel began pulling threads out of his blanket, which he then shaped into letters and a car on the floor. Ayman read the Koran, which he had asked for and received.
One morning they awoke to find their linked hands, which were exposed while they slept, red with mosquito bites. They launched a hunt for the pests and Daniel felt a twinge of conscience about killing them.
They had been sitting in the same room for a week when, early one morning, a prison guard released Ayman and led him away. Daniel waited for Ayman to come back, but he never saw him again. He was convinced that Ayman had been set free and he now sat alone in the cell, waiting for it to be his turn.
But no one came and fetched him. Not even when he had to go to the toilet. He pounded on the door; he shouted and pounded again.
He didn’t know whether he could hold out, because he had no idea how long it would be before they let him go to the toilet. He looked around the room. In one corner there was a plate of bread crumbs, a cup and a half-full water bottle. His insides were about to burst. He filled the cup with water, so the bottle was almost empty. Then he pulled down his trousers, put the remains of the bread under his behind – and shat on the bread. Afterwards, he stuffed the bread and faeces into the nearly empty water bottle. Some of it stuck to the side, some of it stuck to his fingers; it stank and he was embarrassed, even though he was alone. He screwed the lid on the bottle, placed it in the corner and used the water in the cup to wash his hands and the floor. He felt relieved, but hardly dared to think about the bottle of shit in the corner.
Many hours later, when the guard finally stood in the doorway, he became angry.
‘Don’t you know that it’s haram to shit on your bread? How could you do that?’ he shouted.
Daniel explained that he had knocked on the door and had called out.
‘You have to tell us when you need the toilet,’ said the guard.
He was given a bath and clean clothes, while his own were washed. There was hot water and soap and Daniel wondered if they were getting ready to release him like Ayman.
The next day he was given a pen and some sheets of paper. He passed the time by writing a story that took place one thousand years from now, in 3013, which featured a family who lived in a basement during a world war. It was a story about living where there was never any light and still being able to create something.
He had been imprisoned for ten days when the door opened suddenly one evening. Masked men with weapons burst in. They were rough as they held his head and blindfolded him.
‘We will shoot you, kufr, infidel!’ they shouted as they dragged him up the stairs and out to a car. He felt alone without Ayman and had no idea where they were moving him. Were they taking their infidel further into Syria or to the gallows?
What did they want with him?
A Noose around the Neck
Arthur sat in a cafe in the Turkish border town of Kilis. In front of him was a cup of strong Turkish coffee with thick sediment at the bottom. He hadn’t slept for the last twenty-four hours, but was keeping himself awake with caffeine and cigarettes. The Syrian combatants were night owls; they went to bed at dawn and usually didn’t get up until noon, which was why Arthur spent every minute questioning anyone who might somehow be involved in the complicated network surrounding Daniel, as well as tracking down locals who could travel into Syria to look for him.
Across from Arthur sat a carefully made-up young woman with a tight scarf wrapped around her head. Aya was distraught that she hadn’t been able to get Daniel out of Syria with her. She had been hired to help Daniel, but had failed. Arthur scribbled down scattered notes as she relayed her version of what had happened on the day they were captured.
‘When we were sitting on the sofa, I actually felt quite safe, until the Iraqi turned up,’ she told him. ‘He accused us of being spies. I was so scared that I didn’t translate everything for Daniel.
She had recognized one of the men: the unmasked Tunisian. He was one of the men who had stopped them the previous day. He had appeared in the doorway when Daniel was handcuffed and dragged to the basement.
‘The Tunisian told me I deserved to die,’ she said, but she was released some hours later. Luck had been smiling upon her, Aya thought.
‘One of the men who was a foreigner later helped me get away,’ she continued. ‘He showed me his French driver’s licence and I think he released me without asking his boss.’ Aya was certain that Daniel’s kidnappers were Islamists. She had thought for sure that she would be taken captive too.
Arthur was particularly interested to hear that several foreign fighters were part of the group that had taken Daniel. He was also relieved that Daniel had been taken at the former regime headquarters. This would allow him to find out who had been in command in the house in Azaz that day. In the previous months at least five foreign journalists had been kidnapped by Islamists from Jabhat al-Nusra, but after a few days in captivity most of them had been released with no ransom demands. Daniel had already been held hostage for ten days.
Even though the fixer, Ahmed, had written to Signe on the first night that Daniel had been taken by Jabhat al-Nusra, new information suggested a different scenario. When Arthur spoke with the Jabhat al-Nusra contacts he had acquired while working on James Foley’s case, he was informed that Daniel was being held by a group that was beyond their influence. And, unfortunately, in the time it took for the information to reach him, the situation may have already changed. But several people in Arthur’s network independently reported to him that the captors were from Dawlah al-Islamiyah, otherwise known as ISIS. Since there were few precedents, nobody had the prior knowledge or experience to gauge what ISIS would do with western hostages. The informants said that the al-Nusra Front or other rebel groups might be open to negotiations, should they be the ones behind Daniel’s kidnapping, but ISIS was a different story. ISIS members rarely spoke to non-members, such as Arthur’s inf
ormants.
According to the information available, Daniel had been kidnapped for taking photos without permission and had committed a crime according to sharia law’s prohibition against pornography. Arthur couldn’t know that Daniel’s photos consisted of plum trees and doves flocking around two brothers.
Still, he couldn’t get any information on Daniel’s exact location. Arthur’s contacts were working on the assumption that Daniel was still in captivity in the border town of Azaz, where he had originally been detained. Therefore, they focused their efforts on trying to find key members of the complex network of rebel groups headquartered around the sand-coloured building where Daniel was believed to be held.
· * ·
On the tenth evening of his captivity Daniel was moved and led up a flight of stairs, blindfolded and with his arms tied behind his back. He felt several hands search the pockets of his leather jacket and trousers.
‘What’s this?’ asked a voice. Daniel guessed the guard had found the sheet of paper with his fictitious story.
‘A story,’ he answered, but he was allowed to keep neither the paper nor his leather jacket, which the guard ripped off his back, before forcing Daniel into a cross-legged position with his hands cuffed in front of him. Then he fastened Daniel’s handcuffs to a radiator. Facing the radiator and with his back to the room, Daniel was able to lift the blindfold slightly with the inside of his upper arm and get an idea of his surroundings.
From the little he could make out without his glasses, it looked as if he was in some kind of large foyer with corridors leading off to other rooms. The room echoed when anyone spoke and he could see a wash basin, a window and a table in the middle. Daniel could hear people walking past the wash basin; some splashed water on their faces or filled water bottles, while others just walked through.
A man gave Daniel some water and an omelette. Once he had eaten, he dozed off in an awkward, cross-legged position. He was suddenly awoken by a violent kick in his side.