by Puk Damsgård
‘It’s a card game we made,’ Daniel replied.
The guard took the cards from them. They had committed a great sin, because they had made playing cards out of what were apparently Jabhat al-Nusra’s recruitment flyers. They had thoughtlessly torn into pieces the Prophet’s words and verses from the Koran and turned the holy scriptures into a game with infidel kings and queens.
Daniel expected they would be punished, but life as a hostage with ISIS was unpredictable. To his great relief, nothing more happened.
Card games, tea and sardines couldn’t numb Daniel’s longing to escape. This was further encouraged by the large windows in their cell. Right out there on the other side of the glass stretched freedom. The hostages began to conduct a sort of public hearing on the topic of ‘golf’, a code name for their escape attempt. Everyone had something to say. Would it actually be possible to ‘play golf’?
Daniel shared his own experiences. He showed the scars on his wrists and throat. That was why he had tried to escape, but there was a high risk of failure – also, they were in the middle of ISIS’s stronghold in winter, when it would be possible to see them for miles in their orange jumpsuits.
‘It isn’t enough just to be out on the other side of the window,’ he said.
Some of the hostages argued that it was better to die free than to rot in captivity. Pierre would rather flee than allow ISIS to get money for him, if indeed that ever became an issue.
David, who had experience from the British military, strongly advised that they reflect on the matter, because statistically the vast majority of hostages are released through successful negotiations. An escape would have to be arranged and planned down to the smallest detail, he said, because escape attempts often ended in death. It might well have been an escape attempt that had cost Kenneth Bigley his life. According to the Sunday Times, Bigley had managed to escape from his captors with the help of a Syrian and an Iraqi, who had infiltrated the group. But after a short time on the run, Bigley had been recognized at a checkpoint, even though he had been disguised. This example was one of several that supported the notion that escape attempts often ended up going wrong – even if one had outside help.
‘I know the odds,’ David insisted. ‘I’m betting on coming out through negotiations.’
Even so, Daniel whispered in Pierre’s ear that he would join him if he planned to escape.
Despite the grim statistics, there was agreement among the hostages that they could at least explore the possibilities. They delegated tasks to each other. Some of them had to keep an eye on what was happening outside the windows, so that they could understand when the guards came and went, what weapons they carried, who replaced whom, how many guards were in and around the mansion, and how to attack a guard and steal his car.
The hostages created a document in which they noted what they had seen. They were cautious and wrote in code, as if it were player rankings from a card tournament. They were always ready to swallow the most dangerous notes.
David was the voice of pragmatism.
‘You have to convince me it’s possible,’ he said and asked the others to find patterns in the guards’ activities that could be exploited. For example, did the guards sleep before dinner at a certain time or was there a period during the day when there were fewer of them?
They took notes as they watched through the windows and saw cars driving to and from the mansion; when the guards checked the cell and brought food; and where and how many lookouts there were.
The Americans thought that they had to work fast, because it was perhaps the last chance they would get before they were again moved to a basement cell without windows.
They watched the guards for four days, but there was no regularity in their activities. There didn’t seem to be any regular routines.
There is no damn pattern at all! Try finding a pattern in the Middle East, thought Daniel.
Their escape plans were given the final death knell when the Beatles moved into the closed terrace next to their cell. Only a thin curtain and a window pane separated the hostages from their worst guards. At any moment, John or George could pull aside the curtain and monitor every movement the nineteen men were making. It gave Daniel the chills. It was as if the curtain and the side of the room where it hung had become toxic. Now it was just about survival, because the British guards seemed more unpredictable than ever.
‘Peter Kassig!’ shouted George one day to the American.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Do you like to be in the army, Peter?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Do you like to kill Muslims, Peter?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Don’t lie to us.’
Peter was ordered to stand up for several hours on the spot. Another time it was James who had to stand for a whole night. When this happened, the other hostages took turns staying awake and giving them water or bread if they needed it, but the Beatles even put a stop to that outbreak of solidarity. They installed a camera on top of a cupboard in the cell and hooked it up through the door and out to the terrace where they lived.
‘Now we can see every move you make,’ announced John.
Daniel stopped doing his daily sit-ups and the hostages held back from playing and talking together out of fear that it could give the British guards an excuse to punish them. The Beatles watched them through the camera, which Daniel felt pointed straight at him. They could come in at any second. He felt as if he was chained to the radiator again.
‘You’re sitting looking out the window!’ shouted John to Daniel one day.
He had just leaned his head against the cold pane. ‘No, I wasn’t.’
‘Yes, you were. I could see you.’
The mental torture also consisted of Ringo and John standing in the doorway, demanding specific answers to political questions.
‘Do you know Blackwater?’ one asked, to which the hostages would answer that it was the US security company that, among other things, was guilty of killing seventeen civilians during the Iraq War.
At other times they demanded that the hostages ask them questions to which they responded with long, preaching answers. It was a game of ‘ask a question or get beaten up’.
‘Why are you so opposed to women being educated?’ asked one hostage.
‘We don’t say that. Women should be educated in the Koran, because it is they who must raise our children. The more they learn about the Koran, the purer and better the children will be,’ one of the Brits replied and went on to talk about ‘the true path’.
Ringo said that, while living in Britain, he had phoned in to a debate on the radio and said that the western forces would lose in Afghanistan and Iraq, because God was on the Islamists’ side. The host of the show had claimed there was a problem with the connection and had hung up.
‘That is proof that there is no culture of debate in western countries,’ he said.
James asked what was the point of converting to Islam if other Muslims still considered a convert an infidel? The response from the Brits was that only God could cast doubt on the sincerity of one’s belief.
The Beatles also played the hostages off against each other. One day they gave Toni, who had converted to Islam, a whole chicken at one of the meals.
‘Toni is a good Muslim,’ they said.
‘May I share the chicken with two others?’ asked Toni.
‘Who?’
Toni suggested giving a little of his chicken to two of the other prisoners who had also converted, James and John.
‘James may not have any,’ they answered. ‘He is evil.’
Daniel tried to make himself as invisible and insignificant to the Beatles as possible; to merge into the wall and hide himself among the others as if he didn’t exist. He didn’t dare to even look at them, unlike Pierre, who was on alert whenever they were in the cell.
One day George, for the first and only time, entered without covering his face. While he stood in front of James and put a plastic cable tie around his tongue, several of the hostages paid close attention to his appearance. He was quite young, maybe in his early twenties, with shoulder-length, wavy hair, a thin beard and full lips. Terror had finally been given a face.
Daniel mostly succeeded in staying under the British guards’ radar – until one day in early February 2014, when they again asked for email addresses for Daniel’s immediate family members.
‘If you give me your girlfriend’s email address again, I’ll beat you to a pulp!’ shouted John.
Daniel gave him his mother’s email address. But he wasn’t sure if he had remembered it correctly.
Emails from the Dark
On Saturday, 8 February 2014 Susanne and Kjeld were at a birthday party at the Hedegård Community Hall. Their relative and neighbour Sven Olaf was celebrating his seventieth birthday and the room was buzzing with talkative friends and neighbours dressed up for the occasion. Under normal circumstances, Kjeld and Susanne would have enjoyed being part of this festive gathering, but not on this particular day, because, as usual, the conversation veered towards the subject of how the children were.
‘Where’s Daniel?’ their friends asked.
‘He’s off somewhere taking photos. He lives in Copenhagen,’ lied Susanne, stifling the anguish of betraying her desire to tell the truth.
Susanne and Kjeld were on tenterhooks all evening and took turns going into the bathroom to check their mobiles for any new messages. They thought it would be rude to have their phones sitting out next to the birthday cakes. Later in the evening, they went home exhausted. Kjeld went to bed and Susanne switched on the computer in the office to check her email one last time.
At 9.26 p.m. an email had arrived. She didn’t recognize the sender, [email protected], but opened it anyway; it was written in English and used a lot of capital letters, making it look at first glance like spam. It began:
This message is to inform you that we have taken the Denmark citizen Daniel Rye Ottosen PRISONER. It’s very simple, a CASH PAYMENT will secure his release.
Susanne held her breath as she read on.
If you want to confirm we are really the ones holding Daniel, then we will except [sic] three questions from his family of a personal nature that only Daniel could possibly be able to answer correctly.
The CONDITIONS OF DANIEL’S SAFE RETURN IS, NO MEDIA INVOLVEMENT, WHATSOEVER, AND A CASH PAYMENT!
Reply FAST, with clearly written email messages, to this email address and NO ATTACHMENTS! Act FAST, so as not to endanger the safety of Daniel.
Susanne flew out of the office and ran to the bedroom. Kjeld was still awake.
‘There’s an email from Syria!’ she shouted.
Finally, after almost nine months, the kidnappers were interested in making contact.
They’re ready to negotiate, thought Kjeld, as they forwarded the email to Arthur and called him. Arthur was on holiday with his family, travelling on some Norwegian road in the middle of nowhere. Since he had started working to find James Foley – and later Daniel – he had hardly stepped foot in Denmark. Having spent more than 275 days travelling in 2013, he had finally taken a couple of days off to spend time with his family.
‘I’ll have a look at it and send you my thoughts as soon as we get to our cabin,’ he said.
When he read the message from the kidnappers, he could see the wording and the use of capital letters were similar to the email that James’s family had received in December 2013.
Susanne and Kjeld couldn’t sleep that night. The words from the email swirled around Susanne’s head, especially the sentence about not speaking to the media. She couldn’t help but worry about what would happen if journalists wrote about Daniel anyway.
The following day they discussed their next move with Arthur and at noon they sent their reply to the kidnappers. They made sure that the proof-of-life questions would make Daniel think of something positive.
‘Assalamu alaikum, greetings,’ they began their message. They went on to explain that for nine months they had been trying to negotiate a ‘practical’ solution that could bring Daniel home, and that they had managed so far to keep the story out of the press.
Then they listed their three carefully selected questions for Daniel: ‘At which family event did Daniel give a speech shortly before his departure to Syria, and where did it take place? Where did Daniel and Signe first meet? With whom did he travel to Nepal?’
The email ended with a heartfelt request: ‘Would you please pass on our best wishes to Daniel from Signe, Anita, Christina, Dad and Mum. Best regards, Susanne and Kjeld Rye Ottosen.’
· * ·
The day after the family had replied to the kidnappers’ email, the hostages were moved to a new location. Had Daniel been able to look at a satellite photograph, he would have seen a square, fenced-in area. It lay south-east of Raqqa in the middle of the deserted, sand-coloured expanse, a short distance from the verdant areas surrounding the Euphrates. The vegetation alongside the building indicated that it was being watered and trees had been planted in long, straight rows. Two iron towers stood high above and the large containers standing close to the building indicated that this could be an oil refinery.
The new cell, where Daniel was to spend the remainder of his captivity, was named the Quarry by the other prisoners.
When the captives’ handcuffs and blindfolds were removed, Peter blurted out: ‘I’ve been here before!’
He reassured the other men, telling them that the last time there had been a nice guard and that he had been given plenty to eat, even though he was served only one meal a day. It was also in this prison that Peter had converted to Islam and taken the Muslim name Abdul Rahman. Pierre recognized the room as being the first one he had stayed in when he was originally captured in June 2013.
The cell was dark and measured about 170 square feet. The only sunlight there was filtered in through a ventilator in a corner of the room. They used the daylight to help them count the days and the guards’ calls to prayer to work out what time it was.
There were storage boxes for clothes and medicine, so they could keep things tidy. They were given a couple of blankets each and, as the weather was becoming milder, they had no difficulty staying warm in the overcrowded cell. New prison suits were also handed out, as the orange ones had become infested with lice. Daniel wore dark-green trousers and a jacket.
They had been in the Quarry only a couple of days when the Beatles banged hard on the cell door. Daniel sat with his hands against the wall, as one of the Brits kicked him in the side.
‘Danish boy … we’ve got some questions for you. Make sure you answer them right. Don’t screw this up!’
The first proof-of-life question was put to him: at which family event had he given a speech just before he travelled to Syria?
He felt a surge of energy rushing through his body. His captors had taken images and videos of him at random, and he had no idea if any of them had ever reached home. Suddenly, he felt as if his family were speaking directly to him.
‘My maternal grandfather’s birthday,’ answered Daniel.
‘Where did you meet your girlfriend, Signe?’ the Brit continued.
‘I met her at Vesterlund Ungdomsskole.’
The Brit burst out laughing.
‘Vester-what? You’ll have to spell that for us!’
Daniel started laughing too, and a warm feeling spread throughout his entire body at the thought that Signe was still waiting for him. She had to be, otherwise he wouldn’t have been given that question.
The Brit ordered him to spell out ‘Vesterlund Ungdomsskole’ using the phonetic alphabet, but he could remember only Alpha, Bravo, Charlie. Instead he found random words that began with the respective letters to
dictate the rest.
The answer to the last question was easier: who had he travelled with in Nepal?
‘My friend, Ebbe,’ answered Daniel, who could no longer conceal his enthusiasm and answered a bit too cheerfully. A punishment was promptly issued: one of the Beatles whacked him in the side. His instinct was to contract and draw his body in on itself, but he remained sitting upright. Then kicks began coming at him from all angles, landing on his legs, shoulders, ribs, until he could no longer sit up. He ended up in a foetal position on the floor to protect his stomach and internal organs. He felt a desert boot using his face as a doormat, wiping the sole against his ear, while other boots continued relentlessly kicking his lower back and thighs.
Petrified, Pierre sat in the mandatory position, with his face and hands against the wall, and listened to the merciless beating of his screaming friend. When the Beatles left the cell, everyone looked at Daniel, who was crying. Pierre asked in a concerned voice if he was OK and Dan asked where it hurt most. After a while in captivity, they had learned to protect their internal organs from the beatings; bruising would disappear, but permanent internal injuries would not. Despite the pain, Daniel laughed and cried with relief that he hadn’t been seriously hurt.
‘Signe is waiting for me! Signe is waiting for me!’ he exclaimed.
During this period, the prisoners held proof-of-life parties whenever one of them was asked questions like the ones the guards had asked Daniel. Emails had been sent to the hostages’ families or employers, who hastily sent back questions. The only people who had nothing to celebrate were the six British and American hostages. Nobody asked them proof-of-life questions. The other captives had various theories as to why. Perhaps the silence was part of a political game, perhaps the US and UK were playing hard to get, or maybe the Beatles could manage only a certain number of negotiations at one time.
With impatience and a deep sense of foreboding, the six hostages nevertheless waited for a sign that negotiations for their release would begin soon.
· * ·
Five days passed before Daniel’s family in Hedegård received answers to the questions they had sent the kidnappers; the responses confirmed that they were indeed in contact with those holding Daniel captive.