by Puk Damsgård
On the day Pierre and the other Frenchmen received their second question, Pierre couldn’t sleep. He lay awake all night, scratching his long beard. He hated the idea that someone should pay the Islamists so that he could live, and he hated himself for accepting that he was just a white foreigner who could be sold as an object. The activist and the super-idealist within him had surrendered to darker forces, and he was disgusted. Pierre seemed so indignant about the situation that Daniel was worried he would take his own life to avoid being bought.
Everything indicated that Pierre would be released before Daniel. The Beatles had told Daniel that his family had collected only €845,000.
‘They’re still over 1.3 million euros short,’ said George disdainfully.
So Daniel made a plan for what Pierre should tell his family. The stories had to be from the good times – that they had sat together by candlelight and played chess and had long conversations.
‘Don’t tell them I was tortured,’ Daniel asked.
Inspired by the Spaniards and the Frenchmen, they also got another idea. So that Daniel could get a hint of how the negotiations about his release were going, they agreed that some secret codes should be inserted into the last proof-of-life questions which the family would be asked to send to Daniel.
If things were looking bad for his release, they would send a question about Kjeld’s red truck. In that case, Daniel could make up his own mind whether or not he wanted to try to escape if the opportunity arose. If a release seemed possible, but they weren’t absolutely there yet, the question should be about his old motorcycle. Although the motorcycle wasn’t amber, he would remember the question as amber. And if they had collected all the money, the question should deal with the apple-green car he had sold to his parents.
Red, amber, green. He would be able to remember the colours of blood and hope, even if they beat the life out of him.
Pierre and Daniel gave each other a long hug. When the moment came for Pierre to leave, they had already said their goodbyes.
‘We’ll see each other when we go to Scotland,’ said Pierre, referring to an earlier promise they’d made to each other.
Before the Frenchmen were released, the Beatles brought a guest to the cell one day in mid-April 2014. When the hostages were given the order to turn around again, a woman in a black veil stood by the far wall. She pulled the veil to one side and introduced herself as Kayla Mueller from the United States. She said she had a message for the US government that the Frenchmen should deliver.
She said that she was well and the demand for her release was €5 million – or a woman prisoner for a woman prisoner. If the latter, ISIS was demanding the release of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist who had been sentenced to eighty-six years in prison in the US for an attack on US agents and military personnel in Afghanistan. Kayla said that she had been held hostage since August 2013. The young aid worker had been kept in many of the same prisons as Daniel.
When she and the Beatles again disappeared out of the cell, the hostages talked about how they could help Kayla, who was probably locked up in a cell alone.
The day after Kayla’s visit, the Beatles told the Frenchmen they would be released, but that among the many euros that had been delivered as ransom were 4,000 damaged banknotes.
‘But we aren’t Jews, so we will free you in a few days,’ said one of them and ordered the Frenchmen to tell the authorities about the worthless notes they had received. At the same time George demanded that the other hostages should write letters home.
The Beatles came back the next morning and George was furious because nobody had finished their letters. One of the hostages objected gently that he had told them they had two days.
‘Did I say two days …?’ mumbled George.
Daniel scribbled down a few sentences to say that his family should hurry and pay the ransom.
Pierre sat waiting with his hands and face against the wall, while the guards came and went through the open door to the corridor, where there was intense activity. Pierre and his countrymen were led out of the cell for the last time.
On his way out, Pierre quickly laid a hand on Daniel’s shoulder.
‘Goodbye, see you later,’ he said, and Daniel watched him disappear, wearing the jacket that had the drawing of Daniel sewn into one sleeve.
· * ·
The kidnappers’ response to Susanne and Kjeld’s offer of €845,000 wasn’t exactly encouraging. Using exclamation marks and capital letters, they emphasized in their reply that they wouldn’t accept less than €2 million. They once again urged Daniel’s family to contact the freed hostages, including the three women from MSF, who had been released in the meantime.
‘You may also take the opportunity to ask these families and representatives how they managed to raise the sum demanded for their release, so that you may do the same,’ was the message.
The daily updates on the fundraising weren’t encouraging either. The flood of contributions had slowed. As a result Anita extended the circle of contributors to include people who didn’t necessarily know Daniel. A letter was circulated to the principals of Denmark’s schools and colleges which had been signed by several principals of the schools where Daniel had been a student and taught, as well as by the bishop of Ribe Diocese, where Susanne was originally from. Because they hadn’t yet been able to collect the whole ransom money, the letter called on each recipient to ‘share it by email with people you trust in your own network’. They explained:
A lot of money has been collected for the family and they now have more than half of what is expected to be needed to free Daniel. There are a number of private companies and business people who have chosen to support the collection. But it has also to a large degree been the breadth of support from the community, where the ‘many small streams’ have made such a difference.
While the family in Hedegård was in a race against time, in mid-April happy pictures of the four released Frenchmen made news around the world. Because France had the exact opposite approach to hostage negotiations as Denmark, when they landed on French soil in front of rolling cameras the released hostages were greeted by a welcome committee consisting of President François Hollande and Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius.
‘France is proud to have been able to secure their release,’ said Hollande as he stood beside the four men.
Pierre tried to blend in with the asphalt and stood furthest away from the president and Didier François, who gave a speech, saying how great it was to be free and back ‘out in the open’. Pierre felt uncomfortable about being seen with the president and about the state making such a big deal out of his release. Moreover, this was what the Beatles had warned against: talking to the press while negotiations about other hostages were still ongoing.
· * ·
When the Frenchmen left the Quarry in Raqqa, the remaining prisoners were divided into Muslims and non-Muslims. James, John, Peter and Toni were escorted into another room diagonally opposite. Daniel, Dan and his colleague Federico, Alan, Steven and David stayed in the cell where they had always been and where there was suddenly so much space they could turn around without getting someone else’s foot in their crotch.
Daniel used the space to train himself to run a marathon in a circle on the floor. As he ran round and round on a blanket, so that he didn’t make a noise, he updated Dan about how it was going. He was in poor shape, so he started out gently with a daily distance of what he loosely calculated had to be about two kilometres, when the running circle was about nine metres and he ran 220 laps.
His training programme was interrupted when a new hostage was thrown into the cell.
‘Get to know him well – he’s going to be here a long time,’ said one of the Beatles, slamming the door behind him.
The man was of dark complexion and seemed to be in his mid-fifties. What little hair he had left was grey and he wore a
long, grey tunic. He had a frightened look in his eyes and asked in poor English who these people were that had taken him. The hostages offered him food and water, but he declined and prayed to Allah. A few hours later, George came into the cell with a marker pen and some sheets of A4 paper and ordered the remaining hostages who weren’t from Britain or the United States to write exactly the words he dictated. With the marker, Daniel wrote:
I don’t want to end like him. Pay 2 M. Go to Danish Government.
Daniel accidentally wrote the ‘G’ in ‘Government’ backwards and George kicked him in the side, screwed up the paper and gave Daniel a new sheet to start again. Maybe it was fear, but Daniel wrote the ‘G’ backwards again. George gave up and made Federico write Daniel’s message instead.
Daniel’s brain was running at full speed. ‘I don’t want to end like him.’ What the hell did that mean? And why weren’t Alan, Steven and David, who were sitting in the same room, writing a similar message? Daniel, Federico, Dan and the Belgian were asked to follow, while Toni, who had also written a note, was dragged out from the other room, where the Muslim converts were sitting. For the first time, they didn’t have their hands tied behind their backs, only blindfolds. Daniel, Federico and Toni were pushed into the back seat of a car, while Dan and the Belgian were in another car.
‘Do you know what you’re going to do?’ asked George cheerfully from the driver’s seat.
No one answered.
‘You’re going to watch someone be executed,’ he said. He told them that the man who was to be executed was a North African spy who worked for the West, which was why the ISIS sharia court had sentenced him to death for espionage.
‘And you’re going to watch. Don’t worry, you’re OK.’
The Brit began playing music in the car, a nasheed, an ISIS Islamic hymn, and he chanted along as they drove.
‘Stay in your seats,’ ordered George when the car stopped.
The door opened and a hand gripped Daniel’s arm. He got out of the car and could feel through his thin sandals that he was walking through sand and scattered pebbles. George pushed the blindfold down around Daniel’s neck so that he could see a desert landscape with scattered tufts of grass – and a bulldozer. He led Daniel and the other four hostages in front of a hole, the size of which was similar to what an excavator could take with a shovelful.
The middle-aged man from the cell was on his knees next to the hole, in his grey tunic and a reddish-yellow blindfold. His hands were tied together with a strip of fabric and it struck Daniel that the Beatles weren’t going to waste a pair of handcuffs on a dead man.
The hostages were asked to hold their A4 sheets up in front of them. The wind was gusting strongly and Daniel held his paper tight, so it wouldn’t blow out of his hands.
The man’s lips were moving in a final prayer. John was standing behind him with his Glock pistol; Ringo was filming from the other side of the grave, and George was choreographing the entire scene.
‘Look into the camera and hold your pages towards the camera!’ shouted Ringo.
‘Don’t fuck up, Daniel, or we’ll shoot you!’ George chimed in, picking on Daniel even more.
The wind threw the warm desert air into Daniel’s face as he gazed at the praying, condemned man and gripped his page.
John took a few steps back and shot the man in the back of the head, so that he toppled over, head first, then landed on his back with his legs against the wall of the grave. The sound of the shot from the pistol cut through the wind and blasted through Daniel’s eardrums with such force that it felt as if they were exploding.
John went over to the grave, targeted his pistol at the already dead man and sent eight more shots into his chest. Blood was pouring through the victim’s reddish-yellow blindfold and out on to the cracked desert floor at the bottom of the pit. Ringo panned with his camera from the executed man and up to the five hostages who were kneeling like sand sculptures by the edge of the hole with their messages in front of them. Daniel stared at the man’s lifeless body and felt a sense of relief that death happened so quickly when it finally came. The Beatles had talked so much about beheadings that it was a relief to see that they could also use a firearm.
The hostages were ordered to climb down into the grave, after which Ringo took photographs of the hostages with his SLR camera. Daniel was between Dan and Toni, and while they held up their papers to the camera, Ringo took a series of photos with at least two hostages in each.
‘Look into the camera!’ shouted Ringo to Daniel, who was staring down at the corpse by his feet.
When Daniel raised his head and looked towards the camera, which Ringo was holding in front of his face, the Brit shouted, ‘Noooooo, stop staring at me!’
On their way back to the cell, Ringo leaned towards Daniel and whispered in his ear, ‘Want to hear a secret? You’re next.’
Daniel’s heart was pounding. Ringo was right. If his family didn’t collect the money fast enough, they could use him as blackmail in the other cases. They probably wouldn’t kill an MSF worker, Italy would pay for Federico, and the Americans and British were worth more politically than a man from a small country.
When they returned to the cell, Steven, Alan and David asked what had happened. While Daniel and the four others had been forced to watch the execution for the proof-of-life video, the Americans and the British had been left in uncertainty. Daniel didn’t want to express his fears in front of others who had been given no sign that negotiations for their release were taking place. Instead, he went over to Dan, who, thanks to his employer paying the ransom, would soon be on his way out. Still afraid that Ringo was right, Daniel began desperately writing down names of people his family could contact in order to help raise the ransom. He used a green ballpoint to draft a list that Dan could take home to his family: names of business and media people, politicians, trade unions, ‘the Queen and more’.
‘If I’m going to get out, then it fucking well needs to be now,’ Daniel said despondently.
‘Calm down, everything will be OK,’ reassured Dan.
‘If I don’t get out of here alive, and you get out, will you do me a favour?’ Daniel asked.
Dan nodded.
‘Buy a bouquet of roses for Signe, and one for Christina when she finishes high school.’
· * ·
On 19 April an email landed in Susanne’s inbox. It was the sort of email the family had agreed with Arthur they wouldn’t open. It contained a compressed file that came with instructions on how to download it, as well as a password which included ‘9-11’.
Arthur was the first to download the file. It was Ringo’s video from the grave in the desert. There were also several photographs of Daniel, who was holding the paper with the demand for €2 million. He stood in a white shirt, and his blindfold, a piece of grey cloth, was wrapped around his neck. The captors wrote in the email:
Stop wasting valuable time and come up with our demand for cash before it’s too late.
The Easter gala for Daniel’s benefit was held in Svendborg. Volunteers had been working hard to get the arrangements off the ground. A number of gymnasts were going to perform; some people had organized a bake sale; and Anita had made sure the audience could further contribute to the fund by buying photographs that Daniel had taken of the World Team in Denmark.
Anita gave a welcome speech and she took a deep breath as she stood alone in the spotlight on the floor in front of 1,100 paying spectators, who had crowded into the hall. She stuck closely to her script.
‘First, on behalf of the family, I’d like to thank you all for coming here today – not only those of you who knew the purpose of the show in advance, but also those of you who have just found out. For obvious reasons, it has been necessary to exercise great discretion about the show being a support show for my brother,’ she began.
‘Unfortunately, we haven’t reached our
target yet and that is why we still need your help. But we also know that many of you who are here today have already supported us financially and that the possibilities you have of giving us further support are limited. So the greatest help you can give is if all of you go home and pass on the message to your networks and anyone you think will support us.’
The sea of people in front of her applauded and the show began.
Even though the Easter gala brought in 175,000 kroner (€23,500/£18,200), Anita was running out of ideas about where next to turn to reach the target. Daniel’s pictures hadn’t exactly been bestsellers. It was only thanks to some slightly larger contributions, and because they took a chance and offered about 2 million kroner more than they actually had, that, on 24 April, the family could email Syria with an offer of 9.7 million kroner (about €1.3 million or £1,009,300).
The agreement was that the kidnappers would send a picture of Daniel when the family had collected €1.3 million, which they did the same day. Susanne thought that Daniel had put on weight. His face looked almost plump or swollen as he sat there, holding a sign with the message: ‘We appreciate your quick reply and the fact that four more have been united’ – a reference to the release of the French.
Pierre also reached out to Daniel’s family. He called Susanne’s mobile while she was sitting on the sofa with a blanket over her legs. She had difficulty understanding the French-English accent, but managed to interpret that, according to Pierre, Daniel was well. They agreed that the family would call Pierre over Skype, so that Arthur could also be present and act as interpreter.
They all gathered in front of the computer, listening to Pierre as he recounted how he and Daniel had played games, done gymnastics and spent time together in the evening.
‘The kidnappers would like to release Daniel,’ said Pierre.
Anita asked about the pearl-shaped marks around Daniel’s neck, which were there on the first images the family had received during the summer of 2013.