Saturday, January 28, 2006

Kidnapping the relatives of terrorists

From the AP:

The U.S. Army in Iraq has at least twice seized and jailed the wives of suspected insurgents in hopes of "leveraging" their husbands into surrender, U.S. military documents show.

In one case, a secretive task force locked up the young mother of a nursing baby, a U.S. intelligence officer reported. In the case of a second detainee, one American colonel suggested to another that they catch her husband by tacking a note to the family's door telling him "to come get his wife."

Ah... that's an old trick Filipino vigilantes (both Christians and Muslims) use to convince the Abu Sayyaf to release their hostages. I commented about it at wretchard's old blog:

I remember the hostage taking situation in Basilan. Some fed-up Muslim citizens immediately formed vigilante groups and kidnapped the wives and relatives of the Abu sayyaf hostagetakers so that they will be used as "bargaining chips" in exchange for the release of student hostages.

And didn't russian authorities do the same thing too in beslan by seizing some of the relatives of the chechen terrorists "for questioning"?

Go google about it if you like. Too lazy to provide the links right now. Maybe later.

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