Sunday, January 22, 2006
Osthoff On The Take???
Remember Suzanne Osthoff, the "deeply confused" hostage who didn't think her captors were criminals? After her release, TigerHawk speculated about whether Germany had ransomed her. Many Germans were furious with her when, shortly after being released, she announced that she was going to return to Iraq:
Perhaps the funniest note in the Times article was this, tacked onto the tail end:
Apparently Ms. Osthoff is in hot water again. The former hostage and Idiotarian of the Year Nominee has been found in a bit of an embarrassing situation:
So far, no word from the German government on whether they consider Ms. Osthoff to be a criminal...
UPDATE: Via David's Medienkritik, More evidence Osthoff is playing some kind of double game:
The linked article goes on to describe an interview in which Osthoff lets slip the fact that her captors knew her first name and considered her "a friend of Iraq". But the most interesting facet of all this is where the hostages come from:
Has Oil-for-Terrorism been supplanted by Hostages-for-Terror?
“A self-willed woman!” exploded Hans-Ulrich Klose, the deputy leader of the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee. “Incomprehensible,” agreed Ruprecht Polenz, the committee chairman. “In the event of a second kidnapping one would have to discuss who should foot the bill.”
German newspapers have been full of letters complaining about how much she has cost the taxpayer. Peter Scholl-Latour, the country’s leading Middle East expert, complained: “She is absolutely irresponsible — she is just kicking the Government on the shins.”
Perhaps the funniest note in the Times article was this, tacked onto the tail end:
Frau Osthoff was unharmed and, according to security sources quoted in Der Spiegel, the sharp-tongued archaeologist made full use of her Arabic fluency to reprimand the kidnappers. It appears they were relieved to see her go.
Apparently Ms. Osthoff is in hot water again. The former hostage and Idiotarian of the Year Nominee has been found in a bit of an embarrassing situation:
Part of the ransom money alleged to have been paid by the German government to win the freedom of Iraq hostage Susanne Osthoff last month was found on Osthoff after her release, the German magazine Focus said on Saturday.
Without citing its sources, Focus said officials at the German embassy in Baghdad had found several thousand U.S. dollars in the 43-year-old German archaeologist's clothes when she took a shower at the embassy shortly after being freed.
The serial numbers on the bills matched those used by the government to pay off Osthoff's kidnappers, the magazine said.
Efforts to contact Osthoff for comment through her mother and a friend failed.
Osthoff, who converted to Islam and lived in Iraq, was seized heading north from Baghdad on November 25 by gunmen who threatened in a videotape to kill her and her driver unless Germany ended all support for the Iraqi government.
So far, no word from the German government on whether they consider Ms. Osthoff to be a criminal...
UPDATE: Via David's Medienkritik, More evidence Osthoff is playing some kind of double game:
Despite the steadfast tone of Merkel’s words, evidence emerging in the German media suggests that the result of the Osthoff kidnapping was the same: i.e. more euros for terror. The first indications came from Osthoff herself. Asked about the conditions of her release in an interview with the German weekly Stern, she responded: “The kidnappers had an offer from the Germans. I am not permitted to tell you the exact amount. But they found it a bit low. So, they haggled some more. After all, they had to save face and cover their costs.” Note Osthoff’s remark that she is “not permitted” (“Ich darf nicht”) to reveal the exact amount, suggesting that she had been so instructed in being debriefed by German authorities following her release.
In any case, if a report from the German domestic wire service ddp is to be believed, the hostage-takers in fact did much more than just “cover their costs.” Citing information from unnamed German intelligence sources, the ddp report puts the sum of the ransom payment at “around $5 million.” According to the ddp’s sources, an envoy from Germany’s Federal Intelligence Agency, the BND, “brought the money, divided up into smaller bills, from Berlin to Iraq, as the hostage-takers demanded. The ‘bound ‘parcel’ was of ‘considerable weight’.”
The ddp also claimed to have confirmed widespread rumors according to which Osthoff is supposed herself to have worked for the BND in Iraq. Nonetheless, the shock headline of a UPI article that appeared subsequently -- “The Lady was a Spy” -- is undoubtedly exaggerated. As her own account largely corroborates -- she has merely remained coy about whether she was paid for her services -- Osthoff was, more exactly, an informant for the BND: providing her “friends” in the German intelligence agency with tips on what she has euphemistically termed the “security situation” in Iraq -- or, in other words and as her examples make clear, on impending terrorist attacks.
This raises an obvious question: how was Osthoff privy to such information? In the series of often mind-bending interviews that she has given to the German media since her release -- starting with her now famous burqa-clad appearance on Germany’s ZDF public television -- Osthoff has made no secret where her political sympathies lie. Among other things, she has referred nonchalantly to the forces responsible for the violence in Iraq as “the resistance,” waxed philosophical about wishing to see Iraq return to “how it was,” and even spoken of Osama Bin Laden by just his first name as “Osama” (that’s “Sheik Osama”, her captors are supposed to have corrected her).
The linked article goes on to describe an interview in which Osthoff lets slip the fact that her captors knew her first name and considered her "a friend of Iraq". But the most interesting facet of all this is where the hostages come from:
While politically-motivated hostage-takings still occur in Iraq, a second sort of, so to say, “economic” hostage-taking operation has clearly become a major source of financing for the Iraqi “insurgency.” It is hard to overlook the fact that the seemingly most remunerative “catches” have been citizens of precisely those states that spearheaded the opposition to the American-led intervention in Iraq and whose governments staked their credibility on the claim that the consequences of ousting Saddam Hussein would be disastrous. By permitting their citizens to enter into harm’s way in Iraq or even facilitating this -- Osthoff’s archaeological project in Mosul was financed by the German government -- and then paying ransom to gain their release from captivity, France and Germany are, in effect, helping to make these dire predictions come true.
Has Oil-for-Terrorism been supplanted by Hostages-for-Terror?
1 Comments:
By 
Christine, at
Sun Jan 22, 03:37:00 PM:
“Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive”
