Last Saturday, a 28-year-old man from Ede took four employees of a café in that town hostage. According to his lawyer, he was in a ‘hopeless situation’ and was looking for appropriate assistance. Yesterday, just three days after the hostage situation in Ede, there was a hostage situation in the PI in Heerhugowaard. The detained hostage taker was arrested.
Both hostage situations lasted several hours. And that is no coincidence. “Time is the most important thing,” says lecturer in technology and investigation Jaap Knotter of Saxion University of Applied Sciences and the Police Academy. He worked as a police negotiator for sixteen years and obtained his PhD in the subject. “The more time there is, the more peace there is.”
That calm is important in hostage situations, he explains. The hostage taker must feel that he or she has control over the situation. “Otherwise you get a situation of ‘a cornered cat makes strange jumps’. And that is a very scary situation.”
Scenario sketches
A hostage situation is a form of deprivation of liberty. This is also stated in the Criminal Code if someone is prosecuted for taking a hostage. Specifically, we are talking about a deprivation of liberty where the location where the victims are being held is known.
When a report of a possible hostage situation is received by the police, a negotiator is not immediately called in. First it must be determined what exactly the situation is. There are many different variations of hostage situations, ranging from, for example, an abduction of a child abroad or a hostage situation with a terrorist motive.
In all cases, the victims have the highest priority, Knotter knows. “They must remain unharmed.” Only then will an arrest and possible conviction be considered.
What to do
Although there is no general answer to the question of what a hostage can best do in such a situation, Knotter suggests that there is no harm in trying to start a conversation with the hostage taker. He sets the condition that the hostage taker must be open to it. A conversation should not be forced. “But a hostage taker is also and remains a human being of flesh and blood.”
Negotiators trying to contact a hostage taker must consider the best approach on a case-by-case basis. “Physical contact is sometimes preferable,” says Knotter. “Then you can look each other straight in the eye and see each other’s body language.”
On the other hand, such direct contact can also be very confrontational for a hostage taker and sometimes even dangerous for the negotiator himself. “Especially if it is a hostage situation with terrorist intent,” says the lecturer. In those cases it may be better to contact us by telephone, WhatsApp or via the internet.
If promises are made during the negotiation – such as the delivery of food during the hostage crisis in Ede – then it is important to keep that promise. “You can’t say: oh sorry, it’s not possible,” says Knotter. Otherwise you run the risk of an unexpected situation arising.
According to Knotter, these unexpected situations are dangerous. “The hostage taker may do something in a panic reaction that you wouldn’t actually expect,” he says. Consider, for example, the moment when the hostage ran away from his captor at the Apple Store in Amsterdam in 2022. Although that ended well for the hostage – the hostage-taker was hit by the police – there was ‘absolutely no guarantee’ that it would happen that way.”
Ultimately, a negotiator tries to convince a hostage taker that it is possible to stop the situation. That happened in Ede, for example. The hostage taker eventually released the hostages and had himself arrested. Knotter: “You may have deprived people of their freedom, but no murder was committed. Of course you will be punished, but there is still a way back.”
Tags: hostage situations week negotiator works
