In a two month spree last year ISIS terrorists brutally executed five westerners after holding them captive for months and some for years. Three were American, two were British.

But in the lead-up to those murders, 15 European hostages, who had been held in the same underground cell in Syria as the murdered men, were released and returned to their families.
The difference? European governments routinely negotiate the payment of multi-million dollar ransoms to Islamist hostage-takers. The British and American governments will not.

One of the 15 Europeans to make it home was Nicolas Hénin. He is lucky to be alive – and, he adds, lucky to be French. The photo-journalist was kidnapped in Syria in 2013 and held for 10 months with some 20 other hostages. For a week he was handcuffed together with American reporter Jim Foley. Foley would become the first American to be beheaded, in August 2014.

But by then, Hénin and three fellow Frenchmen had been released. European governments routinely deny that they pay ransoms. But a French member of parliament is adamant: somebody paid.

“It’s impossible to make somebody free without paying, if you are French. Perhaps if you are Australian or American or British, it’s possible. But if you are French, no. We pay.” Alain Marsaud, Opposition member of French Parliament

Hénin talks movingly of the mixture of fear and boredom that he and his fellow hostages endured. And of how Jim Foley wept with happiness when, after 13 months of silence, his captors finally asked him intimate questions, posed by his family, to prove he was alive.

“It’s not only a proof of life that you send to your relatives, it’s also a proof that the outside world still exists, and knows that you are alive. The proof of life gives you hope.” Nicolas Hénin, former IS hostage

But Jim Foley’s employer describes how hope soon gave way to frustration. As more and more European hostages were released, his family realised that their own government was doing nothing. And when they began to raise money for a ransom themselves, they were warned by a White House official that they might be prosecuted. Now Foley and three other American hostages are dead.

“The US and UK governments need to reflect on the outcome and not just the simple policy that they can try to feel proud of. The outcome here was not good, and it needs to be better.” Philip Balboni, founder and CEO, Global Post

Paris bridge shots

Music

00:00

Holmes walks with Hénin

HOLMES: French freelance journalist Nicolas Hénin is lucky to be alive. For now, he lives and works in Paris. But he spent years covering the disintegration of Iraq, and then Libya, and then Syria.

00:18

Archival. Syria fighting

00:37

Reconstruction. Stairs and corridor. Hostages in underground cells. Super: Reconstruction

And for ten long months, until his release in April last year, he was held as a hostage by the fanatical followers of IS, the self-styled Islamic State; crammed in with up to 20 others, in a series of underground cells in the Syrian cities of Aleppo and Raqa’a. Five of them – two Britons, and three Americans – are now dead. Of the others, all but one are free. But none of them knew at the time how long their captivity would last, or how it would end.

NICOLAS HÉNIN: “It’s a lot about boredom and also fear,

00:50

Hénin interview. Super:
Nicolas Hénin
Former hostage

but I would say that boredom is probably the most important feeling, even before fear.

01:40

Hostage reconstruction

We were stuck in a small room in a very small place and we had, well often no more than one square metre for each of us. We had very little light, and… we had nothing. The only thing we had to entertain us was what

01:50

Hénin

every one of us took with him here [points to head], in his memory”.

02:14

Hostage reconstruction

HOLMES: Memory and imagination.

02:20

Ext. Radio France building

02:30

Hénin in radio studio promoting children’s book

Since his return to Paris, Hénin has become a minor celebrity…

02:33

RADIO ANNOUNCER: “Nicolas Hénin makes regular appearances in our newspapers and on television”.

02:39

HOLMES: ...partly on the basis of a children’s book that he conceived in his cell,

02:43

Hénin’s book

with illustrations by fellow hostage Pierre Torres: Will Daddy Hedgehog Come Home? The book started, Hénin explains, with a game some of the hostages played to pass the time.

02:46

Hénin in radio studio

NICOLAS HÉNIN: “The idea was to ask what animal do you like best, what animal would you like to be? And then one day I chose a hedgehog and that triggered a memory for Pierre, who told me that same evening. “You know Nicolas the cool thing about hedgehogs is that they always find their way home.”

03:02

Pages of book

And the story came to me at that moment very vividly”.

HOLMES: In his book, Daddy Hedgehog is taken away in a picnic basket and after many adventures, finds his way home.

03:22

Photos. Hostages with families

In real life, Nicolas Hénin, Pierre Torres and two other French journalists were reunited with their families just over a year ago. In fact, in the space of a few months last year, fifteen of the twenty or so hostages who crammed

03:40

Return to reconstruction

Nicolas Hénin’s cell were freed – journalists and aid-workers from seven other European countries as well as France. All their governments deny that they pay ransoms.

NICOLAS HÉNIN: “The only thing that I know for a fact is

03:57

Hénin interview

what President Hollande, the French President, told me when I arrived in Paris right after my release, he told me looking me into the eyes “France did not pay”.

04:13

New York GVs

Music

04:26

Ext. New York Times building

HOLMES: But according to a much-quoted series of articles published last year in the New York Times, France does pay multi-million dollar ransoms, and so do most other European governments.

04:32

New York Times headlines

The author of those articles is Rukmini Callimachi, who’s been researching hostage-taking in the Middle East and north Africa for years.

04:44

Callimachi in newsroom

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: “They’ve created a system of proxies that that allows them in some very literal interpretation of that question to claim that they haven’t paid, especially in Africa.

04:55

Callimachi interview. Super:
Rukmini Callimachi
New York Times

A European government would send the money and disguise it as a humanitarian payment, and then officials in the country would then pass it forward”.

HOLMES: “But as far as your sources

05:06

tell you, is it true to say that the ultimate payer of most of these ransoms are European taxpayers?”

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: “Absolutely”.

05:18

Return to hostage reconstruction

05:26

HOLMES: By August of last year, the only hostages left in the cell in Raqa’a were American and British – the nations that won’t pay ransoms.

05:31

Archival. Plane taking off from aircraft carrier/Air strike montage/Hostage murder

Then United States and its allies – including Britain and Australia – launched air strikes against Islamic State. Between August and October last year, Islamic State posted graphic videos of the murder of five hostages – three from the United States and two from Britain.

05:43

Foley execution video

Super: August 19, 2014

JAMES FOLEY: [Footage entitled A Message To America, 19 August 2011] “I call on my friends, family and loved ones…”

HOLMES: The first victim was American photojournalist James Foley.

JAMES FOLEY: “I wish I had more time, I wish I could have the hope of freedom and seeing my family once again. But that ship has sailed…”

06:17

Hénin interview

HOLMES: “A few months after your release, there was that gruesome series of public beheadings of people that you must have known intimately”.

NICOLAS HÉNIN: “Very intimately,

06:37

because we had a time of moving from one gaol to another and it was, all this move was, well....

06:46

Hostage reconstruction. Super:
Reconstruction

very improvised but to prevent us from escaping they handcuffed us by pair, and I was handcuffed with James Foley 24/7 for a week. So this gives you an idea of how intimate we became. You know,

06:55

Hénin interview. Super:
Nicolas Hénin
Former hostage

in a group like this, when you are so much missing space

07:18

Hostage reconstruction

and under pressure and stress, it’s normal that there were arguments between us and actually I think every one of us had, at some point, arguments with every other, except for James.

07:24

Hénin interview

James managed to stay friendly with everyone all the time”.

07:40

Archival. Foley Global Post report

07:46

HOLMES: Shortly after filing this report from Benghazi, Libya, in March 2011, James Foley was captured by pro-Ghaddafi forces. His then employer, the Boston website Global Post, managed to get him out six weeks later.

08:04

Super: August 8 2012

But in 2012, Foley insisted on going into the field again, to Aleppo, where the Syrian civil war was raging.

08:28

This time he was freelancing, but the Global Post bought many of his stories.

08:46

Boston from across river/Balboni walks through offices into meeting

Set up in Boston in 2009, the Global Post specialises in exactly the kind of front-line reporting Jim Foley did. Founder and CEO Phil Balboni admits that it’s struggling to break even. But when in November 2012, Foley disappeared, Balboni didn’t hesitate to spend money trying to find him.

08:56

PHILIP BALBONI: “We had people on the ground on the Turkish-Syrian border within a week

09:23

Balboni interview. Super
Philip Balboni
CEO, Global Post

and we didn’t find Jim for almost exactly a year. That was November of 2013 and very soon after that the first email form the kidnappers arrived”.

09:28

B&W Photo. Foley

HOLMES: The hostage takers put a price on Foley’s head: 100 million Euros.

PHILIP BALBONI: “We didn’t believe that that could be a credible,

09:44

Balboni interview

serious offer, I mean a hundred million euros is a stunning amount of money, at that time it was about 135 million US dollars. No one was capable of paying a ransom like that, no government would be likely to do it”.

09:59

Photo. Foley

HOLMES: But there was an upside: in the same email, the kidnappers invited the Foleys to submit three questions to prove their son was alive.

PHILIP BALBONI: “Jim’s brother Michael, worked very hard on crafting those questions so that they couldn’t be researched on the internet or on Facebook or something like that, that you could only know them... it would only be in Jim’s head.

10:16

Balboni interview

So off they went and a few days later they came back and they were all answered absolutely perfectly correctly, so we knew without any doubt that these people had Jim Foley”.

10:43

Hostage reconstruction

HOLMES: And when he was returned to his cell in Aleppo, Jim Foley knew, after thirteen months of silence, that his captors were in touch with his family.

NICOLAS HÉNIN: “He was crying. He was so happy, he was crying. OK, because when you are asked a proof of life question, it’s not only a proof of life of you sent to your relatives, it’s also a proof that the outside world still exists and knows that you are alive.

10:58

Hénin interview

The proof of life yes, gives you hope”.

11:38

Holmes to camera on Washington Street

HOLMES: But for Jim Foley’s family, hope soon gave way to frustration. In December 2013, after just five emails, all communication from his captors abruptly stopped. And from the FBI here in Washington, despite its access to all the United States’ formidable intelligence and diplomatic resources, they heard nothing either.

11:40

Ext. FBI Building. GFX: Digital signals

PHILIP BALBONI: “They had communications, intercepts, they had aerial surveillance, they had almost certainly human resources on the ground in Syria. So there was

12:03

Balboni

without doubt a lot of information that was available to them. Nothing, in the entire period of time that Jim was alive, not a single piece of actionable information ever came back to us”.

12:16

Callimachi at work

HOLMES: And according to Rukmini Callimachi, as winter gave way to spring last year, there was no communication either between the US Government and the hostage takers.’

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: “There was

12:31

Callimachi interview

very quickly a very big difference in how the French and how the Spanish and in how some of the other governments responded, whereas the Americans, you know, were dragging their feet and basically telling Mrs Foley “No, we don’t pay, ask for more proof of life etcetera,” the others were going into negotiation mode and saying okay, you know 100 million, 50 million, that’s out of the question, let’s talk more reasonably”.

12:44

Cherry blossoms in Washington, Washington memorial, US flags

HOLMES: By April, the European hostages were coming home. But from Washington, the families of the American hostages still heard nothing. Slowly, they realised that their government was doing nothing either.

13:08

What most of the families decided to do was to start raising the millions of dollars they thought might get the hostages freed.

13:28

Ext. White House

A White House official warned them that if they did so, they might face prosecution.

PHILIP BALBONI: “I think the thing that particularly infuriated Diane and John Foley was the threat

13:36

Balboni. Super: