Hutchings, Captives Leave Only Trail Of Questions Captured Rebel Says Hostages Killed, But Nomads Report Seeing Them Alive
Thick, swirling mists envelop the forbidding vastness of the Himalayas above this trekking village where an American, two Britons and a German have disappeared after being seized last July as hostages in Kashmir’s guerrilla war.
Unlike the Western hostages in Lebanon, whose fate commanded public attention in the 1980s, the four men have never been household names. Like the war in which they became victims, the hostages’ plight, even whether they are alive or dead, has been mostly a distant matter for all but their relatives and those immediately involved in trying to bring them back.
But the search for the men - Donald Hutchings, 43, a psychologist from Spokane; Keith Mangan, 34, and Paul Wells, 24, both from Britain, and Dirk Hasert, 27, from Germany - has become one of the costliest and most mystifying in the annals of political kidnapping.
Diplomatic appeals, especially to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries backing Muslim insurgents in Kashmir, have been coupled with secret military operations by the U.S. Army’s crack Delta Force, by Britain’s Special Air Squadron and by GS-9, Germany’s elite counterterrorism force, together with tens of thousands of Indian troops.
So far none of these efforts has come close to ending the drama.
Nobody can even be sure whether the kidnappers, who call themselves Al Faran, are real insurgents or, as many better known Kashmiri guerrillas assert, are Indian-backed renegades who have set out to discredit the entire movement.
“There are many bizarre things about this entire business,” a senior diplomat said. But the diplomat added that India, while gaining politically from the bruising that the hostagetaking had given to the image of Pakistan and to the insurgents, had nonetheless dealt honestly in attempts to free the men.
For the moment about the only thing anybody can be sure of is that the kidnappers have to be taken in deadly earnest.
Because earlier kidnappings here had ended peacefully, usually with trades of hostages for imprisoned insurgent leaders, the seizure first looked as though it might end with a quick release. But a month after the kidnappings, when the Indian government had rejected any deal on the kidnappers’ demand for the release of 21 jailed militants, the gang responded with a brutal message.
On Aug. 13 a fifth hostage, Hans-Christian Ostro, a 27-year-old Norwegian who had come to India to study dance, was found lying dead on a village pathway in the Pahalgam district, close to the site of the kidnappings, with his severed head balanced between his thighs.
Since then nobody has argued with Hutchings’ gloomy estimate in a radio conversation shortly after he was abducted.
Addressing his wife after the first week of forced marches through the mountains with a group of about 20 kidnappers, often at heights of 12,000 feet and more, Hutchings said: “Jane, I want you to know I am OK. But I do not know whether I will die today or tomorrow. I appeal to the American and Indian governments for help.”
Two weeks ago, six months after a Nov. 26 radio contact between the kidnappers and Indian intermediaries that was the last direct link, hopes for the kidnapped men plunged.
In the presence of U.S. and British antiterrorism experts, a captured Muslim insurgent who claimed to have been involved in the kidnappings told Indian interrogators that the hostages had been killed and buried in the mountains in December.
At Kokernag, in a thickly forested valley 50 miles southeast of Srinagar, the summer capital of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, the report of the killings set Indian paramilitary forces on the grim task of digging in the forest outside Magam, a nearby village.
Masood Naseer, the captured insurgent, said he had given orders for the hostages to be killed and buried near Magam after hearing that other members of the gang were in danger of being trapped by Indian troops.
But last week a senior Indian intelligence officer told reporters in Srinagar that Naseer’s account of the execution was “less credible” than claims by goat-herding nomads in the mountains above Kokernag.
The nomads told the reporters in Kokernag that they had seen the hostages in the mountains about 20 miles northeast of the village as recently as two weeks ago, and that the four men appeared to be well.
The kidnappers’ own account, in a message delivered to the news media in Srinagar in December, was that they had ceased holding the hostages after an incident Dec. 4 in which an Indian patrol attacked members of the gang at the village of Dabran, killing four gang members, including the man said to have been in charge.
xxxx ARE THEY ALIVE OR DEAD? Two weeks ago, a captured Muslim insurgent who claimed to have been involved in the kidnappings said the hostages had been killed and buried in the mountains in December. But last week a senior Indian intelligence officer told reporters that the insurgent’s story was “less credible” than claims by goat-herding nomads, who said they had seen the hostages in the mountains as recently as two weeks ago, and that the four men appeared to be well.