1- One of these trends leads to explicit hostage situations: one person or a small group of persons is held as a lever to obtain something.

This "something" may be money as well as a political demand.

· Money, the first "sub-trend" of explicit hostage taking is quite common. That means that the terrorist group abducts people for the purpose of requesting money for their freedom.

For instance, this practice is very common with the FARC, (Fuerzas Armadas Revolutionarias de Colombia - EP - army of the people) the Colombian narco-terrorist group. The figures are terrifying.

From January of 1996 to March of 2001, 12 917 people have been kidnapped by all types of Colombian criminals. The FARC are responsible for 3 513 abductions and about the same figure represents unidentified acts. The total in 2000 was 3 705.
Today, Colombian specialists consider that at least 500 people are detained by the FARC in the Switzerland sized so-called "demilitarized" zone. This same zone that the UN and 10 so-called "facilitator" nations - including France - managed, a few days ago, to preserve under the rule of the terrorists.

According to our sources, a ransom's mean price is $400 000 in Colombia and the starting price is $2million for a foreigner.
It's a great deal of money that combines with the FARC's cocaine and heroin trade.

This is only one example of the hostage taking money business, but there are of course many others.

· The other "sub-trend" of explicit hostage taking, is the use of hostages to modify the political behavior of a government, internal or diplomatic. The hostage situation can last long or be short but is intended to put high media pressure on a government, which generally leads to negotiations.

The goal may be effective or symbolic but always using opinion as a main player.

For instance the objective can be liberation of so called political prisoners, usually other terrorists, and the means that comes first to mind is hijacking.

One among so many happened in January of 2000. 5 hijackers from the Islamist group "Harakat ul Mujahidine", Pakistanese, close to Oussama Ber Laden, kept 160 hostages in an Indian Airlines plane on the Khandahar airport runway for 170 hours.
They demanded the liberation of the Kashmiri separatist Masood Azhar, 36 extremists, the body of one of them and $200 million.

But that time, the first demand the commandos dropped was the money and at the end of a hard negotiation, only three people were released.

None of the commandos was caught. India, under the spotlights of the world`s media, had to change its attitude and free some islamists involved in Kashmir terrorist actions.

Of course, a hostage situation can include both, money and a political request, for instance Lebanon and French hostages. The situation was created to make France change its politics towards the Middle-East situation and particularly Iran, but hostages were exchanged for - controversial - money

It also has to be said that these explicit hostage situations can be very similar outside of terrorism in purely criminal actions.

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