NYC Letter: Kidnapped By Personal Islamite Bankers

RANSOM 'FOUND ON FREED HOSTAGE'

January 22, 2006 (Telegraph) - Part of the ransom money alleged to have been paid by the German government to win the freedom of the Iraq hostage Susanne Osthoff last month was found on her after she was released, it was claimed yesterday.

Two days after her release, Germany freed a Hizbollah member jailed for life in 1985 [sic] for the murder of an American navy diver. Berlin has denied a connection between the two events ["completely absurd"].

Just that crazy synchronicity thing. Not unlike when asked at gunpoint for money at that exact same instant you had independently decided to surrender your wallet.

The German magazine Focus said officials found several thousand dollars in the 43-year-old archaeologist's clothes when she took a shower at the German embassy in Baghdad after being freed on December 18.

The serial numbers on the bills matched those used to pay off her kidnappers, the magazine said. ... Ms Osthoff was unavailable for comment.

[Hat tip: Hervé]

TERRORIST JOINT VENTURE
You Provide The Body, Abject Fear, And Squeals For Mercy
Your Jihadi Financial Partners Do The Tough Money Talk

Ah, but Frau Osthoff has not always been unavailable for a comment or two:

Osthoff, a Muslim convert and Arabic speaker, said her captors [Saraja el-Salasil, scil., Stormtroopers Of The Earthquakes] demanded German humanitarian aid for Iraq's Sunni Arabs and stated clearly that they did not want a ransom. ... She described her captors as "poor people" and said that she "cannot blame them for kidnapping her, as they cannot enter [Baghdad's heavily fortified] Green Zone to kidnap Americans."

It is a sad day indeed when Arab gentlemen must make do with peace-loving Germans because jackbooted Americans are unavailable for kidnapping and beheading.

She said she lived with her captors in a clean place and that they treated her "well". [See photo above.] But she repeated more than once that she "was sold", without making clear what she meant, while expressing her shock at Berlin's failure to contact her captors.

Perhaps Frau Osthoff was "sold" on the heady profit-sharing afforded her by Saraja el-Salasil, which is an Arab gentlemen's hospitality club and, as it turns out, an Islamite-compliant financial opportunity association. But then it is difficult to keep one's head when propositioned by the Arab gentlemen.