This year has been the quietest on the high seas since 2008, as incidents of piracy have decreased. But that drop belies a change of tactics. Instead of hijacking vessels, pirates have turned to kidnapping. The last three years have seen a rash of kidnappings targeting ship crews, especially on Africa’s west coast and parts of Southeast Asia.
Between January and September this year, 44 kidnappings were tracked by IHS Maritime & Trade, a risk and analysis firm. That’s more than double the 19 kidnappings recorded in 2015, and more than four times as many incidents in 2014.
Captive is the first of the next wave to emerge and deals with the grim world of hostage-taking. Split into eight parts, each episode explores hostage situations from not only the perspective of the captive, but everyone else involved, including the hostage-takers, families, negotiators, and government officials. The series has been produced by Lightbox, with The Bourne Identity director Doug Liman also contributing heavily.
“Hostage taking is an issue that people are familiar with, but apart from those directly involved, nobody really knows much about,” said Lightbox’s Simon Chinn and Jonathan Chinn in an interview with Variety back in May.
(ABC news)- Police negotiators talking to the Orlando nightclub gunman at first weren't sure if the person they had on the phone was actually in the Pulse nightclub, according to audio recordings released Monday after a judge ruled they should be made public.
The audio recordings between police negotiators and shooter Omar Mateen don't stray from transcripts of conversations released previously by the city of Orlando. But they do capture something not in the transcripts: police officials strategizing among themselves about how to talk to Mateen, who hung up several times during the 3-hour standoff at the gay nightclub.
