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Daniel Rye, a former elite gymnast turned freelance photographer, was kidnapped in northern Syria in May 2013. He was held with James Foley and other Western hostages, tortured, and moved between prisons. He was released in June 2014 only after his family, working with a private hostage consultant, quietly raised a ransom of millions of kroner from relatives, strangers and donors.
When a state refuses to pay ransom, the kidnapping does not end; it becomes a private negotiation carried out by the hostage's ordinary family. The family must raise money, keep the case out of the media, and sit through proof-of-life exchanges with no institutional power. They also face the legal and moral risk of funding the captors, while the government stays formally clean.
Within the same cell, a hostage's fate depended less on his own conduct than on his home country's ransom posture. European hostages whose families or governments found ways to pay were released one by one. American and British captives like James Foley were kept as propaganda assets and executed. Captors sort prisoners by the price or political value their passport represents.
With no paper and no guarantee of survival, hostages memorized letters dictated by fellow captives so whoever got out could deliver them. This turned shared confinement into a relay of testimony that outlasted the captors' control.