FEATURE: 317 days tied up in a cellar – a former hostage reflects on his ordeal and the need to do more to protect aid workers

 “The guy on my left probably died [immediately...] and on the right-hand side, there was no one left anymore,” recalled  Cochetel, who quickly dived out of the car onto the ground, where someone caught him and ordered him to shut up and kneel down. and on the right-hand side, there was no one left anymore,” recalled  Cochetel, who quickly dived out of the car onto the ground, where someone caught him and ordered him to shut up and kneel down.

It's like it was yesterday. It's under the skin.

He thought he would be executed on the spot, but instead was dragged for more than 300 feet and thrown into another car. Someone removed his blindfold, and  Cochetel realized that he was a free man, at last: he had just been liberated by Russian commandos from his kidnappers after spending 317 days in captivity, most of them in complete darkness.

Almost 18 years later,  Cochetel, who is now the head of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Europe, revisited the circumstances surrounding his abduction in an interview with the UN News Centre.

Ahead of the first World Humanitarian Summit, which will take place in Istanbul, Turkey, on May 23-24,  Cochetel reflected on the recent advances that have been made to protect humanitarian workers and on areas of improvement he hoped to see discussed during the Summit.

The kidnapping: “I stayed there, with a gun to my head”

Back in 1998, prior to his abduction,  Cochetel was the head of the UNHCR mission in North Ossetia, a Russian republic located near Chechnya, in the troubled region of North Caucasus.

“We managed extensive humanitarian programs, ranging from emergency housing, to food aid, and the construction of schools or water points, not just in Chechnya, but also in the neighboring republics of Ingushetia and Dagestan,” described  Cochetel.

According to him, humanitarian workers had begun to leave the area as early as 1997, in reaction to the growing number of kidnappings for ransom that were happening in Chechnya.

“Foreigners were seen as a potential source of money and traffic, so most of our non-governmental partners had closed shop,” he explained, adding that, as a result, kidnappers looked beyond Chechnya for potential victi

In North Ossetia, more than 62 miles away from Chechnya, there had been few reported cases of abducted foreigners in the republic at the time.

“Still, we were taking the usual precautions, including going to work every day with bodyguards in armored vehicles and changing paths on a daily basis,” he remembered, adding that these security measures made him and his team feel relatively safe. “I guess I did not see the danger approaching. But it was coming and, on 29 January 1998, it took me by surprise.”

On that day,  Cochetel, who lived in a modest building in Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia, came home with his bodyguard after a working dinner with colleagues. He had been instructed, for security reasons, to install as many locks as possible on his apartment's front door, so it took him some time to find the proper keys, standing in his building's hallway.

“The moment I opened the second lock, several masked men armed with handguns came from the stairwell,” recalled  Cochetel, who immediately asked his bodyguard to stay quiet.

The masked men ordered them to come inside the apartment. They put the bodyguard on the floor, tied him down and brought him to another room.

“Then, they took me to the kitchen and made me kneel in front of the fridge,” said  Cochetel, who kept wondering if he was the victim of a kidnapping or a targeted assassination. Not able to speak Ossetian,  Cochetel was unable to understand what the masked men were saying.

“It lasted for a long, long time. I stayed there, with a gun to my head,” he said.

After a while,  Cochetel was handcuffed, blindfolded and taken out of the building. Then, his kidnapers forced him into the trunk of a car.

“I stayed like that for three days. Sometimes, the car moved. Sometimes, they put me into another car, but still under the same conditions. And after three days, I was transferred to Chechnya,” he said.

The detention: “I was in complete darkness all the time, and tied to a bed”

The armed men who had kidnapped him were most likely subcontractors,  Cochetel explained, working for a criminal organization structured according to a strict division of labor.

“There were people responsible for the kidnapping. There were people in charge of the transport. There were people who were there as guards. There were other people in charge of negotiating the ransom. And then, there was someone at the head of all this who gave orders,” he said.

Apart from the first few days he spent inside Chechnya, when he was relatively well treated and well fed,  Cochetel spent the remaining 300-plus days of his captivity in various cellars, where he was held in inhumane conditions.

“I had a maximum of 15 minutes of light per day for my meal,” he said. “They would bring me a candle or a lamp, and I had some light for those 15 minutes. Otherwise, I was in complete darkness all the time and tied to a bed.”

The length of the metallic cable that connected him to the bed frame allowed  Cochetel to walk for three steps, four maximum, at a time. As for human interactions, they were equally limited.

“Sometimes, the guard who brought my food said a few words [...] But most of the time, they just dropped it and left the place,” he said.

As the days, weeks and months passed,  Cochetel, who knew nothing about any of the efforts being made for his liberation, was aware that things could end badly for him.

“The more my captivity dragged on, the more I asked myself: Is it a good or a bad sign? It wasn't easy to answer that question alone in the dark,” he said.

A dramatic resolution: “All of a sudden, it's gunfire all over the place”

After 317 days of this ordeal, on 11 December 1998, in the middle of the night, his kidnappers abruptly removed  Cochetel from his cellar and brought him outside, handcuffed.

“There was a convoy of about, maybe 10, 15 cars with heavily armed people. The convoy started driving. At some stage they blindfolded me and asked me to stay on the floor of the car, between two guards,” he recalled.

After a while, his captors made  Cochetel switch cars, drove for about a half-an-hour and took him to another car again, a smaller one, he remembered, still with the two men at his side.

“We drove, rather slowly, outside of a road, so totally off-track, because it was very bumpy. That I remember. All of a sudden, it's gunfire all over the place,” he described of the assault that would lead to his liberation. That was when he tumbled out of the car and was grabbed by someone who forced him to kneel down in silence.  Cochetel was still blindfolded and handcuffed at the time, so he was not sure who that man and the others working with him were.

“I said: 'Don't shoot,' because I thought, you know, after all this time in captivity, to die on my knees like on the first day I was abducted... I wasn't prepared for that,” he said.

While two men started dragging him, his legs went numb in the stress of the action. Then, the men threw him into another vehicle.

“And when I hit the floor of the car, I hit a metallic helmet. For me it was the realization that I was with an army, a regular army. That I wasn't anymore with the group that had abducted me,” he said.

Someone removed his blindfold and the car drove off while shooting. After that,  Cochetel was taken to a Special Forces base of the Russian Federation and repatriated to Switzerland, home of UNCHR Headquarters, where his family awaited him.

Back to life: “If I didn't go back to work, that meant they'd managed to destroy me”

Upon landing in Geneva,  Cochetel was immediately placed under observation at the maternity section of a hospital.

“I was surrounded by pregnant women. It was a bit like a new birth in many respects,”  Cochetel joked.

During that first week, he was under constant medical surveillance and could only see his wife and children for a half-hour every day.

“They were a bit scared I would commit suicide or something like that,” he said.

Once discharged,  Cochetel, whose first impulse was to go back to work, was told to take some time off in order to relax. He took a leave of absence, but after only a couple of months, he felt the need to start working again and asked the UNHCR to place him in a more quiet position in Geneva.

“If I didn't go back to work that meant they'd managed to destroy me,” he said of his kidnappers.

Expectation for the World Humanitarian Summit: “Now, there is no room left for amateurism”

Since these events,  Cochetel said significant advances have been made to improve the protection of humanitarian workers on the ground, precisely because humanitarian workers are being increasingly targeted by terrorists, criminal organizations and warring parties. As a result, greater efforts are being made in terms of prevention, equipment, training and operational security measures, allowing deployed UN personnel to continue doing their work in a secure environment.

“Now, there is no room left for amateurism,” he said. “We're much more professional in our approach to safety measures on the ground.”

Where, according to him, there is still room for improvement, is the fight against impunity for the people who are targeting humanitarian workers.

Cochetel underlined that the Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) considers attacks against humanitarian workers as international crimes.

“It means in practice that there is no status of limitation for these crimes,” he explained, adding that, even 30 years after, it is still technically possible to prosecute the perpetrators.

“But in practice it is very difficult, and it happens only very, very rarely,” he said.

One of the core commitments of the first World Humanitarian Summit that will take place this month in Istanbul is to enhance efforts to respect and protect medical personnel, transports and facilities, as well as humanitarian relief personnel and assets against attacks, threats or other violent acts.

On Tuesday, 24 May, a high-level roundtable will also be held during the Summit, entitled “Upholding the norms that safeguard humanity,” which will focus on the protection of humanitarian workers.

Cochetel said he hoped that the Summit would help Member States find a way to better enforce international humanitarian law and ensure that attacks targeting UN or non-UN aid workers do not go unpunished.

The humanitarian community should use the Summit as an opportunity to come together on that issue, as opposed to taking unilateral stances. For that reason, said  Cochetel, humanitarian actors need to adopt a cohesive approach and, when one of their own gets kidnapped or killed, demand that the governments or rebel groups that failed to ensure their security be held accountable.

“Our lives matter. Otherwise, we won't be able to stand alongside the victims anymore,” he said.

While  Cochetel insisted that he received all the medical care and psychological support he needed from UNHCR after his liberation, he also noted that some areas of the UN system need improvement, including taking into account an employee's past trauma. For example, he said that if a formerly abducted employee is required to go back to the field after some time, it should be in a safer area at first, where her or his family is allowed to come as well.

Cochetel also called to put an end to what he sees as a two-tier system separating local and international aid workers.

“That is to say that the international staff of humanitarian organizations is often better treated in these circumstances than the local staff. They do not have access to the same packages in terms of psychological and medical support than what they may be entitled to outside of their country of nationality,” said  Cochetel, calling for a more harmonized approach on this issue.

Looking back: “It's like if it was yesterday. It's under the skin”

Almost two decades later, the nightmarish experience he went through in North Caucasus is still very much on  Cochetel's mind.

“These facts go back eighteen years, but for me, it's like if it was yesterday. It's under the skin,” he said.

Every time a humanitarian worker is kidnapped or killed,  Cochetel is drawn back to that year of 1998.

“I have a thought for his family, for all the sacrifices that person made before being killed or abducted,” he said.

As vivid as his memories of those 317 days are,  Cochetel said he had learned to live with them “like a person scarred by a former accident or an illness.”

Photo: UNHCR