A principled man in ISIL’s grip: The troubling case of John Cantlie
John Cantlie is the last of the group’s known western hostages, and he has made statements about the extremists that range from neutral to positive. But experts warn against rushing to conclude that he sympathises with them.
In the dark history of the hostages seized by ISIL, who are often treated abominably and in many instances murdered, the case of John Cantlie stands out as particularly troubling.
The British photographer from a distinguished family, with a background in health, science and engineering, is the group’s last known western hostage. He has appeared in a series of ISIL videos, talking about it in terms that range from neutral to positive.
But it is clear from what has become known about the behaviour of hostages that nothing can be taken at face value.
Psychiatrists, psychologists and others with knowledge of the phenomenon warn that no one should underestimate the duress experienced by Cantlie, like others before him, as he speaks to the camera for the propaganda purposes of a ruthless group of extremists.
It is a disturbing feature of the conflict in Syria and northern Iraq that ISIL’s crimes, along with its comprehensive disregard for the Geneva Convention, have ceased to surprise.
This was underlined this month, when ISIL extremists beheaded 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians who had migrated to Libya in search of work.
Even on the evidence of the actions to which ISIL freely admits, it can be assumed that a hostage’s refusal to obey its instructions would prove fatal. The instinct for survival would encourage most captives to accede to the group’s demands.
This is not necessarily the same as succumbing to Stockholm syndrome, in which people held hostage come to support their captors’ aims or activities.
Neil Greenberg, an occupational psychiatrist and professor of defence mental health in the psychology department at King’s College London, says Stockholm syndrome arises from a combination of factors, in which a hostage’s survival strategy is replaced by a willingness to identify with the hostage takers.
The syndrome takes its name from a bank raid in the Swedish capital in 1973, when bank employees were seized by robbers and, during a six-day siege, began to sympathise with them.
The most famous example is Patty Hearst, an American teenager from a wealthy publishing family who joined an urban terrorist group, the Symbionese Liberation Army, after being kidnapped by its members in 1974.
She was later jailed but, after outrage at her treatment, was released early into a long sentence. She was finally pardoned in 2001 by Bill Clinton, the US president at the time.
Prof Greenberg restricts his comments to general issues and not any specific hostage, when he says there is no “black and white” definition of how people behave as hostages.
“If, for example, someone is held in conditions of austerity shared by their captors, rather than by people living in relative luxury up the road, there is a chance of some bonding,” he says.
“Just as you want to make yourself a human being to them, they become human beings to you.”
A hostage who disapproved of what their captors were doing could nevertheless develop “an element of understanding” to replace hatred or anger, Prof Greenberg says.
In the case of ISIL, the willingness to comply with what is demanded would be deepened by knowledge of what the group has already done to other hostages.
For Cantlie, the danger to his life is acute. His most recent message, or at least the words attributed to him in an article published this month by ISIL’s online magazine Dabiq, offers a chilling hint that even compliance may not help him.
Cantlie, whose father died last November shortly after being filmed in a bedside appeal to the kidnappers, urged his family and fiancee to put him behind them.