The Meadow (73 page)

Security Advisor Lt. Gen. D. D. Saklani briefs police officials before they begin an aerial search for the five Western hostages on Tuesday, 18 July 1995. Saklani had found American John Childs in the same helicopter the week before.

John Childs reunited with his daughters Cathy and Mary Childs at Bradley International Airport, Connecticut, on 15 July 1995.

Childs shortly after his rescue. The skin on both his heels had worn away to the bone during his fifteen-hour trek to freedom through the mountains.

A picture of the hostages and their captors that was delivered to the Srinagar Press Enclave on 14 July 1995, shortly before the first deadline expired at midnight. Investigators concluded that the kidnap party was now moving up beyond the snowline in a north-easterly direction, possibly heading for the remote Warwan Valley.

Hostages photographed inside an unidentified herders’ hut, probably in the Warwan Valley. (Left to right) Hans Christian Ostrø, Dirk Hasert, Paul Wells, Keith Mangan, Don Hutchings.

The Warwan Valley, where the hostages were held for several weeks.

Sukhnoi village, looking south, where the hostages were held for eleven weeks in a guesthouse on the edge of the village.

Indian Border Security Force soldiers question
gujjar
shepherds about the whereabouts of four hostages on Saturday 8 July 1995. A fifth and sixth hostage, Dirk Hasert, from Germany, and Hans Christian Ostrø, from Norway, were taken that day, as police would later discover.

Al Faran falsely claimed on 21 July 1995 that two hostages had been injured following a botched Indian security force operation, and later issued photographs appearing to show an injured Don Hutchings (pictured here) and Keith Mangan.

Hans Christian Ostrø was beheaded in the early hours of 13 August 1995 by the leader of al Faran, Hamid al-Turki. His corpse was later taken to Anantnag police station in south Kashmir, where it was photographed.

The hostages soon after they arrived in the Warwan Valley. In an attempt to identify their location, the FBI studied this and other pictures for evidence of plants that grow only in specific locations of the Himalayas.

A view from Mardan Top, a treacherous pass at the southern end of the Warwan Valley over which the remaining four hostages were marched in the second week of September 1995, across the Warwan and towards Inshan.