The Meadow (74 page)

Another view from Mardan Top.

(Left to right) David Mackie and Kim Housego were seized in the same area by Pakistan-backed militants in June 1994 and held for seventeen days, with some of the hostage-takers involved going on to carry out the 1995 abductions.

Letter written by Hans Christian Ostrø to his family and the Norwegian Embassy in New Delhi shortly after his capture. It is unclear how this letter was smuggled out, but it eventually reached his mother Marit Hesby, who was staying at the Embassy.

Ostrø arranged for several batches of photographs, on which he had written cryptic clues as to the hostages’ condition and location, to be smuggled out of the Warman.

The contents of Ostrø’s money belt, recovered from his tent at Zargibal and eventually returned to his family.

Press conference given by Jane Schelly and Julie Mangan, Srinagar, July 1995.

Photograph of Paul Wells thought to have been taken in the wooden guesthouse in Sukhnoi village, Warwan, where the hostages were kept for several weeks.

Photograph taken by al Faran in August 1995, after Ostrø’s beheading, that served as a prelude to ‘proof of life’ conversations that followed. (Left to right) Keith Mangan, Don Hutchings, Dirk Hasert, Paul Wells.

In the years following the kidnapping, the families of the hostages announced several rewards for information leading to the return of their loved ones.

Jehangir Khan, a commander of the pro-government renegades, semi-retired but still afforded bodyguards by the state, at one of his bases in Kadipora, Anantnag, in 2008.

Kashmiri women walk back from market in 2011, passing an Indian Central Reserve Police Force patrol.

The last confirmed photograph of the hostages. (Left to right) Paul Wells (squatting), Dirk Hasert, Keith Mangan and Don Hutchings. When it emerged in February 1996, the families were told by Indian investigators that it had been taken the previous month. Western investigators believed it was much older, and dated to September or October 1995. There was much discussion about the identity of a fifth figure, whose shoulder can be seen on the far left, and why he had been cut out of the photograph.