Arrest, seizure and detectives
By Manohar Malgonkar

TIME magazine really went to town on its coverage of the capture of Abdullah Ocalan: a double-page spread was headlined a terrorist’s bitter end!

Ocalan: Apo to his millions of devoted admirers. Apo, in the Kurdish language, means ‘uncle’. To the half-a-dozen countries which, between them share what the Kurds want to form into a separate state, Ocalan is a rogue revolutionary, terrorist said to have caused the death of thousands, and thus the number-one villain on their wanted-dead-or-alive, list: A man with a price on his head. What Osama Bin Laden is to the U.S., Ocalan is to Turkey. Or was.

Ocalan had been on the run for nearly a year, looking desperately for political asylum. He had finally landed in Nairobi, at the residence of the Greek ambassador, and he had hoped that, since Turkey and Greece were almost in a state of permanent hostility, he would be safe on Grecian territory. But when the Greek Ambassador to Nairobi sought instruction from his superiors in Athens, he was curtly told "boot him out".

What happened next is confusing. But this much is clear. Ocalan was overpowered by force and bundled into a jeep which took him to Nairobi’s airport. "By 1107 p.m. a blindfolded, handcuffed and drugged Ocalan was escorted into a private jet, bound for Turkey."

And right enough, there is a startlingly vivid photograph, of a dazed yet belligerent man strapped to his chair and handcuffed, watched over by a man wearing a mask: Abdullah Ocalan in the hands of his Turkish abductors!

But then what was so unusual about this particular abduction? Was not this sort of thing a part of the very tradecraft of the undercover agents of all nations? Particularly of the Americans, the Russians and the British?

The Turkish Secret Service may have picked the scenario from John le Carre’s portrayal of Britain’s MI6, as depicted in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. A British secret agent based in Hong Kong, called Ricki Tarr, had fallen in love with a Russian secret agent visiting Hong Kong, Irina, and had persuaded her to defect to Britain. Tarr and Irina had arranged to meet in a church, and when she failed to show up, Tarr realises that Irina has been caught. On a hunch, Tarr makes a dash to the airport where his frantic inquiries reveal that "an unscheduled Russian plane had taken off two hours ago. Only four passengers boarded. The centre of attraction was a woman invalid. A lady in a coma. They had to carry her to the plane on a stretcher and her face was wrapped in bandages."

The same scenario, with minor changes to suit regional differences was acted out by the American secret agencies working in cooperation with Pakistani secret agents, in the trapping of Ramzi Yousef who, the Americans believe, had "masterminded" the bombing of the World Trade Centre in New York, in 1993. Yousef was taken captive from a hideout deep in Pakistan, blindfolded, handcuffed, and flown out to the US under an American escort for trial. It would seem that the prisoner’s blindfold was not removed till the final leg of the journey, in a helicopter. As the chopper flew over New York, Lewis Schiliro, the escorting officer from the FBI, ordered it to be taken off. "See," said one of the escorts, pointing to the Trade Centre Building, "it’s still standing."

Yousef, it is reported, blinked for a few seconds before dryly remarking: "Next time, if I have more money, I’ll knock it down."

That money which Yousef did not have, is now made available to people such as Yousef who are willing to engage in terrorist activities against the U.S. It is provided by Osama bin Laden.

No wonder that the C.I.A. began hatching plans to "snatch" Osama from "a foreign country and bring him to the U.S. for trial. But Bin Laden avoided some of the nations where the U.S. was waiting to pounce including Qatar and Kuwait."

And, almost certainly, Pakistan. The willingness indeed the eagerness of the Pakistani authorities to act as sidekick to the CIA-FBI, and to allow them a free run of their country as though Pakistan were a satellite country, is highlighted in Time:

"In the spring of 1998, a small CIA-FBI team collected intelligence on Bin Laden by parking itself at what agents call the "Zero Line, Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan."

Now what other country in the world would permit the intelligence-gathering services of another nation, no matter how friendly, to so much as come within look-taking distance of a sensitive frontier, let alone giving them "parking" facilities at the Zero Line itself.

But enough said. The bhaibandi between the U.S. and Pakistan, is a pillar of American foreign policy since the days of Henry Kissinger, and, if anything, has gone on getting stronger ever since. It is a fact of history, yet not central to my theme which is that kidnappings come in the category of SOP, or standard operating procedure, of the dirty-tricks organisations of all countries.

The Empire’s minions thought nothing of it just part of everyday work... just a part of the burden that the White Man had geared himself to groan under, in his ordained role as Guardian to the Lesser breeds without the law.

In the summer of the year 1910, a young Indian studying law in London, Vinayakrao Savarkar, was arrested on a charge of "waging war against the King Emperor" and sent to India to stand trial. He and his police escort travelled by ship, the SS Morea. On July 8, when the Morea had made a halt at the French port of Marseilles, Savarkar slipped out of a porthole and swam to the shore. He was running along the paved streets in the dockyard, hotly pursued by the men of his escort, when a French policeman stopped him and overpowered him.Savarkar was handed over to the Indian policemen and the French policeman actually assisted in the process of the prisoner being led back, screaming and kicking, to his ship.

It was only after the Morea had sailed away from Marseilles, that the publicity generated by the incident made the French authorities realise their gaffe: they had allowed the British police to make an arrest on French soil. They lodged a formal protest with the British Government who, of course, were too hardnosed to pay heed to such fine points of International law — they took no notice of the protest. The French, for their part, did not wish to damage their friendly relations with the British in the face of the rising threat from Germany; they quietly dropped the case. In India, Savarkar was tried for sedition and packed off to the Andamans to serve his sentence for life.

But then muscular, no-holds-barred work such as could be used with impunity against a subject people, was the pride and boast of the Raj. In proof, I quote from the report made by one Inspector Stephenson, on his capture of Balkrishna Chaphekar, who had been charged with the murder of two Englishmen W.C. Rand, and Lt Ayers, in 1908. The two men were shot dead as they were being driven back in open horse-carriages after a party at Pune’s Government House.

Chaphekar had gone to ground in the Satpura hills which were infested by what were called criminal tribes. So long as the tribes sheltered him there was no way the police could arrest him.

So Stephenson enlisted the help of imprisoned criminals and through them sent a message to Chaphekar that, if he made his way to the Gadag railway station on a certain date and at a certain time, arrangements had been completed for him to be whisked off to Goa, which was then Portuguese territory. As Stephenson reports: "the dacoits brought Chaphekar to my camp and made off, abandoning Chaphekar, who was arrested."

Stephenson ends his report on a note of self admiration:

"I think I may say without self-praise that this result was not obtained without the exercise of detective ability."

But of course!