A friend of mine claimed that after 2002, there have been no more hostage situations in Russia, because the government gassed the Chechen terrorists along with their hostages. He says they intentionally killed the hostages too, to send a message to any future prospective terrorists. Something along the lines of “We don’t care about the hostages, so we won’t even try to negotiate with you. We only care about killing you, even if we have to kill everybody around you.”
Whether that’s what the Russian government actually thought, is something we probably will never know. But if that was their gamble, did it work? Did terrorists stop taking hostages after the Moscow Theatre massacre? I tried to look for statistics, but Google only gives me links for that 2002 event.
During a hostage situation involving terrorists, the internationally accepted policy (can’t find a cite) is “the terrorist must be caught/stopped by all means possible.”
Is Jack Bauer the one with the hostage or the one responding?
If he’s responding he shoots the hostage-taker between the eyes as the guy talks shit. Never misses. (The specific example I’m thinking of here is in season 8 when he shoots the creepy-looking guy who has the chick from BSG held hostage; I’m sure other examples abound.)
If he’s holding the hostage he gets away, even if it would be trivially easy to disable whatever vehicle he’s trying to abscond with. (Again season 8, in which Jack stole a helicopter despite the presence of about a dozen heavily armed people who could have shot the tail rotor off after he let the hostage go.)
Killing the hostages certainly was not the plan - if that was the plan, they could have done things differently.
What killed the hostages was secrecy and inertia. The authorities would not tell the hospitals how the hostages had been put to sleep (aerosolised fentanyl), so they could not respond appropriately. If that information had been provided as the hostages were extracted, fewer would have died.
Also the army lads who carried out the sleeping hostages were not told to put them in the recovery position so many died due to that also some placed near the air-con outlets got a high dose and died…of course shooting the sleeping hostage takers would seem also to us “not to be cricket” … thought it certainly sent a message.