The mega-fanatical jihadists of ISIS have been capturing innocent people (as well as opposing solders) in Iraq & Syria for donkey’s years – for a century many of them have been simply killed, often violently, and often by beheading. In the case of westerners or foreigners (and we are talking in the hundreds here from some fifty countries) they are regularly abducted and held to be used as a bargaining tool, or to spread fear, or generate widespread publicity and worldwide media hype.

In the last three months we have had the murder by beheading of three kidnapped Americans & two British (three journalists & two aid-workers), gruesomely videoed and sickingly published on the internet, solely to obtain worldwide notoriety & promotion for the ISIS cause.

As commented on here before, the Media have of course played us all, right into the hands of the jihadists, giving them ‘exactly’ the type of coverage ISIS sought and craved – television, radio, newspapers, internet and everything else, they all ran the nauseating detail the perpetrators wanted. Surely, a disgraceful performance and response from our untrustworthy news peddlers, who seem to lack adequate judgement and courage to curb reporting at such times? Not only did they let down the brave men who died, but at the same time they signed the death warrant of them all, and those in line who will inevitably follow? ISIS won, didn’t they?

We have little idea actually, neither how many people are captive nor indeed where any ‘missing’ hostages are held. The families of most hostages shun the possibility of news getting out about it (as that would endanger their loved one). Some though have launch major appeals for clemency, which are milked by ISIS, and don’t make an iota of difference to the outcome. There must be dozens of westerner hostages now whose fate currently hangs in the balance. Because of this, there is continuing debate about the right or wrong of countries paying a ransom to obtain the release of their abducted men & women.

Payment of ransoms is widely condemned by all major counties, but that hasn’t stopped the flow of enormous amounts of money to the jihadists, has it? Lucrative, secretive, surreptitious, payments are being made which are bankrolling the jihadist killing machine and purchasing their arms, paying for recruitment & training – so basically funding the global operations for their so called ‘holy war’.

Bluntly, it is a well established fact that giving-in to kidnappers and paying them ransoms (and the like), may sometimes save a victim, however it then simply encourages the evil deed – so terrorists & criminals carry-on the process (and ISIS certainly will, won’t they?).

Who has been said to have paid ransoms then? Try France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Philippines, Jordon, Cyprus, Lebanon, Turkey, Indonesia, for a start (but it is ALWAYS denied of course). Is it fifty million, a hundred million, two hundred million pounds paid out, or what? Who knows, but what we DO know is that for every life so reprieved, thousands of other innocents will lose theirs through the blood money paid to the callous killers. Do we British (or the Americans) really want to join-in on the ransom lottery, to play with others’ lives in that kind of game with the abductors?

[ISIS, and other terrorists & jihadists, will only be defeated if they can be starved of funds. That means their access to rich Arab benefactors needs to be finally halted. It is also even more critical that their current lifeblood of ransom payments to free Europeans (the bulk of their money comes that way now), is obliterated].