Geopolitics Magazine January - February 2015 ( 7th Edition ) | Page 66

Geopolitics & Daily News Magazine
Written by Alexandros Niklan
Sr. Security Consultant
IISCA Sec Group

A glance on hostage incidents and operations.

In recent events of Paris against the magazine Charlie Hebdo, we all became witnesses of actions
taken by GIGN French forces to take down the terrorists and at the same time try to accomplish a
hostage rescue operation. A similar case took place at Australia where special police forces there
attempted to neutralize a terrorist who took hostages inside a coffee-shop.
After operation execution many raised significant
questions about the effectiveness of these operations
as there were casualties of innocent people along with
terrorists’ dead bodies. They also questioned the
ability to prevent such events in just enough time
before they are executed. This is not the first time
actually. Many similar questions were raised in every
case of violent confrontation with terrorists since the
hit committed by terrorists against the Israeli team in
Olympic Games of Munich in 1972.

GIGN forces breaching

In order now to explain some things it is essential to make people understand the basic principal of
security. This is “THERE IS NOTHING LIKE 100% SECURITY”. This means that any measure we
might take over a security aspect of things will be described rather as mitigation than
prevention/reaction. Security experts will try to narrow down possibilities of security incidents and limit
down any kind of threats. But this means that they are not, at any point, capable of preventing
everything before they happen. This is happening only in movies like
“Minority Report” and not in real life.
So taking under consideration that security mitigation on risks and
threats is the main goal of all security experts and agents, we can
move on to describe in phases what an operation means when dealing
with a hostage incident.
First phase - 4C.
When first responders reach the scene (usually police officers) they
need to contain all persons in scene. Even simple bystanders who are
in close proximity of the incident. Reason for this is to establish
authority first and then make sure that no “third person” affiliate to
terrorists is standing by and inform them inside or even start another
attack against them. By containing all people in scene this is the first
step to establish the 4C parameter (Contain, Control, Communicate
and Coordinate)
Contain: As explained above this is where scene and surrounding area
at an estimated proximity based upon threat’s nature is to be also
contained. For example there is a different need for distance when
attacked is using explosives or guns shooting at the public than a guy
threatening with a knife.

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