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Intensive Course on Escaping Captors

[San Francisco Chronicle] Matthew B. Stannard - Doron Benbenisty, 37, a former counterterrorism instructor in Israel's border police and lead instructor of Las Vegas-based Crisis Response International, was teaching a three-day class on "Surviving Execution-Beheading-Assassination Attempts and Escaping from Captivity." "Up to 10 years ago, when they captured someone, they usually held them for ransom or to advance political goals," Benbenisty said. But now, "it's no longer just if you cooperate, you're going to survive." He argues that a "new reality" has overwhelmed the conventional wisdom that the best thing to do when facing armed attackers is to do exactly as they say. "By now," he said, after showing a series of gory videos of men shot or beheaded after waiting passively for the end, "I hope you understand that if you are captured, you'd better fight." Some of the lessons were based on knowing obscure characteristics of the methods and tools of capture - guns, knives, rope, duct tape, handcuffs - that can turn a seemingly inescapable situation into a surprisingly brief inconvenience. "I can't believe they didn't teach us this," moaned Sean, an intelligence officer, during one escape demonstration.
2007-01-26 01:00:00
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