The strange Susanne Osthoff hostage story continues to unravel, thread by thread.
The story began to seem strange when, after her release, German hostage Osthoff said her abductors were "not criminals," a bizarre remark from someone who had supposedly just been kidnapped.
Things became more bizarre when Osthoff appeared on TV in a black headscarf (providing the fodder for an amusing parody at Clarity and Resolve).
Then Osthoff was reportedly found holding some of her own hostage ransom money (a ransom which nobody officially admitted having paid, by the way).
John Rosenthal now continues the saga at TCS Daily:
"Osthoff’s various attempts at providing an account of her ordeal did nothing to discourage the suspicions. Thus, in her first interview on German television – the now famous burqa-clad appearance on the public television channel ZDF – when asked to explain how the kidnapping took place, she responded:
"I think these details are uninteresting. Nobody is interested in that. Normally, a kidnapping involves the use of force. People watch a lot of television. Maybe they see that no one lets herself get snatched up voluntarily. There’s a brief use of force, which is, of course, such that one has no more possibility, and it happens and so forth.
"Her next interview, a print affair published in Stern, provided more details and gave the impression of greater coherence. But it contained, nonetheless, a disturbing inconsistency. Osthoff related how while being transported in the trunk of a car she bit off the bindings with which her hands had been tied. But as an alert Stern reader pointed out in a letter, she had previously said her hands were tied behind her back. “Does Ms. Osthoff possess the flexibility of a human snake?” the reader asked. Stern responded by saying the anomaly was the result of editing."
Right.
I'm pretty sure there's a snake in this story somewhere.
Maybe a whole nest of 'em.
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