(n.) A person given as a pledge or security for the performance of the conditions of a treaty or stipulations of any kind, on the performance of which the person is to be released.
Example Sentences:
(1) Photograph: Jared Malsin for The Guardian They are among at least seven Egyptians – six Christians and one Muslim – who are believed to be held hostage in Libya, though that is regarded as a conservative estimate.
(2) Several former hostages, now safely in Europe, say he had spent the past year true to the creed of his new faith.
(3) Isis recently threatened to kill American hostages to avenge the crushing airstrikes in Iraq against militants advancing on Mount Sinjar and the Kurdish capital of Irbil.
(4) The US and Iran have had no diplomatic relations since 1979, when a group of student protesters seized the US embassy in Tehran and took US officials hostage.
(5) Played out against the backdrop of the 1979 hostage crisis, Argo spins the account of a joint Hollywood-CIA mission to spring six imperiled Americans from revolutionary Iran, using a fake movie production as a decoy.
(6) Blindfolding the American hostages, Asgharzadeh later admitted, was their first mistake – it immediately turned an occupying campaign into what looked like deliberate kidnapping.
(7) It established a pattern that would hold for the next five years: to call the effort irresponsible, but then – sometimes after giving an actual veto – to sign the bill rather than inviting the obvious attacks that he was holding US troops hostage to his Guantánamo closure pledge.
(8) Zawahiri said: "I tell the captive soldiers of al-Qaida and the Taliban and our female prisoners held in the prisons of the crusaders and their collaborators, we have not forgotten you and in order to free you we have taken hostage the Jewish American Warren Weinstein."
(9) At least two of them have been hostages of Isis whom the US did not mean to kill.
(10) But even more than the state’s failure to rescue the 21 hostages, who were believed to have been taken in separate incidents during December and January, Egyptians are criticising Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi for ordering airstrikes on purported Isis hideouts in Libya without a clear plan to evacuate Egyptians living in the country.
(11) The $400m was an arms payment by Iran’s pro-western government in the late 1970s – weapons never delivered when revolution overthrew that government and took Americans hostage in Tehran.
(12) You don’t know at night who is going to be coming in the window.” Until now, US ground forces have largely been restricted to a “training and support” mission for the Iraqi army and a handful of one-off special forces raids to free hostages.
(13) "They had taken some Iranian and Pakistani hostages so we had to separate them from the pirate suspects," said Lieutenant Commander Claus Krum, a veteran of five piracy missions.
(14) At Gölcük naval base, a frigate was reportedly taken over by an unidentified anti-government group and the head of the Turkish fleet was held hostage, a Greek military source told Reuters.
(15) Sydney siege inquest: hostage pleaded with police to storm Lindt cafe urgently Read more They had taken cover after the final group to escape the siege had successfully fled in the early hours of 16 December 2014.
(16) The mood did not improve in 1980 when Iran's London embassy was taken over by Iraqi-backed gunmen before the siege was dramatically ended by the SAS hostage rescue.
(17) The only reason they are here is because they are Ukrainian army soldiers,” he said, gesturing at the rooms with the hostages in.
(18) They fit with his continuation of the regime’s systemic human rights abuses, its pitiless prison labour camp system including enslavement, forced abortions and systemic rape, its abductions and foreign hostage-taking, and its aggressive defiance of its neighbours.
(19) So they'll free a few hostages, but continue siege?
(20) Or the story about how Rich was en route from Switzerland to Finland and had to order his jet to reverse course at 20,000ft to avoid being arrested by the FBI at Helsinki airport; or the secret tunnel he built between the 'Dallas building' and the Glashof restaurant opposite so he could slip out to lunch without fear of being assassinated; or the time he was held hostage in Azerbaijan while his captors considered whether or not to sell him to the Russians (who were allegedly pissed off with Rich for nicking their reserves of gold and other precious metals), or the rumours that Rich had slipped in and out of Britain and the US on numerous occasions under false passports.
Ransom
Definition:
(n.) The release of a captive, or of captured property, by payment of a consideration; redemption; as, prisoners hopeless of ransom.
(n.) The money or price paid for the redemption of a prisoner, or for goods captured by an enemy; payment for freedom from restraint, penalty, or forfeit.
(n.) A sum paid for the pardon of some great offense and the discharge of the offender; also, a fine paid in lieu of corporal punishment.
(n.) To redeem from captivity, servitude, punishment, or forfeit, by paying a price; to buy out of servitude or penalty; to rescue; to deliver; as, to ransom prisoners from an enemy.
(n.) To exact a ransom for, or a payment on.
Example Sentences:
(1) The mother in Arthur Ransome's children's classic, Swallows and Amazons, is something of a cipher, but her inability to make basic decisions does mean she receives one of the finest telegrams in all literature.
(2) According to Ghazian, the regime cannot easily silence Ahmadinejad, because "he has two important assets: one is that he has the potential to act unexpectedly and, secondly, he has taken his opponents ransom by threatening to reveal their secrets to public."
(3) Professionals say the payment of ransoms by countries whose nationals are kidnapped encourages further kidnappings as they represent a guaranteed cash return.
(4) Other transactions are more blatantly criminal: Eritreans, who with Syrians and Afghans make up the majority of migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean, are often driven “for free” from Khartoum in Sudan to Ajdabiya on the Libyan coast, where they are locked up and tortured until relatives pay a ransom.
(5) At the end of 2010, AQIM had reportedly received €50m worth of ransom money since 2003, with each western hostage worth around €2.5m to the countries that paid up.
(6) A new criminal offence will be created to make it illegal for British insurance companies to provide cover for terrorist ransom payments.
(7) The mining giants have made enormous profits at the expense of Mirarr traditional lands,” he said, “and they are now holding the word heritage-listed area to ransom.
(8) He told delegates: "It cannot be right that 3,000 people should be able to hold the city to ransom, stop people getting to work and jeopardise the economic recovery when the measures we are taking to reform ticket offices are an inevitable consequence of the success of the automatic Oyster [smart card] system ... and when we are able to make these changes with no compulsory redundancies, with no loss of earnings and with no station unstaffed at any time.
(9) Ransome-Kuti made her name as an activist with a mass protest against policies that increased prices for market women.
(10) As "Darien", it was the lookout for Ransome's boat‑loving kids.
(11) The official Anadolu news agency reported that no ransom had been paid and "no conditions were accepted in return for their release".
(12) Downing Street believed it had secured an agreement last year during the UK's presidency of the G8 which meant the group's members would not pay ransoms to terrorist kidnappers.
(13) As for the name, we have already pointed out the possibility that he could have used different identities.” But Calantropo said that while the accused man had indeed been briefly in touch with actual smugglers, he did so to ensure the release of three friends held for ransom by smugglers.
(14) What the State Department admitted today was the dictionary definition of a ransom payment and a complete contradiction of what they were saying just two weeks ago.
(15) (via @ dylanbyers ) Jamie Dupree (@jamiedupree) White House statement on meeting somewhat tough: "we will not pay a ransom for Congress reopening the government" October 14, 2013 John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) So...why even have a meeting?
(16) The US refuses to pay ransom for hostages, and, Diane Foley said, even threatened to prosecute the Foley family for raising money to do so, while European countries do pay.
(17) He said the pair's freedom was due in large part to the "professionalism" of Foreign Office officials and backed the UK's stance of not engaging in ransom talks.
(18) An exasperated David Cameron lectured fellow world leaders on Thursday night telling them not to succumb to Islamic State's ransom demands, as he warned at the Nato summit in Wales that such payouts merely funded more terrorism against the west.
(19) Sunday's attack in Tripoli targeted the Islamist lawmakers and officials Hifter blames for allowing extremists to hold the country to ransom, his spokesman Mohammed al-Hegazi told Libyan television.
(20) George Christopoulos, his press secretary, and Isaac Ransom, his deputy, resigned "on principle", according to CBC News.