'When ISIS snatched John Cantlie my stomach sank - I felt the dragon waking'
Even for someone whose job it was to stay level-headed in the most fraught situations, this was hard to keep calm about, and Nicky Perfect was already emotionally involved when British journalist John Cantlie went missing in Syria in 2012.
Just months earlier, the experienced Met police hostage negotiator had been part of the team who debriefed 41-year-old John after he had managed to escape from Islamic State kidnappers in Syria. Nicky, the first female member of Scotland Yard’s Hostage and Crisis Negotiation Team, experienced many highs and lows in her 31-year career, talking people out of suicide, and using her communication skills to resolve hostage situations.
But it is John’s case, one which is unresolved, that haunts her now. He has not been seen since 2016, after being held by Islamic State a second time in Syria in November 2012. No one knows if he is dead or alive. For three days in May 2012, Nicky had got to know John as he recounted his horrific experiences as a captive of Islamic State, and had left feeling intensely relieved that he was now safe with his family.
But six months later – before he had even recovered from the gunshot wound on his hand from the first kidnapping – John returned to Syria with US journalist James Foley, and as they were heading out to the Turkish border after the dangerous trip, the Islamic State terrorists captured them.
John Cantlie was snatched by IS in 2012 (FastFeatures.com)Nicky, 54, says: “We had got to know John well during the debrief. I respected him, he seemed to be a person of integrity and also to have a real strength of being. But he was also a risk taker, willing to take that risk to go back out. We were all pretty sure that he would be back in Syria soon.
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“It was pretty clear it was a different situation and ISIS was different to anything we’d ever seen before. The level of violence being used and message they were getting across – it was difficult to have hope.” Nicky was sent to break the devastating news to John’s next of kin, close family member Veronica, that he had been kidnapped a second time.
She was surprised how convinced Veronica was that John would escape again and would soon be back home. Veronica told her: “John’s very tough. He’ll take any opportunity he can to get away. He’s smart. And these guys holding him – come on, they’re not the SAS. They’re not Who Dares Bloody Wins. I mean – are they?”.
But Nicky, who had been following the rise of Islamic State and their increasingly brutal treatment of Westerners, was not convinced. As days and weeks passed with no word from John, Nicky, who phoned his family daily, had to help them understand how things had changed in Syria, and prepare them for the worst.
Nicky remembers how Veronica cut off the call after she explained that IS was stronger and more brutal than six months earlier, and John could be held for much longer this time. Nicky remembers the aftermath of that phone call. She says: “I couldn’t sleep at all after that. The terror of John’s situation, along with the knowledge that his family faced months of wretched anxiety without any idea of how or even whether it might end, made my stomach sink.
“John became a constant part of my thoughts as the weeks went by and gradually turning into months with no news from his kidnappers.” Her fears intensified as she tried to understand what his captors were thinking, and, as part of her research, saw videos of the terrorists beheading prisoners.
John speaking in 2014 video (PA)In February 2013, Nicky was called into the operations room in New Scotland Yard to learn that ISIS had finally made contact by email, demanding money for John’s release. Recalling the moment in her new book, Crisis, she says: “Who the hell gets email from ISIS? This seemed surreal. As I stared at the screen, I felt the dragon waking.”
She goes on: “The British government doesn’t negotiate with terrorists, and nobody did so that day. But governments do talk to them and try to understand the way they think and act. We don’t pay them and we don’t give them concessions, but you have to open up dialogue whenever you can.
“A few hours later, the negotiation team sent our advice to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The final call on what the British government should say to ISIS was theirs to make.” She does not know how the Government replied, but nothing more was heard of John until 2014, when he appeared in a video, apparently being forced to read a prepared script criticising the West.
A month earlier, another video had been published showing James Foley, a 40-year-old American journalist, being decapitated by Islamic State. John was last seen in 2016, in another IS propaganda video filmed in Iraq. Nicky clings to the hope that he is still alive. She says: “It’s what often happened in my job. You go through these incredibly emotional experiences with people who often you’ve never met. You have these relationships that are not relationships, but which end up shaping your life too.”
Her path to becoming the UK’s only female international hostage negotiator began, aged 18, when she became a police cadet. She started her police career in Catford, southeast London, before, in 1996, joining the Territorial Support Group, the unit that carries out public order policing. Moving up the ranks, she was an inspector when she joined the Met Police firearms unit in 2000, the only woman in a team of 650.
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Nicky decided to become a volunteer with the hostage and crisis negotiation team after watching them deal with an incident in 2008 when two men from Fathers 4 Justice staged a rooftop protest on the London house of Harriet Harman, then-Leader of the House of Commons. The protest ended with the two men, dressed as superheroes, coming down in a cherry picker and being arrested.
Protesters on the roof of Harriet Harman's house in 2008 (The Daily Mirror)
Nicky's book is out nowNicky did a two-week intensive course in negotiation before being in charge of real life situations in London. On her first assignment, she was sent to deal with a recently-released prisoner who had grabbed his baby from his former partner and was using the child as a shield as police surrounded his car.
Nicky thought she would arrive as the hero and persuade the man to hand himself in quietly, but the incident ended with him refusing to cooperate and being Tasered. She soon learned that the skills she needed in her new role were very different from those used on the policing front line.
She says: “The biggest thing is communication. It’s often sold as a soft skill, but you can’t be a good negotiator unless you’re a good communicator, and the fundamental skill of being a communicator is listening. People in crisis think their voices are never heard, their opinions never listened to.” They include people threatening to take their own life, who Nicky dealt with a lot.
She says: “These people are thinking from the emotional part of the brain, rather than the logical part, and 95% of the time they realise there might be a different way and a better solution.” Nicky became deputy head of the Hostage and Crisis Negotiating Team, and was the first woman to become director of the negotiation course, which trains police officers across the UK.
She also worked on many tense international hostage situations, including the kidnapping of British nationals in Nigeria which ended with their safe release. She says: “To have been involved with that and get it sorted out, having to think outside the box, the rollercoaster of emotions, and to get them back safely, there’s no greater feeling.”
Nicky retired in 2018, but never stopped listening and helping, setting up a cafe and community hub in her Bedfordshire village of Riseley. She says: “The biggest lessons I learned as a hostage and crisis negotiator were that all people have a story, that we will all have a crisis in our lives, and that loneliness is one of the biggest killers in the UK. I wanted to create a space where people could come and have a chat. I pick up when someone’s having a bad day or might not be OK, and I’m definitely not afraid to go up to a complete stranger and ask how they are and if they need to chat.”
* Crisis: True Stories Of My Life As A Hostage Negotiator, by Nicky Perfect. HarperCollins, £9.99
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