Above the Tearline: Lessons for Expats from Warren Weinstein's Abduction
Video Transcript:
Vice President of Intelligence Fred Burton examines the recent abduction of an American citizen in Pakistan and discusses ways expats can protect themselves while abroad.
Editor’s Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, STRATFOR cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.
This week's Above the Tearline, we thought we would examine the abduction of an American ex-pat in Lahore, Pakistan, with an eye towards ex-pat security.
Last weekend Warren Weinstein, an employee of JE Austin Company, a USAID contractor in Lahore, Pakistan, was abducted from his home at 3 o'clock in the morning. Motivation-wise we don't know whether or not this was a criminal abduction or a hostage taking for the purposes of some sort of political statement. One of the fears you have in any kind of abduction would be the potential for the hostage to be sold to a terrorist organization.
The police are looking at the potential for some degree of complicity either with household staff or security guards hired to protect the residents. Having investigated many hostage takings overseas, there are two components that I want to bring to your attention. The first being: it's important that you have trusted and vetted security as well as household staff that you're bringing into your home to rule out the potential for an inside job or complicity.
The second thing that is critical is making sure that you have a good safe haven inside your apartment or house to retreat to. A safe haven would be a location that is hardened up. It has either hardened doors or a hardened frame that will enable you to lock the door and retreat to in the times of emergency. Ideally you would have a ability to communicate from that safe haven with an outside line or a cell phone that's stored there so you can call for help.
In examining the video from the crime scene, I saw something that caught my eye that needs to be looked into. Whether or not this has anything to do with the case, it's the kind of lead that you need to run down. I think it looks like the individual had personalized license plates or license plates that were issued to the car, which would make it very easy to identify the individual operating that vehicle. Case and point: in one of the investigations I worked involving Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. Yousef and the informant that we subsequently worked that led to Yousef's arrest walked around Islamabad, Pakistan, and was able to identify U.S. and British residents based on license plates that were parked in their driveway. And I'm wondering, in this case, whether or not the very unique license plates led to the individual's location being identified to the criminal abductors or to the potential terrorist organization.
The Above the Tearline aspect of this video is: complacency had probably done Mr. Weinstein in. He'd been in and out of Pakistan for seven years -- probably the last thing he's thinking about is something happening to him. It's important that long-term expats maintain a high degree of situational awareness and revisit their security posture.
