“The Siege: The Remarkable Story of the Greatest SAS Hostage Drama” by Ben Macintyre (published by Viking)
Inside the action for a rip-roaring read
Few people in Britain knew much at all about the shadowy SAS before the daring and explosive rescue attempt to end the six-day siege was put on air by the BBC, which suddenly broke into its coverage of the final of the World Snooker Championship in Sheffield being watched by 14 million viewers. Instead, there on screen were masked soldiers with machine-guns and stun grenades, abseiling down the five-storey building amidst fire and explosions.
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was refusing to negotiate, with four Britons among those held and the gunmen, having killed a hostage and dumped him outside, were threatening to kill one every 45 minutes and to blow up the building. It was the worst terror situation Britain had faced, and time to call in the hardened men of the SAS – motto: “Who dares, wins.”
As Macintyre tells, recruits faced famously demanding selection, with training in surveillance, close-quarter combat, explosives, high-speed driving, swimming, markmanship and urban warfare. Its tactics in many theatres of operation usually involved small units infiltrating an area controlled by insurgents, guerrillas or terrorist groups, gathering intelligence, liaising with resistance forces, conducting sabotage, assassination and ambush, then slipping off, unidentified and unseen. Freeing hostages too, but not so far for real, only in training.
The Iran Embassy siege of April 30 to May 5, 1980 was gripping the world, the new miracle of live television playing out the drama day by day, and ultimately moment by moment. No one – hostages, gunmen, police, journalists, politicians, SAS – could predict how the drama would end. Now, by the sixth day, everyone’s nerves were strung; death and disaster threatened.
The six gunmen came from the Arab majority population of oil-rich Khuzestan province in south-west Iran and believed they had an authentic cause to bring to global attention, seeking political rights and autonomy. First, the Shah of Iran, styled King of Kings, Monarch of the Peacock Throne, had used his hated secret police, the SAVAK, to repress the region.
Then, after the Shah was toppled by the Islamic Revolution and forced into exile in January 1979, the Ayatollah Khomeini’s hardline regime inflicted further vicious persecution. On “Black Wednesday” May 30, 1979, Arab protestors in the Khuzestan city Al-Muhammara were attacked by brutal security and masked militia loyal to the regime, killing hundreds.
The six Iranian Arabs from Khuzestan each lost family members in the massacre, leading them to form “The Group of the Martyr”. “The promises we had had from Khomeini himself were just lies,” they said. Their leader was Towfiq Ibrahim al-Rashidi, with the nom de guerre “Salim”, a gentle, poetry-loving moderate, university-educated and speaking four languages, but radicalised and in hiding after the torture and execution of his brother by the regime.
The other five had suffered horrifically at the hands of the security forces, and they hoped to force Britain to back their battle for rights and end the “torture, terror and liquidation” by Khomeini. They also wanted the release of 91 activists held by the regime, including their spiritual leader. Idealistic, they thought their demands would be met in a 24-hour deadline. Then they would be flown abroad unharmed. Naive and under-trained, they were also ready to kill and be killed, though not actually having any desire for either (and both did happen).
They were being led astray. Behind the scenes lurked the cunning Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who bankrolled the siege. He viewed Arab unrest in Khuzestan as an opportunity to destabilise the Iranian regime. He put Iraqi Intelligence Officer “Sami Muhammad Ali”, known as “The Fox”, in charge of financing, training and arming the Arab militants.
The book’s generous photos include the only one known of “The Fox”. He found the men a flat in London and took them shopping in Oxford Street for suits, shoes, toys, cocktail dresses. He held their fake passports, saying they would not be needed because the siege would end with Britain’s capitulation. And he issued one final instruction: the operation must not be launched before 11am, not a minute before. He kissed them solemnly on both cheeks, and told them: “Your brothers and sisters back home are counting on you. God be with you all.” As they burst into the embassy he was safely aboard the 11am flight to Paris.
Author Macintyre acknowledges that the siege has spawned multiple documentaries, films and books: fiction, non-fiction and something in between. Most of his source material, he says, is secret, pseudonymous, unpublished or privately owned. Many people assisted him in research, tracking down unseen contemporaneous records, diaries, letters and testaments by participants and eyewitnesses. Four unpublished full manuscripts by hostages were found.
“Only” 44 years since the siege, this is a plus in tracking down those involved, but a minus in that the drama has received so much literary and filmic attention. However, Macintyre and an assistant spoke to ageing survivors and witnesses, including hostages, negotiators, police, journalists, intelligence officers and the on-site psychiatrist. Of the 32 SAS who blasted into the embassy’s 56-room Victorian town house facing Hyde Park, 18 were still alive and 14 of them were interviewed about it for the first time.
Here is oodles of fresh detail, the inside story claiming to be told in full for the first time. It’s an absolutely rip-roaring read, and if truth is said to be sometimes stranger than fiction, this is the proof. Macintyre had wanted to write about it for years, provided he could describe the weather, what it smelled like in the rooms, give the tone of voices and so on. Readers are taken on a gripping journey from the years of build-up to the desperation of the event.
For instance, British police were usually unarmed, except the Diplomatic Protection Group, of which Constable Trevor Lock was one, assigned to the Iran Embassy just along from the Royal Albert Hall. Unfortunately he was having a coffee when the gunmen burst in. After they failed to find his .38 revolver he kept his tunic on the whole six days to keep the gun hidden, so he ate and drank little to avoid visiting the toilet, where he was guarded. Macintyre: “Bravery comes in different forms: in the case of besieged policeman Trevor Lock, it meant fighting off the call of nature for as long as possible, in a heroic feat of self-imposed constipation.”
An annoying Pakistani who kept saying he had to catch a plane and who snored very loudly was released. In all, five were let go before one was killed. Macintyre: “But on active service in Northern Ireland, SAS soldiers carried plastic handcuffs attached to their flak jackets, in case a suspect needed to be restrained. Gullen asked the police liaison officer to provide a stock of these ‘plasticuffs,’ and a policeman duly appeared with a large cardboard box. ’I don’t know what you want these for,’ he muttered. Inside were two thousand plastic cups.”
But the Iron Lady was intransigent and the message from Tehran never changed – the siege was Britain’s problem and if the hostages were killed they would be privileged, going straight to heaven.
Here is Ben Macintyre’s full treatment, layer by layer, the known and the unknown together (even the duck and the gerbil) for a complete picture in tremendous detail.