ransom

David Rohde, a New York Times reporter in Afghanistan, 2009. Elizabeth Smart, a 14-year-old girl in Salt Lake City, 2002. In March 2011, twenty-two Canadian oil workers were held as hostage in Bogotá, Columbia by local rebels. New York Times journalists Lynsey Addario, Anthony Shadid, Stephen Farrell, and Tyler Hicks, Libya, March 2011. These are the names we associate with contemporary kidnapping cases: Journalists taken while reporting in war zones; foreign employees captured by guerilla…