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© UNHCR/ Diego Ibarra Sánchez aid workers in danger


“CAN YOU IMAGINE THAT MOCK EXECUTIONS CAN BE A PASTIME FOR GUARDS WHEN THEY ARE SADISTIC, OR JUST BORED OR DRUNK?”


In 1998, as head of UNHCR in North Ossetia, Russia, Vincent Cochetel was kidnapped and taken to Chechnya, where he was tortured and chained in a dark basement for 317 days. Eighteen years later he still works for UNHCR as director of the Europe Bureau and is an outspoken advocate for the protection of humanitarian workers around the globe.


Arriving home on January 29, 1998, despite heavy security measures, the then 37-year-old Mr. Cochetel and his bodyguard were ambushed by three masked men toting hand guns with silencers. The bodyguard was beaten and dragged away, leaving Mr. Cochetel on his knees, a gun pressed to his neck.


In 2010 Mr. Cochetel spoke publicly and briefly about his ordeal to the UN News Agency. Remembering those first few minutes of the kidnapping, he said: “I thought that was it. I thought it was some sort of contract killing because there you have that sort of thing happening in that part of the world. And after some long minutes, they searched me [and] handcuffed me at


the back. They


put a bag on my head, blindfolded me somehow. And we went downstairs, six floors. I fell a couple of times… Then they put me in the trunk of the car, and then I was transferred from car to car for three days.”


© UNHCR/ B. Sokol 2014


In late 2014, in a powerful TEDx talk that has garnered over one million hits on YouTube, Mr. Cochetel spoke for the first time of the unimaginable terror of his kidnapping. His hope is that his talk will call attention to the record number of attacks on aid workers—the Aid Worker Security Report 2015 states that 329 aid workers were victims of major attacks in 2014 vs. 125 in 2004. Of the 329 victims in 2014, 121 were killed, 88 wounded and 120 kidnapped.


Mr. Cochetel vividly recalls his almost year-long ordeal. For the first 12 days of his captivity, he was tortured by his captors, while loud music blared to cover the noise.


“Can you imagine that mock executions can be a pastime for guards when they are sadistic, or just bored or drunk?” he remembers.


For 23 hours and 45 minutes of every day Mr. Cochetel was chained to a bedframe in a completely dark


Vincent Cochetel, TEDx talk UNHCR / 25


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