Campaign Groups and Pairs
We had been there for five days in all. Negotiations went on and on. I was convinced that this would all end in a peaceful settlement. The terrorists didn't know what was sitting next door, and if they had, I think they would have given up fast.
We were in assault teams of two men per team, and we all had jobs to do. First of all, we had to get in. This would be achieved by blowing an entry point at the rear of the building using explosives. It would be an electronic initiation. However, if the explosives failed to detonate, my job was to run forward and gain entry with a sledgehammer.
My team's final assault position was behind a small wall that we all had to lie down behind. It could not have been more than two feet high, which would not be much cover from a big blast. We waited for the big bang. It did not happen. Instead I got a slap on the head from one of the team. Go, go. I thought it must have been a misfire.
A misfire occurs when there is a problem with the circuit or when the detonator fails to explode and set off the main charge. Whatever had gone wrong, it was now up to me to get us in. I got up and ran forward. The explosives were still there on a long, flat length of wood leaning against the wall. Well, consider this: I thought that it was a misfire. The safety time for an electronic initiation misfire is ten minutes; this means you don't go near a device that has been attempted electronically for ten minutes.
Well, it was obvious that we did not have time to hang around and wait, so I kicked the charge out of my way, thinking, Well, if it goes off, I won't know anything about it. I'll be all over the park. And then I started to make an entry point through the window to my front. It had wooden shutters behind it, which were closed, and heavy draped curtains behind those. It didn't take me long, as obviously the adrenaline was rushing. I made an entry point. I remember removing the safety catch on my MP5 submachine gun with my thumb. Ready to deal with the aggressor that I might now meet inside, I climbed in. We were in.
Rooms were cleared of terrorists one at a time and hostages were handed out to the rear of the building. All had to be ID’d and the opposition dealt with. Regrettably, a fire had been started, so we had to get out as soon as the task was completed, which we did.
We were back next door, our task had been completed, we had saved all the remaining hostages and captured one terrorist, the other terrorists died due to their actions. Unfortunately the Embassy caught fire but this was brought under control and today it has been rebuilt to be as grand as it ever was.’
Capturing a terrorist
The capture of the terrorist was in no small part due to Pape. Whilst Curry was part of Rusty Firmin’s ten-man assault team at the rear of the Embassy, Pape was also at the rear as part of the eight-man hostage reception team. He was to be engaged in Phase Four of the Deliberate Assault plan - Evacuation: On completion of Phase Three (Stronghold Assault and Domination), teams to evacuate the hostages via a secure route to the secure hostage reception area in the embassy’s rear garden.
More detail is given in Rusty Firmin and Will Pearson’s Go! Go! Go!:
‘In the rear garden, more SAS call signs... stood ready... the hostage reception team would also continue to act as the rear cut-off group for any hostile runners.
As the hostages came tumbling out, the garden team grabbed them, told them to lie face down on the grass and cuffed their hands behind their backs with plastic ties.... If you’re genuinely innocent and six terrorists have been holding you at gunpoint for six agonising days, the face down and handcuff treatment doesn’t sound very friendly. Standard procedure, it was designed to be assertive: no one knew for sure if all the terrorists had been killed. There could still be more sleepers trying to escape in the throng. The SAS had just detected one terrorist - plus grenade - attempting to mingle with innocent hostages on the stairs. The pattern of behaviour suggested the terrorists had all been told - or agreed - to detonate grenades as an action of last resort. It was therefore essential to identify every single one of the people now lying face down on the embassy lawn.’
Sim Harris, one of the hostages, identified a terrorist as being amongst those in the rear garden. He gives the following detail in a book he co-authored with fellow hostage Chris Cramer:
‘On the other side of the lawn the one thing which the S.A.S. feared had happened - one of the gunmen had been brought out of the embassy in the confusion. It was the terrorist with the European features, Ali, who had thrown himself down among the hostages just seconds before the S.A.S. entered the telex room. As the embassy continued to blaze Ali was tossed out of the building, along with the people he had been holding hostage for six days.
Ali was first spotted by a police marksman deployed on the sixth floor of a block of flats in Kensington Road. The officer had seen the gunman earlier in the day leaning out of an embassy window.... The officer frantically began to shout down to the S.A.S. below. Sim too had noticed to his horror that Ali was among the hostages. The gunman was crawling on all fours towards one of the women hostages. He clawed at the girl’s sleeve and gripped tight.
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