CHAPTER 7: CRISIS NEGOTIATION

Event: Siege of Iranian Embassy, London Date: 30 April 1980 Summary: Six armed men stormed the embassy, taking 29 hostages and making various demands on the new Khomeini government. Police responded to an alarm, they knocked on the door and the head terrorist told them to go away. Crowds of Iranians arrived and began chanting support for the hostage-takers. Police set up a command post in a nearby school. To mask the noise of their work, commercial airline flights were diverted to fly overhead and a crew operated jackhammers, pretending to fix a gas leak. The Strategic Air Service (SAS) counter-terrorist unit was about to go on an exercise, having been alerted to a fake terrorist incident in the North of England. A former SAS member who was working as a dog-handler alerted his former colleagues that they might be needed. Authorities began making a full-size replica of the embassy to practise ways of storming the building. By the sixth day, hostage-takers threw one dead body out the front door, and police feared others were dead. The SAS began their assault from three sides at 7:24 p.m. Two stun grenades malfunctioned, and a soldier kicked in a window by mistake, alerting hostage-takers. Another solider got caught up in his ropes, blocking the way for his colleagues. Another SAS team came in from balconies and through an adjoining embassy whose wall theyd quietly been taking down all week. Result: All but one hostage-taker were shot dead. One other dead body was foundthat of a hostage. The surviving hostage-taker was tried and sentenced to life in prison. Lessons Learned: The situation was made more difficult by language barriers and crowds of protesters. There was the unusual procedure of police knocking on the front door and the equally unusual response when the hostage-taker opened the door and told police to go away. The happenstance of a former SAS member alerting his colleagues may have helped immeasurably, as did the happenstance of an SAS
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simulation at the same time as a real incident. Bad luck with stun grenades and the broken window could have been tragic. The need to involve countless others, such as air-traffic control, the gas company and nearby building owners, is a lesson. The surprisingly low toll, with 24 hostages and one hostage-taker surviving is a pleasant surprise.

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