Our kidnappers had total power over us. Islamic Jihad's hostage takers were teenagers, the children of Shias who had fled southern Lebanon. Being a hostage means facing your own death. Every time you leave your cell, you don't know if it's to be liberated or executed. Kauffmann compares his jailers' behaviour to that of children tearing off the legs of crabs or torturing cats.
Evil is the real enigma - because there is no 'why'.
That's what happened to us. Before he was kidnapped, Kauffmann was a journalist at the daily Le Matin de Paris , then at L' v nement de jeudi . Watching the suffering of others was, he claims, a form of voyeurism. You're there to recount the suffering of the world. I was like a lava.