Fox Journalist Says He's 'Sympathetic' to Captors

Aug. 31, 2006 — - Despite being taken hostage at gunpoint in Gaza by a jihadist group and held captive for 13 days, Fox News cameraman Olaf Wiig says he can't condemn his captors.

"In some ways, I feel such sympathy for the Palestinian cause. You know, in my heart. You know, I can't hate them for what they did. I resent on behalf of my family what they did. But there's a funny bit of me that's sympathetic to them still."

Wiig, 36, and Steve Centanni, 60, were abducted by masked gunmen earlier this month.

Centanni, a Fox correspondent, said they were sometimes held facedown in a dark garage, tied up in painful positions, and forced at gunpoint to make videos and say they had converted to Islam.

The two journalists were dropped off Sunday at Gaza City's Beach Hotel by Palestinian security officials.

"I was wondering if I was going to die of a heart attack or if the next thing would be a bullet in my head," Centanni said.

According to Wiig, when asked where they were being taken, their captors said, "To hell. You're going to hell."

A previously unknown group calling itself the Holy Jihad Brigades held the two men in a garage for 13 days, forcing them to pledge allegiance to Islam.

On the day of Centanni's and Wiig's release, their captors delivered a video showing the two men in Arab robes reading from the Koran to indicate their conversion to Islam.

"I have the highest respect for Islam, and I learned a lot of good things about it, but it was something we felt we had to do because they had the guns, and we didn't know what the hell was going on," he said in other reports.

Centanni and Wiig were stripped of their possessions and dressed in sweat suits as part of a process of removing their identity.

Videotaped messages shown around the world revealed the apparent resignation in their faces.

The captors told Wiig that he would be released because he was from New Zealand.

However, Wiig said, they told him that his colleague, Centanni, an American, was dangerous and that they were going to kill him.

"I just knew that he was under [a] huge strain already, and I thought it was a burden he didn't need to carry for however long," Wiig said.

Centanni said he was grateful for that. "He's a beautiful man and a good friend," he said of Wiig.

Wiig's wife, Anita McNaught, who is also a journalist, was on assignment in Damascus, Syria, when she heard the news of the kidnapping. She rushed to Gaza to put pressure on Palestinian authorities and local Islamist chieftains to save the lives of her "boys."

"The terrorists have not met my wife," Wiig said. "She is a force to be reckoned with."

McNaught said she believed Wiig and Centanni had been released thanks to a team effort on the part of local politicians and journalists, Fox News, her visibility locally and the men themselves.

"It's really crucial to emphasize this," she said. "Now know that a lot of the things I did were visible to the people holding them hostage. They knew I was in Gaza making statements, talking to Palestinian people. That on its own I don't think would have been enough to have got the guys out."

McNaught said it was Wiig and Centanni's "nobility and self-possession" as hostages that played a large role in their release.

"Because they kept, despite the stress they were under, they kept their cool," she said. "They got to know their captors. They behaved with generosity and courtesy. They took them seriously."

I know. But telling that to this woman's family below is of little consolation. At the Crocker National Bank
On April 21, 1975, Mrs. Opsahl was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. The 42-year-old mother of four arrived at the bank with several other parishoners from Carmichael's Seventh-Day Adventist Church, planning to deposit the church's collection from the weekend. The S.L.A. bank robbers showed up at the same time. A local police detective described the scene to news reporters: "...as soon as they entered the bank [they] announced that it was a hold up, everyone to get down on the floor and put their faces in the rug. And with that a shot rang out hitting Mrs. Opsahl... two of the individuals vaulted the counter, start scooping up the cash. They were kicking people in the head, stepping on their faces and just shouting profanity throughout." Opsahl was taken to a local hospital, where her husband Trygve was a surgeon, but she died shortly afterward.
The Second Victim
Opsahl blouse with blood Opsahl was not the S.L.A.'s first murder victim, though she became the first unintentional one. In November 1973, the radical group had targeted Oakland school superintendent Marcus Foster, an African American community leader whose senseless slaying was incomprehensible to most Berkeley left-wingers. Russ Little, who was tried and ultimately acquitted of Foster's murder, would recall that the group's leader, Donald DeFreeze, chose Foster believing he "was the front man for some horrendous police apparatus that was set up." Such paranoia fueled the S.L.A.'s constant military drills and hair-trigger nerves. In a celebrated 1974 recording, kidnap victim-turned-fugitive Patty Hearst would memorialize fallen S.L.A. members with an ode to their violent ways. "Gabi crouched low... she practiced until her shotgun was an extension of her right and left arms. Zoya, female guerrilla. Perfect love and perfect hate reflected in stone cold eyes. Fahizah taught me to shoot first and make sure the pig is dead before splitting." Myrna Opsahl's path intersected with that of the S.L.A., ending in tragedy. Her murder would remain unsolved for decades.
Seeking Justice
Former S.L.A. member and fugitive Kathleen Soliah had adopted the name Sara Jane Olson and was living a comfortable life in Minnesota, married to a doctor and raising three daughters. She had seemingly buried her radical past. But she was apprehended in 1999, prompting two Los Angeles prosecutors to take a new look at the cold case files on the S.L.A. They decided there was enough evidence to prosecute Olson not only for explosives and conspiracy charges in Los Angeles, but also for Opsahl's murder in northern California. When they took their plan to Sacramento prosecutors and found little interest in reopening the case, the Los Angeles team approached the Opsahls. Jon Opsahl, who had been just fifteen years old when his mother died, began a public-awareness campaign, pressuring Sacramento officials to seek justice.

Resolution
On November 7, 2002, over 27 years after the crime was committed, four former S.L.A. members pleaded guilty to the second-degree murder of Myrna Opsahl. At the February 2003 sentencing, Emily Harris Montague, who acknowledged she had fired the murder weapon, received an eight-year prison term. Her accomplices, including her ex-husband William Harris, Sara Jane Olson, Michael Bortin, and James Kilgore, each received lesser sentences. The former S.L.A. members expressed remorse. In court, Bortin would offer an emotional apology to the Opsahl family, saying in part, "the fact that Mrs. Opsahl was murdered unintentionally in the bank is of no consequence to the family. Or the fact that we beat ourselves up more than anyone could... A woman is dead and many people suffer from those consequences. And I can offer nothing but my apologies." And Olson offered, "I never entered that bank with the intent of harming anyone... I am truly sorry, and I will be sorry until the day I die."

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