I agree with you in thinking they will let the prisoners go free. #1- they are Muslim and #2- they did not have their hands tied in the picture. They tie the ones they intend to behead. The Japanese kids that were in on the kidnapping were not tied and were released. If those untied Turks were sure of being beheaded the three of them would jump their capturers and fight it out to the death. I think they believe they will be freed. Of course all that is just my armchair intuition. BTW, my neighbor, Hassan, is in Turkey as we speak. He goes home every summer to visit. This time he took his American wife. I'm watching the house for them.
The three Turks look odd in the video... like perhaps they have been drugged.... The one on the left is shaking and/or jerking around like he has some kind of tremors. Did anyone else think they looked odd/drugged??
They drugged Paul Johnson before killing him. I suspect they are drugging all of these hostages before beheading them. May account for the limited/lack of struggling on the part of the hostage, and may account for the lack of blood spurting that should accompany an adult human with normal blood pressure. Forensic blood spatter analyist commented that blood splatter patterns were not consistent with normal blood pressure (implying either near death, or already dead when beheading took place).