A released hostage said Saturday that one of her captors demanded a ransom from her father while she was held in Gaza. The ransom was ultimately not paid.
Moran Stela Yanai, who was released during a weeklong ceasefire in November, told Channel 12 news that one day while she was held hostage, one of her captors began asking questions about her father.
The terrorist asked her if her father loved her, to which she responded, “Of course, more than anything.”
He then asked how much money her father would pay to get her back. Yanai said that he would pay anything.
“I understood very quickly that maybe they were really contacting our parents and asking for money, and I made it clear to him at that moment that my father would pay anything for me,” Yanai said.
Get The Times of Israel’s Daily Edition
by email and never miss our top stories
By signing up, you agree to the terms
When she returned from captivity, Yanai asked her father if he had been asked for money and he said he had.
Moran Stela Yanai embraces family members at Sheba Medical Center after being released from Hamas captivity in Gaza, November 29, 2023. (Courtesy)
Screenshots published by Channel 12 showed WhatsApp messages and phone calls between Yanai’s father and a person saved in his phone as “Khan.” The messages were in broken English and Hebrew.
In the first message sent to Yanai’s father, the sender told him the hostage was with them and included a photo of Yanai from before she was taken captive. The message was followed by a WhatsApp phone call after which he was told, “One hour if you want to see her alive.”
However, before any money was transferred, the man who had been speaking with Yanai’s father cut off contact.
“It’s part of the psychological games they play with us. They don’t just toy with us, they toy with our families. It doesn’t end with ‘we murdered [people], we took [people], and we left.’ They continue to abuse us and continue to torment our families,” Yanai said.
Yanai was abducted from the Supernova music festival on October 7. She told Channel 12 that she was captured twice and managed to convince her captors to let her go, but she was caught a third time and taken to Gaza.
She was freed in November as part of a truce with Hamas when 105 hostages were released in exchange for Palestinian security prisoners, all of them women and minors.
Freed hostage Moran Stela Yanai gives a televised address on behalf of the families of hostages, calling for their release from Hamas captivity in Gaza, February 15, 2024. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)
After her release, Yanai hinted that she had been subjected to sexual abuse, saying that the hostages were put through physical and mental torture.
It is believed that 105 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Hamas released 105 civilians during the weeklong truce in late November, and four hostages were released before that. Seven hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 30 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the military as they tried to escape their captors.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.
pdcc