Abstract
Today hostage taking is considered as a crime or as a terrorist act. Indeed, hostage taking is one of the many ways of action of the terrorists because, by this way, they can put pressure on States and thus obtain an important media coverage. The hostage taking is one of the favourite ways of action of the terrorists, because it generates a climate of fear that they try to establish. This act has an immediate impact on the State of which the hostages are citizens. Its emotional characteristic leads to dramatization. We can still remember the effects of the hostage-taking of the Israeli sportsmen at Munich during the Olympic Games of 1972, also that of the French people in the 80's at Lebanon and that of the employees of the American embassy in Iran during 1979-1980. Hostage takings at that moment had mainly political objectives and were either linked to a national conflict or to a revolutionary armed movement which wanted to take the power. The political effect of theses hostage takings was significant and thus leads to the adoption of the International Convention against hostage taking by the United Nations.
