…WILL OTHER FORMER HOSTAGES GROW SERIOUSLY ILL OR DIE FROM THE EFFECTS OF THE GAS

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This appears already to be happening. On December 6, Judith Ingram of the Associated Press reported: “Interviews with former hostages and their relatives reveal a wide range of ailments they believe were caused by their captivity and the gas used to knock them out…. Theater watchman Nikolai Lyubimov, 71, has numbness in the left arm and in parts of his face. He can no longer feed himself, said his daughter, Anna Lyubimova. ‘His health is totally damaged,’ she said.” Theater prop manager Larisa Abramova “has been forced to check in again [to the hospital] after a series of worrying blood tests.” Abramova had “developed a tremor in one hand” and doctors were unable to explain irregularities in her blood tests. “They [the doctors] don’t know the full composition [of the gas] and no one plans to talk about it,” her husband complained. Thomas Zilker, a toxicology professor at the Munich University Clinic in Germany who was interviewed by AP, emphasized that, “The hostages’ condition would depend in part on how long their organs were starved of oxygen after the gas interfered with their breathing. And that would be determined in turn by how quickly and effectively they were resuscitated.” It appears likely, to sum up, that many of the former hostages are suffering and will continue to suffer from serious health problems. Some will die prematurely from the effects of the gas.