The Finnish willingness to pay ransom makes sense, when you look at their history and geopolitical situation.  Bordering Russia, they cannot always take a hard line, thereby heightening the risk for invasion (but that didn't stop Russia in WW2).  Appeasement, or whatever you want to call it (aka "Finlandization"), avoided SU invasion during the Cold War--so a practical attitude which has worked for them in the past.

Having Al Qaeda take hostages and then having European governments pay Al Qaeda to release the hostages is one of the ways the West funds Al Qaeda. There was actually a New York Times story about this the other day: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/opinion/sunday/how-european-ransoms-bankroll-islamist-terrorists.html" target="_blank">link According to that story, in the last ten years, Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain, France, Austria, Sweden, and the Netherlands have paid $130 million to terrorists in order to free European hostages. By the way, if you want to see how the CIA created Al Qaeda to begin with, watch this: Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/55980866" target="_blank">link Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8Lam9V_9tE" target="_blank">link