A video recording released yesterday shows kidnapped British journalist Alan Johnston wearing an apparent explosives belt of the type suicide bombers use and warning it will be detonated if an attempt is made to free him by force.
The family and colleagues of Johnston, a BBC reporter kidnapped by Islamist extremists in Gaza, urged his captors yesterday not to harm him.
Johnston's father said he and his family were "most concerned and distressed" about the video, in which the 45-year-old Briton said his kidnappers had threatened to blow up the belt of explosives if force was used to free him.
PHOTO: AP
The BBC also said it was "very distressing" to see Johnston "being threatened in this way."
"Our thoughts, of course, are with Alan in his present predicament. We earnestly request his abductors to release Alan unharmed in any way," Johnston's father said in a statement.
In the one-minute-long video posted by the Army of Islam on a Web site used by militants, Johnston looked tired but unharmed and appealed to the Hamas movement and the British government "not to resort to tactics of force in an effort to end this."
Johnston appeared wearing a white and blue belt around his torso with black shoulder straps over a dark red sweater in the undated video filmed against a black background.
"The situation now is very serious. As you can see I have been dressed in what is an explosive belt, which the kidnappers say will be detonated if there was any attempt to storm this area," he said.
Johnston's captors say they want Britain to free Muslim prisoners, particularly Islamist cleric Abu Qatada, in exchange for the reporter's release.
Hamas officials in the Gaza Strip say they are pressing the kidnappers to free Johnston, but Ismail Haniyeh, the prime minister of the Hamas-led government sacked by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, said on Sunday his group had not used force to try to free Johnston at the request of the British government, fearing he might be harmed in the process.
"We ask those holding Alan to avoid him being harmed by releasing him immediately," the BBC said in a statement.
Johnston was abducted in Gaza on March 12 and is believed to be being held by the Army of Islam -- a little known group that appears to draw inspiration from al Qaeda.
The Army of Islam is dominated by the Doghmush family, a powerful Gaza clan with its own large militia. Although the group participated in a Hamas-backed operation to kidnap Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit last year, its relations with the militant Muslim group have since soured.
None of the several foreigners seized in Gaza in recent years has been harmed. But none has been held as long as Johnston, with most freed within days.
Johnston had reported from Gaza since 2005 and was the only foreign journalist to remain based there after Palestinian infighting erupted last year. There has been a series of kidnappings of foreign journalists in Gaza in the past two years, but Johnston's captivity has been the longest.
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