20 January 2015

ISIS has two Japanese hostages


Time has a Associated Press article by John Grambell and Maamoun Youssef about yet more hostages:
An online video released recently purported to show the Islamic State group threatening to kill two Japanese hostages unless they receive a two hundred million dollar ransom in the next 72 hours.
The video, identified as being made by the Islamic State group’s al-Furqan media arm and posted on militant websites associated with the extremist group, mirrored other hostage threats it has made. The militant in it also directly addresses Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, now on a six-day visit to the Middle East with more than a hundred government officials and presidents of Japanese companies:
“To the prime minister of Japan: Although you are more than five thousand miles from the Islamic State, you willingly have volunteered to take part in this crusade,” says the knife-brandishing militant in the video (above), who resembles and sounds like a British militant involved in other filmed beheadings by the Islamic State group. “You have proudly donated a hundred million dollars to kill our women and children, to destroy the homes of the Muslims.”
The video shows two hostages in orange jumpsuits that the militants identify as Kenji Goto Jogo and Haruna Yukawa. Japan’s Foreign Ministry’s anti-terrorism section has seen the video and analysts are assessing it, a ministry official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of department rules.
Abe was to appear at a news conference in Jerusalem in Israel.
Speaking in Tokyo, Japan, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga declined to say whether Japan would pay the ransom. “If true, the act of threat in exchange of people’s lives is unforgivable and we feel strong indignation,” Suga told journalists. “We will make our utmost effort to win their release as soon as possible.”
In August of 2014, a Japanese citizen believed to be Yukawa, a private military company operator in his early forties, was kidnapped in Syria after going there to train with militants, according to a post on a blog kept. Pictures on his Facebook page show him in Iraq and Syria in July of 2014. One video on his page showed him holding a Kalashnikov assault rifle with the caption: “Syria war in Aleppo 2014.”
Goto is a respected Japanese freelance journalist who went to report on Syria’s civil war last year, and knew of Yukawa. “I’m in Syria for reporting,” he wrote in an email to an Associated Press journalist in October of 2014. “I hope I can convey the atmosphere from where I am and share it.”
The Islamic State group has beheaded and shot dead hundreds of captives— mainly Syrian and Iraqi soldiers— during its sweep across the two countries, and has celebrated its mass killings in extremely graphic videos. A British-accented jihadi also has appeared in the beheading videos of slain American hostages James Foley and Steven Sotloff, and with British hostages David Haines and Alan Henning.
The group also holds British photojournalist John Cantlie, who has appeared in other extremist propaganda videos, and a 26-year-old American woman captured last year in Syria while working for aid groups. US officials have asked that the woman not be identified out of fears for her safety.
The video marks the first time the Islamic State group has specifically demanded cash for hostages. Though the militant in the video links it to the Japanese funding efforts to counter the Islamic State group, it comes amid recent losses for the extremists targeted in airstrikes by a US-led coalition. Its militants also recently released some two hundred mostly elderly Yazidi hostages in Iraq, fueling speculation by Iraqi officials that the group couldn’t support them.
Rico says they want 'only' two hundred million dollars... Good luck with that.

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