An online video released Tuesday
purported to show the Islamic State group threatening to kill two Japanese
hostages unless they receive a $200 million 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 100
government officials and presidents of Japanese companies.
“To the prime minister of Japan:
Although you are more than 8,000 and 500 kilometers (5,280 miles) from the
Islamic State, you willingly have volunteered to take part in this crusade,”
says the knife-brandishing militant in the video, who resembles and sounds like
a British militant involved in other filmed beheadings by the Islamic State
group. “You have proudly donated $100 million 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 later Tuesday in Jerusalem.
Speaking in Tokyo, 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, a Japanese citizen
believed to be Yukawa, a private military company operator in his early 40s,
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. 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. “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. U.S. officials have asked that the woman not be
identified out of fears for her safety.
Tuesday’s video marks the first time
the Islamic State group specifically has 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 U.S.-led coalition. Its militants also recently released some
200 mostly elderly Yazidi hostages in Iraq, fueling speculation by Iraqi
officials that the group couldn’t support them.
Credit: TIME
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