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Online Video Shows Japanese Hostages Threatened by ISIS Online Video Shows Japanese Hostages Threatened by ISIS
(about 4 hours later)
LONDON — A video posted online on Tuesday by the Islamic State extremist group depicted a black-clad militant with a knife threatening to kill two Japanese hostages within 72 hours unless the government in Tokyo paid a ransom of $200 million. AMAMI, Japan — A video posted online Tuesday showing a masked militant threatening to kill two kneeling Japanese men has confronted Japan with the same sort of hostage nightmare already faced by the United States and other nations. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vowed to try to save the men, while also saying he would not give in to intimidation.
The video showed two men, identified as Kenji Goto and Haruna Yukawa, kneeling on a rocky hillside with the masked militant standing between them. The crisis could also create a different sort of challenge for Mr. Abe, who was traveling in the Middle East when the video appeared. Political analysts said the images of the young Japanese men, dressed in the same kind of orange jumpsuits worn by hostages who were beheaded in previous videos, could mean trouble for Mr. Abe, by turning Japan’s still deeply pacifist public against his pursuit of a more active role for Japan in global security issues.
It was thought to be the first time that the militant group had made clear in a video that it wanted money, and that it cited the amount. Previously, the group had threatened to kill hostages if unspecified demands were not met. The video, posted by extremists of the Islamic State, showed the two Japanese men, identified as Kenji Goto and Haruna Yukawa, kneeling on a rocky hillside with the knife-wielding militant standing between them. The militant appeared to be reading a prepared statement, demanding that Tokyo pay a ransom of $200 million within 72 hours.
The 72-hour deadline also seemed to represent a break with the framing of earlier threats. But the amount of ransom involved was consistent with failed efforts — not made public by the militants at the time — to extort money in return for the release of American hostages. The militant linked the ransom demand to an offer that Mr. Abe made on Saturday, promising nonmilitary aid to nations aligned against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Mr. Abe pledged $200 million to help shore up the government of Iraq and to assist refugees in Turkey, Syria and Lebanon who have fled the Islamic State’s rise.
The SITE intelligence group, an organization that tracks jihadist propaganda, said the one-minute 40-second English-language video — titled “A Message to the Government and People of Japan” — had been produced by Al Furqan, an Islamic State media outlet. “To the Japanese public, just as how your government has made the foolish decision to pay 200 million to fight the Islamic State, you now have 72 hours to pressure your government in making a wise decision by paying the 200 million to save the lives of your citizens,” the masked man said in the video, speaking in English with what sounded like a British accent. “Otherwise this knife will become your nightmare.”
The militant appeared to be the same English-accented figure that has appeared in earlier videos by the Islamic State showing the execution of two Americans, James Foley and Steven J. Sotloff, and two Britons, David Cawthorne Haines and Alan Henning. In Britain, the militant is often referred to by the news media as “Jihadi John.” The masked man’s voice, manner and attire were similar to those of a person seen in earlier videos showing the beheadings of two Americans, James Foley and Steven J. Sotloff, and two Britons, David Cawthorne Haines and Alan Henning. The militant did not specify a currency for the ransom demand, but a subtitle in Arabic said it was for dollars.
The militant linked the ransom demand to a Japanese offer of assistance to enemies of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL, which controls a large amount of territory stretching from Syria into Iraq and says it is seeking to establish an Islamic caliphate. Both the United States and Britain say they refuse to pay ransom. While Japan has paid in the past, officials and analysts said that it had appeared to be less willing lately, and that it was highly unlikely to pay $200 million, a figure they said was set unrealistically high to make a political point.
“To the Japanese public, just as how your government has made the foolish decision to pay 200 million to fight the Islamic State, you now have 72 hours to pressure your government in making a wise decision by paying the 200 million to save the lives of your citizens,” the masked man said in the video. “Otherwise this knife will become your nightmare.” The main government spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, told reporters in Tokyo, “Our country will not be intimidated by terrorism, and there is no change to our policy of contributing to the international community’s fight against terrorism.”
The mandid not specify a currency, but a subtitle in Arabic identified it as dollars. The video was thought to be the first time that the militant group had expressly demanded money in a video. Previously, the Islamic State threatened to kill hostages in videos, but did not specify its demands. The 72-hour deadline was another departure from past threats.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan made the promise of nonmilitary assistance to foes of the Islamic State on Saturday during a visit to Cairo on a Middle East tour. The size of the demand, though, was consistent with the group’s failed efforts — not made public by the militants at the time — to extort money for the release of American hostages. The SITE Intelligence Group, an organization that tracks jihadist propaganda, said the latest video, less than two minutes long, was produced by Al Furqan, an Islamic State media outlet.
The hostages in the video wore orange jumpsuits, the attire of many of the group’s captives in previous videos. The threat thrust Japan into the sort of high-profile hostage dilemma that has vexed the United States and Britain, which both say they refuse to pay ransoms. The threat to the Japanese hostages was the top item on news programs in Japan, where many voters have been nervous about efforts by the right-leaning Mr. Abe to nudge Japan out of its postwar pacifist shell.
“Our country will not be intimidated by terrorism,” the main government spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, said in Tokyo, “and there is no change to our policy of contributing to the international community’s fight against terrorism.” The country has faced violent attacks in the Middle East before, including the gunning down of two diplomats in Iraq in late 2003 and the abduction and killing of a young Japanese man in Iraq a year later. But political analysts said the question now was whether the latest crisis would drain public support for Mr. Abe, who had seemed politically unstoppable after his governing party won a sweeping victory in elections last month.
Speaking at his daily news conference, Mr. Suga, declined to answer questions about whether Japan would pay the demanded ransom. While Mr. Abe has enjoyed strong support for his economic policies, the public has been less enthusiastic about his efforts to raise Japan’s diplomatic and military profile. Analysts say the Japanese public has been deeply averse to war or any sort of military action since the nation’s devastating defeat in World War II, and the terrifying spectacle of the hostage video could renew that aversion.
At a news conference in Jerusalem on Tuesday, Mr. Abe said he would not curtail his trip and would keep appointments with political leaders, but that he would skip less important engagements in order to stay on top of the hostage crisis. “This crisis touches on the deepest fear of the Japanese public toward Prime Minister Abe,” said Mikio Haruna, a politics professor at Waseda University in Tokyo. “Even before this happened, the public was afraid that he could get Japan embroiled in a conflict far from our shores that could result in Japanese getting killed.”
“Using human lives as a shield to make threats is an unforgivable terrorist act, and I am extremely indignant,” he said. “I strongly demand that they be released unharmed immediately.” At a news conference in Jerusalem on Tuesday, Mr. Abe said that he had ordered the officials handling the crisis to do everything they could to save the two hostages. At the same time, he said Japan would not withdraw its pledge of $200 million, a new step in Mr. Abe’s efforts to increase the nation’s diplomatic clout and fulfill promises that it would be a more globally active ally of the United States.
Mr. Abe said that a priority for Japan was to safeguard lives and that he had ordered officials handling the crisis to do everything they could to achieve that goal. He said that a senior official had been sent to Jordan to manage the hostage crisis. “Using human lives as a shield to make threats is an unforgivable terrorist act, and I am extremely indignant,” said Mr. Abe, who will cut his trip short and return to Tokyo to deal with the crisis. “I strongly demand that they be released unharmed immediately.”
Mr. Abe also said that Japan would not withdraw the $200 million it has pledged in nonmilitary aid to the region, including food and medicine for Iraqi and Syrian refugees. The United States issued a statement on Tuesday condemning the video and calling for “the immediate release of these civilians and all other hostages.” Jen Psaki, the State Department spokeswoman, said in the statement that “the United States is fully supportive of Japan in this matter.”
The abductions were the top item on news programs in Japan, where many voters have been nervous about Mr. Abe’s efforts to give the long-pacifist nation a higher profile in international events In Japanese news media coverage, one of the two hostages — Mr. Yukawa, 42 — has been portrayed as something of a lost soul who went to war-torn Syria hoping to find himself after his wife died of lung cancer. He appeared in a video on his website wearing fatigues and firing an assault rifle in Aleppo, Syria, and wrote on his blog before he was captured, apparently in August, that he would be going to a location in Syria that he could not disclose. “The next place could be the most dangerous,” he wrote. In a video posted online by his captors, a man appearing to be Mr. Yukawa is seen lying on the ground with blood running down his face.
According to the website of Mr. Yukawa, the chief executive of the private security firm PMC, he was captured in Syria in August. He was shown last year in a video posted online lying bleeding on the ground, being interrogated in English. He told his interrogators that he was working as a doctor and a journalist, but the interrogator also asked why he was carrying a weapon. PMC’s website links to video of him firing an AK-47 assault rifle in Aleppo, Syria, along with other images of him Iraq and Syria. The other man, Kenji Goto, 47, is a freelance journalist with experience reporting from war zones and other crisis situations. Before his capture, Mr. Goto detailed his travels in a series of videos posted online, including one with the English headline “Journalist Goto Heads For the Syrian Border.” According to his Twitter account, he crossed into Syria from Turkey on Oct. 2, somewhere near the besieged town of Kobani. His last Twitter message was posted on Oct. 23.
Several antigovernment activists in Syria, reached via Facebook and Skype, said the man who was shown in videos, said to depict Mr. Yukawa’s capture and interrogation, was fighting alongside the Islamic Front — a rival to the Islamic State — when he was detained. At the time, the Islamic State was advancing on Marea, a town in the Syrian province of Aleppo. Japanese news media outlets reported on Tuesday that Mr. Goto met Mr. Yukawa in Syria earlier this year. The reports said that Mr. Goto told his family that he was going into Syria to try to save Mr. Yukawa, but did not specify how he planned to do it.
The Islamic Front is a coalition of Islamist insurgents, mainly Syrians, that is opposed to the Islamic State and shunned by the West.
Mr. Goto’s website, Independent Press, describes him as a freelance journalist who focuses on war, refugees, poverty, AIDS and education.
Before his capture, Mr. Goto detailed his travels in a series of videos on YouTube. At least two of the videos were filmed near Kobani, a Kurdish town on Syria’s border with Turkey that has been the site of intense fighting for months. Another video features a headline in English: “Journalist Goto Heads For the Syrian Border.”
In a separate posting, Mr. Goto spoke of his encounter with a fellow Japanese citizen who was seeking to join the militant group that is now threatening to execute him. “A Japanese student was trying to become a combatant of the Islamic State, which was a surprise to me,” he said in the video. “The war means he has to kill people. I wonder if he really understood it or not.”
The video on Tuesday was reminiscent of events in November 2004, when Japan had 550 troops in Iraq as part of the American-led coalition, and Shosei Koda, a 24-year-old Japanese tourist, was kidnapped and decapitated by a militant group seeking their withdrawal. The prime minister at the time, Junichiro Koizumi, rejected the demand.
“We cannot lose to terrorism,” Mr. Koizumi said, “we must not yield to brute force.”
Earlier the same year, five Japanese hostages kidnapped in two separate incidents were freed and returned home to opprobrium for what was considered their selfish action in traveling to Iraq against government advice.
The threat to kill the two Japanese hostages fit a pattern of summary justice and abductions in areas controlled by the Islamic State, including in Iraq, according to international monitors.
On Tuesday, the United Nations human rights office in Geneva chronicled scores of killings in Iraq this month, often in public, and said that there had also been frequent kidnappings of civilians then held for ransom. Educated women appeared to be particularly at risk, the office said in a news release.
In one case, two men accused of banditry in Iraq were crucified and then shot after a summary hearing by an improvised court said to have cited Shariah, a legal code based on the Quran. Two other men, who had been accused of homosexual acts, were thrown off a roof.
The killings provided “another terrible example of the kind of monstrous disregard for human life that characterizes ISIL’s reign of terror over areas of Iraq that are under the group’s control,” the United Nations said.