Gaza City, Gaza Strip – British reporter Alan Johnston, looking pale and tired, was released today after nearly four months in captivity in the Gaza Strip.
The British Broadcasting Corp. correspondent said his captors threatened his life a number of times in various ways but were rarely violent, although they hit him in the final moments before he was released. They kept him in solitary confinement throughout his captivity and at one point chained his hands and ankles for 24 hours. He said he got sick from the food.
“It is just the most fantastic thing to be free,” Johnston said in a phone interview with the BBC hours after he was freed. “It was an appalling experience, as you can imagine, 16 weeks kidnapped, sometimes, occasionally, quite terrifying and frightening.”
He spoke from the Gaza home of deposed Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.
As recently as last week, Johnston’s life appeared to be in serious peril when the group holding him posted a video on a militant website in which the journalist appeared to be wearing an explosives belt that he said his captors would detonate if there were an attempt to free him.
“It became almost hard to imagine normal life again,” Johnston told the BBC in a steady and composed voice. “And I literally dreamt many, many times of being free and always woke up back in that room, and now it really is over and it is indescribably good to be out.”
He said he had a radio throughout most of his captivity and was able to follow the support and interest in his case, which was “a huge psychological boost.”
Johnston was kidnapped by a shadowy, little-known group known as the Army of Islam from a Gaza City street March 12 and held far longer than any other foreign reporter in Gaza.
The BBC reported Johnston had spoken to his father since his release.
Asked by al-Jazeera TV whether he would return to Gaza, which he had covered for three years, Johnston said: “After many months of kidnapping, I think I need a break.”
There was no immediate comment from Johnston’s former captors.
Hamas had demanded Johnston’s freedom since it violently seized control of Gaza last month. On Tuesday, Hamas gunmen took positions around the Army of Islam’s stronghold, stepping up the pressure to secure his release. On Monday, Hamas had arrested the spokesman of the Army of Islam, giving it a valuable bargaining chip.
Late Tuesday, the Doghmush clan, the large, well-armed family behind the Army of Islam, released nine students loyal to Hamas whom they had kidnapped earlier in the week.
Then four Army of Islam members were freed by Hamas, negotiators said. The four included the Army of Islam spokesman.
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum accused Johnston’s captors of smearing the Palestinian people’s reputation and of seeking “to prove to the world that we are a group of militias that fight each other to gain personal ends.”
The Army of Islam had demanded that Britain first release a radical Islamic cleric with ties to al-Qaeda.
The same group was involved in the capture of Israeli Cpl. Gilad Shalit, who was seized more than a year ago in a raid on an Israeli army post near Gaza.
