The family and colleagues of Alan Johnston, a BBC reporter kidnapped by Islamists in Gaza, urged his captors on Monday not to harm him after he appeared in a video wearing what he said was an explosive belt. Johnston’s father said he and his family were “most concerned and distressed” about the video. | Islamists adore the footage of groveling, weeping hostage families. |
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”. |