GAZA CITY, 10 May 2007 — A little-known group claimed responsibility yesterday in an audio recording for abducting the BBC’s Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston, making demands which were immediately rejected by the Palestinian government.
To show that it was holding correspondent Johnston, the group posted a photo of his BBC identification card on the Internet.
The posting appeared to be the first tangible evidence that Johnston, who disappeared on March 12 while driving his car in the Gaza Strip, had been kidnapped.
Johnston has been held captive longer than any of the previous foreign journalists who have been seized, and subsequently released, by gunmen in Gaza.
“We demand that Britain free our prisoners, particularly the honorable Sheikh Abu Qatada Al-Filistini,” said a speaker on the audio recording, posted on the Internet by a group that calls itself the “Jaysh Al-Islam,” or Army of Islam.
The authenticity of the tape could not be immediately verified. The BBC had no comment on the demands, describing the claim of responsibility as encouraging.
“We of course welcome any sign that Alan may be alive and well. We profoundly hope that today’s news may be a sign that Alan will soon be safely released,” Mark Byford, the BBC’s deputy director general, said in a statement.
Abu Qatada, suspected of close links to Al-Qaeda, has been described by the British government as a “significant international terrorist.”
He is one of more than a dozen Arab men whom Britain has been holding under detention or house arrest as threats to national security, while acknowledging that it does not have sufficient evidence to put them on trial. The Special Immigration Appeals Commission in London ruled in February that Abu Qatada could be deported to Jordan, where he has been convicted twice in absentia.
— With input from agencies
