Alan Johnston, the BBC journalist held hostage in Gaza for the last four months, was freed early this morning after a late-night deal between Hamas Islamists and the group that kidnapped him in March.
Alan Johnston
"It is just the most fantastic thing to be free. It was an appalling experience," he told reporters from the home of local Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh after his 114-day ordeal at the hands of the Army of Islam.
Haniyeh, whose movement routed the forces of the secular, Western-backed Palestinian president last month to seize full control of the enclave, said the outcome "confirms (Hamas) is serious in imposing security and stability and maintaining law and
order in this very dear part of our homeland".
Khaled Meshaal, Hamas's overall leader in exile, hailed the success and contrasted with "anarchy" that prevailed when the Fatah faction of West Bank-based President Mahmoud Abbas was operating in the Gaza Strip.
Mr Johnston, the only Western correspondent based full-time in the troubled Gaza Strip, said he sensed his captors felt new pressure once Hamas seized control in fighting three weeks ago.
Negotiators, who were backed up by Hamas fighters cordoning off the Gaza City stronghold of the kidnappers, said the final deal was clinched by a senior Muslim cleric issuing a fatwa, or religious edict, for Mr Johnston's release.
No ransom was paid nor other conditions attached. The group had previously demanded Britain and other states free prisoners.
"I dreamt many times of being free and always woke up back in that room. Now it really is over and it is indescribably good to be out," said Mr Johnston, a Scot who turned 45 in captivity.
A video of Alan Johnston apparently wearing an explosive vest was released while in captivity
Describing it as the worst 16 weeks of his life and "like being buried alive" with "dangerous and unpredictable" captors, he later told a news conference with Haniyeh: "It's almost hard to believe that I'm not going to wake up in that room."
He described this afternoon how he was kidnapped when his car was surrounded by gunmen on a quiet Gaza street. He said his kidnappers initially told him they did not intend to kill or torture him, but at 3am on the first night, he was handcuffed and his face was covered with a hood.
He said he had twice fallen sick and was once chained for 24 hours but only in the last half hour did they assault him.
Mr Johnston said he was kept in a shuttered room for the last 3 months of his captivity and could not see the sun.
He feared for his life immediately after being seized on March 12th, as well as when he was filmed wearing an explosive vest by captors who warned Hamas forces not to try to free him.
"Mostly, I was under the guard of one man, a strange guy who barely spoke to me for days and would just glare at me and fly into rages at tiny things - a door slamming or whatever - and then at other times, once a fortnight, he would come across completely different and friendly, especially if he thought it might be coming to an end, the whole kidnapping.
"He would invite me through and we would watch television in his room, almost as if we were friends - of course we weren't.
"There was no violence at all towards me during it, but then last night there was a terrible, highly-charged ride into the centre of Gaza as the kidnappers took me through road-blocks manned by Hamas men who were clearing the way for them.
"Obviously it was tense, but he was just beside himself with anger and he had a go at me and slapped me in the face and so did his mate, the other guard.
"It was a grim, grim ending to it, but he was a dark figure, who I didn't in any way get to know and couldn't quite fathom, a shifty man with angry moods."
Johnston said his "lucky break" during his captivity was getting hold of two radios - first one on which he could only receive news in Arabic, but which allowed him to find out that he had not been forgotten, and then a second which received the English-language service of the World Service.
"I began to realise the extraordinary extent of support that there was," he said. "I realised the BBC from the top to the listeners in all corners of the world were coming out for me. You can imagine the extraordinary psychological boost that was.
"I was hearing friends and colleagues giving me messages from people I didn't know and I really did think that few kidnap victims anywhere in the world have ever been that lucky and I did say to myself 'If you can't get through this, getting that kind of extraordinary support, radio messages from friends and colleagues on a daily basis, it won't be very impressive'.
"It was a tremendous lift and I got that through the whole last three months of the kidnapping."
British diplomats, whose government does not recognise Hamas authority in Gaza, arrived from Jerusalem after
Mr Johnston had adressed the media and brought him back across the border into Israel shortly before 5 am (Irish time).