Departing from its serial beheading videos of Western hostages that have outraged the world, the Islamic State released a new video yesterday featuring a captive British journalist, seated behind a desk, explaining the group’s message and warning that America and its allies are foolishly heading into another unwinnable war.
The internet video, titled Lend Me Your Ears and subtitled in Arabic, shows journalist John Cantlie dressed in an orange jumpsuit and apparently reading from a script, recalling how he was captured by the militant group also known by the acronyms IS, Isis and Isil after he arrived in Syria in November 2012. "Now nearly two years later, many things have changed," Mr Cantlie said, describing the Islamic State's expansion of territory in eastern Syria and western Iraq, "a land mass bigger than Britain and many other nations".
European captives
Mr Cantlie said the Islamic State had released other European captives, with the exception of those from Britain and the US. He did not say that both countries’ governments have refused to pay cash ransoms as other nations have done.
In comments apparently directed at war-weary Americans, Mr Cantlie spoke of what he described as the foolhardiness of yet another US-led military commitment abroad, following the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
He described his message as the first in a coming series of lectures he would deliver about what he called verifiable facts about the Islamic State.
“Now, I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “You’re thinking: ‘He’s only doing this because he’s a prisoner. He’s got a gun at his head and he’s being forced to do this.’ Right? Well, it’s true. I am a prisoner, that I cannot deny.
“But seeing as I’ve been abandoned by my government and my fate now lies in the hands of the Islamic State, I have nothing to lose,” he said.
“Maybe I will live and maybe I will die, but I want to take this opportunity to convey some facts that you can verify. Facts that if you contemplate, might help preserving lives.”
Mr Cantlie was kidnapped in Syria before, in July 2012, and released a couple of weeks later along with a Dutch photographer, Jeroen Oerlemans. That time, the journalists were held at a camp in Syria by a group of foreign jihadists, who kept them hooded and blindfolded and repeatedly threatened to kill them. Mr Cantlie and Mr Oerlemans were shot during an escape attempt before their release. Four months later Mr Cantlie was captured again in Syria while riding in a car with US journalist James Foley.
Mr Cantlie’s three-minute, 21-second message was released as momentum is building in Washington for a strong military response to the Islamic State’s rapid ascendance.
It came a day after the House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted to authorise training and arming Syrian insurgents who are opposed to the Islamic State.
On Twitter, accounts associated with jihadist sympathisers tried to get a wider audience for the video by co-opting popular hashtags, including ones associated with the Scotland independence referendum. – (New York Times service)