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Freed in Gaza

By Jay Bushinsky Posted Oct 1 2007

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The free world breathed a sigh of relief when Palestinian extremists in the Gaza Strip released BBC correspondent Alan Johnston.

The Army of Islam, a military group with suspected ties to the Dughmush clan and Al Qaeda, kidnapped the 44-year-old journalist while he drove to the BBC’s Gaza office on al-Wihdah Street on March 12, 2007. A white Subaru pulled alongside Johnston’s car at 2 p.m., and four armed men seized him, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

At the scene of his abduction, Johnston left a business card on the pavement — deliberately, local reporters assumed.

During the following 114 days of captivity, his kidnappers strapped an explosive belt around his waist at least once and forced him to beg on videotape for acceptance of their demands.

Five days before his release, an e-mail transmitted by the Tawhid and Jihad Brigades based in the Gaza Strip announced that a “previously unknown group had killed Johnston and would release a video of the execution.”  The e-mail said Johnston had been killed after Palestinian and British authorities failed to meet demands for prisoners to be freed from Israeli jails.  

However, no demand for such a release had been made public since Johnston was seized. This morbid exchange can be regarded as premeditated disinformation intended to influence the behind-the-scenes contacts, presumably underway to extricate Johnston.

The kidnappers’ motives remain unclear.

According to one well-informed source, they wanted to use him as a means of exerting pressure on the UK for the release of Palestinian-born terrorist kingpin Abu-Qutada and several of his cohorts who are in British custody. Abu-Qutada, whose full name is Sheikh Omar Mahmoud Othman abu Omar, is suspected of being Al Qaeda’s chief recruiter in Great Britain.  

Another explanation was financial. Johnston’s ransom was suspected to have been $5 million.

The third rationale was that Hamas wanted to build up tension and suspense regarding Johnston’s fate so that it could make political capital as his rescuers.  

None of these notions have been verified and insofar as the proverbial payoff is concerned, it has not been confirmed.  Like the other media whose personnel have been detained ad infinitim, the BBC paid no heed to reports that a large sum of money changed hands through clandestine channels.

Then as now, there have been no disclosures of any ransom paid, deals made or conditions met. In the opinion of one of Israel’s senior radio journalists, Yitzhak Noy, who specializes in local and international news media, one must not rule out the possibility, if not the likelihood, that “political strings” were attached to the captive’s release.  

At the time of Johnston’s kidnapping, Fatah controlled the Gaza Strip through the Palestinian National Authority. During a visit to Sweden on April 20, 2007, PNA President Mahmoud Abbas told reporters: “Yes, I believe he (Johnston) is still alive.  Our intelligence services have confirmed to me that he is alive.”  

Abbas also said he knew who was holding Johnston, but declined to give details and did not initiate or authorize any operations aimed at liberating Johnston.

The Foreign Press Association in Israel, of which Johnston was an active member, waged a relentless campaign for his freedom and worked closely with the BBC, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and the local Palestinian press in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.  

Leads, tips and often unreliable information poured into the FPA’s modest office in Tel Aviv where Executive Secretary Glenys Sugarman of South Africa, herself an experienced foreign correspondent, kept FPA Chairman (and ABC’s Israel bureau chief) Simon McGregor-Wood informed.

There was constant and close coordination with the BBC, while Palestinian journalists launched a variety of initiatives aimed at bringing back Johnston alive.  

Palestinian journalists refused to cover the Palestinian government, its ministers in particular, as a means of exerting pressure on the government to take swift and effective action; they put up giant portraits of Johnston on public buildings; they marched and chanted the slogan that echoed around the world, “Free Alan Now.”

The FPA demonstration staged by Israel-based foreign correspondents at Checkpoint Erez, on April 25, 2007 may have been the first of its kind.  

It was a surrealistic event. The same foreign correspondents, men and women, who have been covering mass protests, vigils and every other kind of collective effort to advance a cause or make a political point were following suit. They stood side by side in the warm spring sun, holding “Free Alan Now” posters for all the TV cameramen on hand to see and shoot, and listened to speeches made on Johnston’s behalf.

“We salute our Palestinian colleagues and thank them for their courageous efforts on Alan’s behalf,” McGregor-Wood said in one speech.

In another speech, BBC Deputy Head of News Gathering, Jonathan Baker spoke with the fervor of a political leader, “LET HIM GO!”  With the words, Baker summed up his message of appreciation for the constant support Johnston received in dispatches, broadcasts and interviews filed by his FPA colleagues.

The International Press Institute followed up two months later by sending a delegation to Ramallah for talks with PNA officials.  Its declared purpose was “to maintain pressure” on the parties involved for Johnston to be freed unharmed, said the IPI’s Catherine Porter, who joined that mission.

In June, Hamas routed Fatah forces and seized control of the politically contested Gaza Strip.

Senior Hamas officials negotiated with the Army of Islam, conducted direct talks with one of its leaders, Mumtaz Dughmush, head of the Dughmush clan, but did not bring the leader and his allegedly-renegade fellow clan members to justice.

During the final stages of this ordeal, Hamas’ armed personnel surrounded the building in which Johnston was kept. They were nearby at 4:00 a.m. when his high-tempered jailers received orders to bring him to the home of deposed PNA Prime Minister Ismail Haniya in Gaza.

Haniya was waiting with a coterie of local TV crews and journalists.

On July 4, the pale and visibly fatigued Johnston passed through Israel’s Checkpoint Erez, stopped in Jerusalem and flew home.

“It is just the most fantastic thing to be free,” he said just before leaving the Gaza Strip.