G
_ G O D _
Guest
Mystery still surrounds Johnston's kidnap
by Donald Macintyre
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/article2413088.ece
See all stories on this topic:
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&n...raph.co.uk/news/world-news/article2413088.ece
Belfast,UK
Alan Johnston was about to start work on his farewell package for the 10 o'clock news
when he was kidnapped three weeks ago.
The subject was one he was uniquely qualified to tackle - the development of Hamas
over the past three years, seen through interviews with members of one of the
faction's local football teams in Gaza. That Monday, he had returned to a seemingly
tranquil Gaza from Jerusalem - where he had a dental appointment. He had dropped into
the Jerusalem BBC office for a chat about the Hamas project with Jo Floto, the senior
producer with whom he routinely worked, and the two men agreed to meet in Gaza the
following day. The meeting never took place.
Mr Johnston left the BBC office in the media centre in central Gaza City at about 5pm
and walked to his car, a rented Kia, to drive home to the beachfront apartment
complex he had moved to six months earlier because of a kidnap near to his old flat.
But he never made the call which under the BBC's routine security procedures he would
normally have put through to his office to say he had arrived home safely.
As he drove up Saed al'As Street, little more than 100 metres from the office, he was
forced at gunpoint from his car just outside the Middle East Council of Churches
building. He has not been heard from since.
Despite his dry, self-effacing sense of humour, Mr Johnston, 44, is passionate about
the Gaza story, and has been throughout the turbulent three-year tour that had been
due to end yesterday, and which he began in earnest covering the bloody Israeli
military incursion into the southern border town of Rafah in May 2004.
"We were always trying to get him to take more holiday," says Mr Floto. "But he would
say he only had a limited time in Gaza and there was so much to report." As the sole
Western correspondent based in Gaza, he was in constant demand for the BBC's multiple
outlets, often to cover news breaking in the middle of the night. And there was
plenty of it: the presidential elections; Gaza disengagement, when Mr Johnston, Mr
Floto, and the BBC cameraman Ian Druce spent a month in the southern Gaza town of
Khan Yunis seeing the Jewish settlers' evacuation through the eyes of Palestinians;
Hamas's victory in the 2006 elections; the corrosive increase in poverty - and
internal insecurity - resulting from the subsequent international boycott; the beach
bombing which all but wiped out the entire Ghalia family; the lethal aftermath of the
kidnap of the Israel Corporal Gilad Shalit; the fighting between Hamas and Fatah
which brought Gaza to the brink of civil war; and the descent into lawlessness of
which his own kidnap has now become a potent symbol.
Simon Wilson, the BBC's Middle East bureau chief, who with Mr Floto spent over two
weeks in Gaza tirelessly chivvying Palestinian leaders and security chiefs to do the
maximum to secure Mr Johnston's speedy and peaceful release, attest to how fast Mr
Johnston went in Gaza from being a relative television unknown to a face the exacting
editors at Television Centre were glad to see on air. But long before that, Mr
Johnston had earned a wide reputation, says Mr Wilson, as "one of the best radio
reporters and package-makers in the BBC".
In a moving broadcast appeal after he had been captive for a week, his Scottish
father Graham called him - with justice - "a friend of the Palestinian people". But
despite what Mr Floto calls his "humane" ability to "engender empathy with the
subjects of his reporting without being mawkish or melodramatic" - inevitably, given
his posting, Palestinian civilians most of all - he was relentlessly scrupulous about
facts.
His Palestinian BBC colleagues became used during Israeli attacks to visiting the
morgue at Shifa Hospital to count bodies at Mr Johnson's behest, as he raced to put a
report on air, refusing to make do with mere local claims of casualty numbers.
A long film he made in Khan Yunis amid the still-to-be-removed rubble from the
abandoned Jewish settlements at the end of 2005 went a long way to showing how far
Gaza remained under Israeli control. But it also reflected local criticisms that the
Palestinian Authority had not done more to exploit the withdrawal for the benefit of
the population.
As Mr Wilson says: "Of course, he was doing the Palestinian story. But if, say, he
was talking to the victims of an Israeli artillery attack, he would also ask them
what they thought of the Qassam rockets [fired by Palestinian militants] and he got a
wide range of answers."
Raji Sourani, the respected director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights,
which has been at the forefront of the many civil groups pressing for his release,
knows Mr Johnston well. "I'm feeling so bad and angry," he says. "Not just because I
know Alan as a human being, a first-class professional journalist and a friend.
"This is not in our political culture, or in our social culture. We are shooting
ourselves in the head with acts like this. We are deforming our image."
Mr Sourani says he was impressed during a protest meeting last week in Khan Yunis
about Mr Johnston's kidnap at how everyone spoke up for him "from the mayor to the
smallest grassroots groups".
But Mr Sourani is all the angrier because he sees the toll the past two years of
kidnaps of foreigners have taken on the international presence in Gaza: it is only
one reason - though an important one - for a reduction in foreign UN staff from about
80 in 2005 to single figures now. The field director for the United Nations Relief
and Works Agency (UNRWA), John Ging, along with Karen Koning AbuZayd, UNRWA's
commissioner general, remain in Gaza with a handful of support staff despite gunmen
firing 11 shots at Mr Ging's armoured car two weeks ago in a failed attempt to kidnap
him.
But such acts, Mr Sourani says, can only threaten the interests of the almost one
million Gaza refugees provided for by the agency. They are also part of what the
former Fatah cabinet minister Sufian Abu Zaida, who was himself briefly abducted by
Hamas gunmen last December in one of scores of inter-factional kidnaps, describes as
the growing "Somali-isation" of Gaza. Besides a marked reduction in foreign
journalists visiting Gaza, Mr Sourani says "there are only about 5 per cent of the
foreign diplomats coming here that there used to be - and they all come in under
heavy guard. And the international solidarity groups hardly show up any more."
Mr Sourani says that "everyone" - including the Palestinian security services -
"knows who Alan's kidnappers are. But we have no accountability to the rule of law."
He is referring to widespread speculation that Mr Johnston was seized by a large
criminal family in Gaza, known for its shifting alliances between the main factions.
One such clan, the Dogmush family, two of whose members were killed by Hamas gunmen
last December, was widely held responsible for what until Mr Johnston's seizure was
the most serious and prolonged of all the kidnaps of Westerners - that of two Fox
television employees who were released unharmed - physically at least - after two
weeks as captives last summer.
Mr Sourani says the kidnappers could be acting as "sub-contractors" for other
interests. The Interior ministry spokesman Khaled abu Hillal said shortly after the
abduction that the kidnappers had a "private" agenda and speculated they wanted the
same things as earlier kidnappers: "Employment, supplies, weapons and bullets."
But since no one has admitted responsibility for Mr Johnston's seizure, or issued a
public demand, and the Palestinian security services have remained tightlipped about
any negotiations they are having with the kidnappers, it is impossible to be sure
what their motives are.
Like any responsible reporter, Mr Johnston had thought seriously about the kidnapping
risks. When the Fox men were abducted he left Gaza for a brief spell. He remarked
with characteristic wryness in a "From Our Own Correspondent" a year ago about Gaza
kidnaps by groups seeking jobs in the security services that: "It is ironic really,
Gaza is the only place in the world where your kidnapper's demand is that he should
be allowed to become a policeman."
But, in fact, the man who his father said in his appeal had applied for the Gaza job
"because he felt the Palestinian story had to be told" is deadly serious about his
work. His flat is littered with books on every aspect of the Middle East, along with
his language flashcards in Arabic, in which he has been taking regular lessons.
The hope must be that as Palestinian leaders return from the Riyadh summit, the
negotiations to free him will intensify. The Foreign Press Association has called its
members to a demonstration in Ramallah today, and there will also be another rally in
Gaza.
"Alan's temperament is calm and he knows how the other kidnappings have ended," says
Mr Floto. "His main worry will be for his parents. But even though this is not
Baghdad and Alan is better equipped to cope than anyone, we would be kidding
ourselves if we thought anyone held this long would not be affected. Every day we can
shorten that period by has got to be a benefit for Alan."
Dangerous posting
several foreigners have been kidnapped in Gaza, including eight journalists. Most
have been released within a short period and without being physically harmed
British aid worker Kate Burton and her parents kidnapped at gunpoint. They were
freed two days later
An Italian peace activist kidnapped and held briefly by masked gunmen in Khan
Younis
An Egyptian diplomat, Hussam al-Musseli, was kidnapped and held for two days
Ten foreigners, including three journalists, kidnapped in Gaza following an Israeli
raid on a prison in Jericho, West Bank. All released by the next day
Two journalists with the US network Fox News held for 13 days. They were freed
after making a video showing them convert to Islam
A Spanish photographer, Emilio Morenatti, kidnapped and released unhurt after a day
Two members of the Italian Red Cross abducted. Freed the same evening
A Peruvian photographer, Jaime Razuri, kidnapped. Released after one week
--
_____________________________________________________
I intend to last long enough to put out of business all ****-suckers
and other beneficiaries of the institutionalized slavery and genocide.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The army that will defeat terrorism doesn't wear uniforms, or drive
Humvees, or calls in air-strikes. It doesn't have a high command, or
high security, or a high budget. The army that can defeat terrorism
does battle quietly, clearing minefields and vaccinating children. It
undermines military dictatorships and military lobbyists. It subverts
sweatshops and special interests.Where people feel powerless, it
helps them organize for change, and where people are powerful, it
reminds them of their responsibility." ~~~~ Author Unknown ~~~~
___________________________________________________
--
by Donald Macintyre
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/article2413088.ece
See all stories on this topic:
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&n...raph.co.uk/news/world-news/article2413088.ece
Belfast,UK
Alan Johnston was about to start work on his farewell package for the 10 o'clock news
when he was kidnapped three weeks ago.
The subject was one he was uniquely qualified to tackle - the development of Hamas
over the past three years, seen through interviews with members of one of the
faction's local football teams in Gaza. That Monday, he had returned to a seemingly
tranquil Gaza from Jerusalem - where he had a dental appointment. He had dropped into
the Jerusalem BBC office for a chat about the Hamas project with Jo Floto, the senior
producer with whom he routinely worked, and the two men agreed to meet in Gaza the
following day. The meeting never took place.
Mr Johnston left the BBC office in the media centre in central Gaza City at about 5pm
and walked to his car, a rented Kia, to drive home to the beachfront apartment
complex he had moved to six months earlier because of a kidnap near to his old flat.
But he never made the call which under the BBC's routine security procedures he would
normally have put through to his office to say he had arrived home safely.
As he drove up Saed al'As Street, little more than 100 metres from the office, he was
forced at gunpoint from his car just outside the Middle East Council of Churches
building. He has not been heard from since.
Despite his dry, self-effacing sense of humour, Mr Johnston, 44, is passionate about
the Gaza story, and has been throughout the turbulent three-year tour that had been
due to end yesterday, and which he began in earnest covering the bloody Israeli
military incursion into the southern border town of Rafah in May 2004.
"We were always trying to get him to take more holiday," says Mr Floto. "But he would
say he only had a limited time in Gaza and there was so much to report." As the sole
Western correspondent based in Gaza, he was in constant demand for the BBC's multiple
outlets, often to cover news breaking in the middle of the night. And there was
plenty of it: the presidential elections; Gaza disengagement, when Mr Johnston, Mr
Floto, and the BBC cameraman Ian Druce spent a month in the southern Gaza town of
Khan Yunis seeing the Jewish settlers' evacuation through the eyes of Palestinians;
Hamas's victory in the 2006 elections; the corrosive increase in poverty - and
internal insecurity - resulting from the subsequent international boycott; the beach
bombing which all but wiped out the entire Ghalia family; the lethal aftermath of the
kidnap of the Israel Corporal Gilad Shalit; the fighting between Hamas and Fatah
which brought Gaza to the brink of civil war; and the descent into lawlessness of
which his own kidnap has now become a potent symbol.
Simon Wilson, the BBC's Middle East bureau chief, who with Mr Floto spent over two
weeks in Gaza tirelessly chivvying Palestinian leaders and security chiefs to do the
maximum to secure Mr Johnston's speedy and peaceful release, attest to how fast Mr
Johnston went in Gaza from being a relative television unknown to a face the exacting
editors at Television Centre were glad to see on air. But long before that, Mr
Johnston had earned a wide reputation, says Mr Wilson, as "one of the best radio
reporters and package-makers in the BBC".
In a moving broadcast appeal after he had been captive for a week, his Scottish
father Graham called him - with justice - "a friend of the Palestinian people". But
despite what Mr Floto calls his "humane" ability to "engender empathy with the
subjects of his reporting without being mawkish or melodramatic" - inevitably, given
his posting, Palestinian civilians most of all - he was relentlessly scrupulous about
facts.
His Palestinian BBC colleagues became used during Israeli attacks to visiting the
morgue at Shifa Hospital to count bodies at Mr Johnson's behest, as he raced to put a
report on air, refusing to make do with mere local claims of casualty numbers.
A long film he made in Khan Yunis amid the still-to-be-removed rubble from the
abandoned Jewish settlements at the end of 2005 went a long way to showing how far
Gaza remained under Israeli control. But it also reflected local criticisms that the
Palestinian Authority had not done more to exploit the withdrawal for the benefit of
the population.
As Mr Wilson says: "Of course, he was doing the Palestinian story. But if, say, he
was talking to the victims of an Israeli artillery attack, he would also ask them
what they thought of the Qassam rockets [fired by Palestinian militants] and he got a
wide range of answers."
Raji Sourani, the respected director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights,
which has been at the forefront of the many civil groups pressing for his release,
knows Mr Johnston well. "I'm feeling so bad and angry," he says. "Not just because I
know Alan as a human being, a first-class professional journalist and a friend.
"This is not in our political culture, or in our social culture. We are shooting
ourselves in the head with acts like this. We are deforming our image."
Mr Sourani says he was impressed during a protest meeting last week in Khan Yunis
about Mr Johnston's kidnap at how everyone spoke up for him "from the mayor to the
smallest grassroots groups".
But Mr Sourani is all the angrier because he sees the toll the past two years of
kidnaps of foreigners have taken on the international presence in Gaza: it is only
one reason - though an important one - for a reduction in foreign UN staff from about
80 in 2005 to single figures now. The field director for the United Nations Relief
and Works Agency (UNRWA), John Ging, along with Karen Koning AbuZayd, UNRWA's
commissioner general, remain in Gaza with a handful of support staff despite gunmen
firing 11 shots at Mr Ging's armoured car two weeks ago in a failed attempt to kidnap
him.
But such acts, Mr Sourani says, can only threaten the interests of the almost one
million Gaza refugees provided for by the agency. They are also part of what the
former Fatah cabinet minister Sufian Abu Zaida, who was himself briefly abducted by
Hamas gunmen last December in one of scores of inter-factional kidnaps, describes as
the growing "Somali-isation" of Gaza. Besides a marked reduction in foreign
journalists visiting Gaza, Mr Sourani says "there are only about 5 per cent of the
foreign diplomats coming here that there used to be - and they all come in under
heavy guard. And the international solidarity groups hardly show up any more."
Mr Sourani says that "everyone" - including the Palestinian security services -
"knows who Alan's kidnappers are. But we have no accountability to the rule of law."
He is referring to widespread speculation that Mr Johnston was seized by a large
criminal family in Gaza, known for its shifting alliances between the main factions.
One such clan, the Dogmush family, two of whose members were killed by Hamas gunmen
last December, was widely held responsible for what until Mr Johnston's seizure was
the most serious and prolonged of all the kidnaps of Westerners - that of two Fox
television employees who were released unharmed - physically at least - after two
weeks as captives last summer.
Mr Sourani says the kidnappers could be acting as "sub-contractors" for other
interests. The Interior ministry spokesman Khaled abu Hillal said shortly after the
abduction that the kidnappers had a "private" agenda and speculated they wanted the
same things as earlier kidnappers: "Employment, supplies, weapons and bullets."
But since no one has admitted responsibility for Mr Johnston's seizure, or issued a
public demand, and the Palestinian security services have remained tightlipped about
any negotiations they are having with the kidnappers, it is impossible to be sure
what their motives are.
Like any responsible reporter, Mr Johnston had thought seriously about the kidnapping
risks. When the Fox men were abducted he left Gaza for a brief spell. He remarked
with characteristic wryness in a "From Our Own Correspondent" a year ago about Gaza
kidnaps by groups seeking jobs in the security services that: "It is ironic really,
Gaza is the only place in the world where your kidnapper's demand is that he should
be allowed to become a policeman."
But, in fact, the man who his father said in his appeal had applied for the Gaza job
"because he felt the Palestinian story had to be told" is deadly serious about his
work. His flat is littered with books on every aspect of the Middle East, along with
his language flashcards in Arabic, in which he has been taking regular lessons.
The hope must be that as Palestinian leaders return from the Riyadh summit, the
negotiations to free him will intensify. The Foreign Press Association has called its
members to a demonstration in Ramallah today, and there will also be another rally in
Gaza.
"Alan's temperament is calm and he knows how the other kidnappings have ended," says
Mr Floto. "His main worry will be for his parents. But even though this is not
Baghdad and Alan is better equipped to cope than anyone, we would be kidding
ourselves if we thought anyone held this long would not be affected. Every day we can
shorten that period by has got to be a benefit for Alan."
Dangerous posting
several foreigners have been kidnapped in Gaza, including eight journalists. Most
have been released within a short period and without being physically harmed
British aid worker Kate Burton and her parents kidnapped at gunpoint. They were
freed two days later
An Italian peace activist kidnapped and held briefly by masked gunmen in Khan
Younis
An Egyptian diplomat, Hussam al-Musseli, was kidnapped and held for two days
Ten foreigners, including three journalists, kidnapped in Gaza following an Israeli
raid on a prison in Jericho, West Bank. All released by the next day
Two journalists with the US network Fox News held for 13 days. They were freed
after making a video showing them convert to Islam
A Spanish photographer, Emilio Morenatti, kidnapped and released unhurt after a day
Two members of the Italian Red Cross abducted. Freed the same evening
A Peruvian photographer, Jaime Razuri, kidnapped. Released after one week
--
_____________________________________________________
I intend to last long enough to put out of business all ****-suckers
and other beneficiaries of the institutionalized slavery and genocide.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The army that will defeat terrorism doesn't wear uniforms, or drive
Humvees, or calls in air-strikes. It doesn't have a high command, or
high security, or a high budget. The army that can defeat terrorism
does battle quietly, clearing minefields and vaccinating children. It
undermines military dictatorships and military lobbyists. It subverts
sweatshops and special interests.Where people feel powerless, it
helps them organize for change, and where people are powerful, it
reminds them of their responsibility." ~~~~ Author Unknown ~~~~
___________________________________________________
--
