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Post by Admin on Jan 20, 2015 22:33:09 GMT
Two Japanese hostages, one demand from ISIS: Hand over $200 million, or else. The else being that the pair will meet the same gruesome fate as other captives held by the terrorist group, others who were shown in ISIS videos kneeling in orange jumpsuits in front of masked, black-clad men -- just like the Japanese hostages identified as Kenji Goto Jogo and Haruna Yukawa -- shortly before being beheaded. In the latest video, a masked man gives the Japanese government a choice to pay $200 million -- the same amount of money Prime Minister Shinzo Abe recently pledged for those "contending" with ISIS -- to free the Japanese men. That deal holds for 72 hours, which would seem to mean sometime Friday, since the video appeared on social media Tuesday. Another move that theoretically could change things would be if Japan's government halts its alliance with those fighting ISIS, which calls itself the Islamic State. Tokyo hasn't participated in airstrikes aimed at the Islamist extremist group, though its leaders have supported those who have, as well as the Iraqi government. "Although you are more than 8,500 kilometers away from the Islamic State, you willingly volunteered to take part in this crusade," the masked man on the video posted Tuesday says, addressing his comments to Abe. But Abe, who is currently visiting the Middle East, didn't seem about to bargain Tuesday. He stood by a pledge, made in a speech Sunday in Cairo, for funding to help build "human capacities, infrastructure and so on" for those affected by ISIS' armed campaign. "The pledge aid is very important to the refugees in need and has nothing to do with the Islamic communities or the radical militants," the Prime Minister said. "... We will contribute to the (region's) peace and stability, in cooperation with the global community." “It is an unforgivable act of terror to use human lives as shields and make the threat,” Abe said in Jerusalem. “I feel strong anger.” Abe also insisted that “we will make further contributions to the regional peace and safety.” “We will not change this policy,” he added. “Japan will continue to positively offer support in a nonmilitary manner.” But Abe did not explicitly rule out paying a ransom to free captives Kenji Goto Jogo and Haruna Yukawa. So what happens next?Abe spoke firmly Tuesday against the terrorists and their $200 million ransom demand. What he did not do, however, is rule out the Japanese government paying ransom or negotiating with its two citizens' captors. Like most countries, Japan has never advertised that it or Japanese companies have paid ransom for hostages. In fact, Japanese government officials have at times denied such a practice, and Japan is a signatory to a 2013 G8 communique that stated, "We unequivocally reject the payment of ransoms to terrorists, and we call on countries and companies around the world to follow our lead to stamp this out." One reason for this policy is that ISIS and groups like it can use ransoms to fund their bloody campaigns. Paying ransoms also may give them incentive to take more hostages, thus putting more people at risk. And ransoms might not always work, since ISIS and other hostage takers aren't usually seen as trustworthy. Still, ruling out ransoms also rules out one peaceful way to free Goto and Yukawa. It's possible someone else may intervene to negotiate their release, whether out of goodwill or in exchange for something else. Or troops from a Japanese ally could launch a raid to get to them, like the unsuccessful one this summer to free Foley. Either way, others could play a role in this story before it's done -- hence Abe's comment Tuesday that the international community "needs to deal with terrorists without giving in to them."
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Post by Admin on Jan 21, 2015 22:47:48 GMT
The first uncomfortable fact is that if you pay a ransom, a hostage is more likely to be released. The other is that every time a ransom is paid it increases the chance that other hostages will be taken to help fill the coffers of a terrorist group. According to an investigation by The New York Times, al Qaeda and its affiliates have netted at least $125 million in ransoms since 2008. That finding is similar to a 2012 U.S. Treasury estimate that $120 million had been paid to terrorist organizations during the previous eight years. Much of this revenue reportedly comes from France. French media reported that the government had paid 20 million euros (about $28 million, reflecting last year's exchange rate) for the release of four employees of a French nuclear firm. They were held by an al Qaeda affiliate for three years in northern Niger and were released last year. The French government denied paying a ransom, but The New York Times indicated -- based on reports from Le Monde and Agence France-Presse -- that France did pay in that case and has paid out a total of some $58 million to al Qaeda or related groups. Not surprisingly, the Times also found that of the 53 hostages known to have been taken by al Qaeda and its affiliates during the past five years, a third were French. The French government's purported policy of negotiating with militant groups for the release of kidnapped citizens does appear to work. Four French journalists -- Nicolas Henin, Pierre Torres, Edouard Elias and Didier François, who were kidnapped in Syria last year by ISIS -- were released near the Turkish border in April, blindfolded and with their hands bound. One of those hostages, Henin, had been held by ISIS alongside Foley. Henin is free, and Foley is dead. These are the facts that policymakers must confront as they consider what to do about the other Western hostages still held by ISIS. So far, ISIS has executed a number of Western hostages, including American journalist Steven Sotloff, and U.S. aid worker Peter Kassig. ISIS continues to holds one American female aid worker. CNN is withholding her name. For the hostages held by ISIS, there is always the chance that their governments will mount a rescue operation as the United States did in Syria in July 2014 to try and rescue Foley and the other Americans. That mission failed because the hostages had been moved from a location they had been kept in for some months. There is also the possibility that hostages could escape, as American photographer Matthew Schrier did last year when he managed to crawl out of a window of the prison where he was being held in in the Syrian city of Aleppo by an Islamist militant group. But such escapes are rare, and while successful rescue efforts do happen, they are fraught with risks for the hostages. Linda Norgrove, for instance, a British aid worker held by the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2010, was killed in a U.S. rescue operation, likely by a grenade that exploded near her. If there's not an escape or a successful rescue effort, Western governments whose citizens are held by ISIS have only the options of either a negotiation involving ransom or the real possibility that their hostages may be executed. This is the sobering choice that has faced President Barack Obama and his national security advisers and now faces the Japanese Prime Minister. Last year, Obama ordered a review of U.S. hostage policy, which is never to negotiate with terrorists. The review is reportedly supposed to examine issues such as "family engagement, intelligence collection, and diplomatic engagement policies." But that seems to be rather missing the point. The real issue is: Will a ransom be paid, or not? An area of possible wiggle room would be to leave the door open so that ransoms for Americans could be allowed to be paid -- not with U.S. government funds but with private donations. In such a case, the government would simply look the other way when private donations were used to free an American hostage, as paying money to a designated terrorist organization is a crime in the States. This is the least bad solution to a terrible quandary, which is if that if you don't pay the ransom the hostage dies, and if you do pay the ransom, you are helping a terrorist organization.
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Post by Admin on Jan 22, 2015 22:33:11 GMT
It is an unlikely friendship that ties the fates of war correspondent Kenji Goto and troubled loner Haruna Yukawa, the two Japanese hostages for whom Islamic State militants demanded a $200 million ransom this week. Yukawa was captured in August outside the Syrian city of Aleppo. Goto, who had returned to Syria in late October to try to help his friend, has been missing since then. For Yukawa, who dreamed of becoming a military contractor, traveling to Syria had been part of an effort to turn his life around after going bankrupt, losing his wife to cancer and attempting suicide, according to associates and his own accounts. A unit at Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs had been seeking information on him since August, people involved in that effort said. Goto’s disappearance had not been reported until Tuesday’s video apparently showing him and Yukawa kneeling in orange t-shirts next to a masked Islamic State militant wielding a knife. Yukawa first met Goto in Syria in April and asked him to take him to Iraq. He wanted to know how to operate in a conflict zone and they went together in June. Yukawa returned to Syria in July on his own. “He was hapless and didn’t know what he was doing. He needed someone with experience to help him,” Goto, 47, told Reuters in Tokyo in August. Yukawa’s abduction that month haunted Goto, who felt he had to do something to help the man, a few years his junior. “I need to go there at least once and see my fixers and ask them what the current situation is. I need to talk to them face to face. I think that’s necessary,” Goto said, referring to locals who work freelance for foreign correspondents, setting up meetings and helping with the language. Goto began working as a full-time war correspondent in 1996 and had established a reputation as a careful and reliable operator for Japanese broadcasters, including NHK. “He understood what he had to do and he was cautious,” said Naomi Toyoda, who reported with him from Jordan in the 1990s. Goto, who converted to Christianity in 1997, also spoke of his faith in the context of his job. “I have seen horrible places and have risked my life, but I know that somehow God will always save me,” he said in a May article for the Japanese publication Christian Today. But he told the same publication that he never risked anything dangerous, citing a passage in the Bible, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” In October, Goto’s wife had a baby, the couple’s second child. He has an older daughter from a previous marriage, people who know the family said. Around the same time, he made plans to leave for Syria and uploaded several short video clips to his Twitter feed, one showing him with media credentials issued by anti-government rebels in Aleppo. On Oct. 22, he emailed an acquaintance, a high school teacher, to say he planned to be back in Japan at the end of the month. Goto told a business partner with whom he was working to create an online news application that he expected to be able to travel in territory held by the Islamic State because of his nationality. “He said that as a Japanese journalist he expected to be treated differently than American or British journalists,” Toshi Maeda said, recalling a conversation with Goto before his departure for Syria. “Japan has not participated in bombing and has only provided humanitarian aid. For that reason, he thought he could secure the cooperation of ISIS.”
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Post by Admin on Jan 23, 2015 22:32:37 GMT
Abe has stressed that the aid money—which he pledged during a six-day trip to the Middle East that was interrupted by the hostage crisis—is for humanitarian purposes only and said his government is doing all that it can to secure the hostage’s release. But he has vowed not to “give in” to terrorists, and most analysts believe he will not authorize payment of the ransom—either openly or otherwise. Comments on Japanese-language social media have been largely unsympathetic toward the two hostages—particularly Yukawa, who told associates that he once tried to commit suicide by cutting off his genitals and later changed his given name to Haruna, typically used for women. Goto is given credit for at least attempting to help someone in need. “They needed to know the possible results before going to that region, especially now. They’re responsible,” said a Twitter post that was re-tweeted more than 1,000 times. Neither Mr. Goto nor Mr. Yukawa went to Syria upon request from the Japanese government,” says another. “Maybe I’m heartless, but we cannot give in to the Islamic State group’s terrorist acts. Japan withdrew all its diplomats from Syria in March 2012 as the civil war escalated, and warned all Japanese citizens against traveling there. The lack of an embassy hasn’t helped Tokyo as it tries to sort through the myriad government, rebel and ISIS forces fighting in the region. The advisory was in effect when Yukawa and Goto entered the country last year. This is not the first time that Japanese hostages in the Middle East have drawn condemnation from their countrymen, rather than sympathy. Three aid workers and peace activists were pilloried in the press and nascent social media after they were kidnapped in Iraq in 2004. The government refused demands that they withdraw Japanese peacekeepers from southern Iraq and the hostages were released unharmed a week later. Nonetheless, the criticism in Japan was so severe that the former hostages were forced to go into voluntary seclusion. “The public thought that because those citizens were working independently, and making independent comments critical (of the Iraq War), they were disloyal troublemakers putting Japan into world news for all the wrong reasons,” says Marie Thorsten, professor of international politics and media studies at Doshisha University in Kyoto. The stakes could be high for Abe, who just won a commanding victory in a snap election held in December. A staunch conservative and nationalist, Abe promised to focus on Japan’s flagging economy, but increasingly has pressed for bigger defense spending, the easing of long-standing restraints on Japan’s military and the promotion of a policy of “proactive contributions to peace” overseas. “This is the first time the public has seen Abe’s “proactive pacifism” at work and this is deeply unsettling,” says Kingston. “Until now, Islamic extremism was something that happened to other countries. People may get cold feet about Japan assuming a higher profile on global stage.”
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Post by Admin on Jan 24, 2015 22:43:17 GMT
A visibly shaken Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said early Sunday that Japan was working to no cost two hostages held by the extremist Islamic State group, calling a new on-line video purporting to show that a single had been killed "outrageous and unforgiveable." The message claimed one particular of the Japanese hostages, Haruna Yukawa, had been killed and demanded a prisoner exchange for the other, Kenji Goto. But the post was deleted quickly Saturday, and militants on a web-site affiliated with the Islamic State group questioned its authenticity. The Connected Press could not verify the contents of the message, which varied considerably from preceding videos released by the Islamic State group, which now holds a third of both Syria and Iraq. The Islamic State group had threatened on Tuesday to behead the men inside 72 hours unless it received a $200 million ransom. Kyodo News agency reported that Saturday's video was emailed to Goto's wife. Citing the release of the photo claiming to show hostage Yukawa had been killed, Abe mentioned immediately after a late-evening Cabinet meeting: "Such an act of terrorism is outrageous and unforgivable. We really feel powerful indignation, and vehemently condemn the act." Defense Minister Gen Nakatani said officials had been attempting to confirm the video and the photo shown in it. Patrick Ventrell, a spokesman for the White Residence National Security Council, mentioned U.S. intelligence officials were also operating to confirm no matter whether it was genuine. "We stand in solidarity with Japan and are coordinating closely," he mentioned, and called for the immediate release of folks held by the Islamic State group.
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