Video appears to show body of hostage
TOKYO — The Japanese government expressed outrage at an image released Saturday that appeared to show the decapitated body of one of two Japanese hostages captured by Islamic State militants, and President Barack Obama condemned what he called a “brutal murder.”
The kidnappers had threatened to kill the men if a Friday deadline passed for a $200 million ransom from Japan. Hours before Obama’s statement, the U.S. and Japanese governments said they were working to authenticate the video containing the image.
SITE Intelligence, a well-known organization that tracks jihadi propaganda, said that it believed it was authentic. But Al Furqan, a media arm of the Islamic State that has in the past posted videos of the group’s beheadings, had not released any video or message confirming the killing by midday Saturday
statement by SITE said the video was posted on Twitter accounts linked to the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Obama reacts
Obama, who was traveling to India, issued a statement saying that the “United States strongly condemns the brutal murder of Japanese citizen Haruna Yukawa by the terrorist group ISIL.” An audio message that accompanied the video released Saturday said the dead hostage was Yukawa, 42, who has been described as an adventurer.
The other hostage, Kenji Goto, 47, a journalist, appeared to be alive in the video. Yukawa would be the first Japanese person to be killed by the Islamic State, which has established a self-proclaimed caliphate in parts of Syria and Iraq financed partly by ransom payments for kidnapped foreigners.
The two men’s fate have become a fixation in Japan in recent days and a major challenge for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Political analysts have said the killing might turn Japan’s still pacifist public against Abe’s efforts to give the nation a more active role in global affairs. The size of the ransom demand for the two hostages matched the amount of aid that Abe pledged last weekend to help with refugee relief and other nonlethal efforts by nations in the Middle East to deal with the Islamic State.
As he let the ransom deadline pass, apparently without paying the money, Abe had vowed that Japan would not be intimidated. After the image of the corpse appeared Saturday, a grim-faced Abe rushed to the prime minister’s office to oversee this latest twist to the hostage crisis that began Tuesday, when a video appeared online showing the hostages kneeling as a knife-wielding militant threatened to kill them. ‘Strong outrage’
Abe held an emergency meeting of his ministers Saturday, during which he said he directed them to use every possible avenue to free Goto.
“I feel strong outrage,” Abe told reporters after the meeting. “The Japanese government will not give in to terrorism and will continue to contribute to the peace and stability of the international community and the world.”
In the 3-minute audio recording released Saturday, the voice of a man who claimed to be Goto said Yukawa had been “slaughtered” and blamed Abe’s failure to pay the ransom. The audio is addressed to Goto’s wife, telling her that the Islamic State was now demanding the release of a woman imprisoned in Jordan, Sajida Mubarak al-Rishawi, for her part in a devastating suicide bomb attack there in 2005.
“They no longer want money,” the voice says in accented English. “You bring them their sister from the Jordanian re- gime, and I will be released immediately. Me for her. Don’t let these be my last words you ever hear. Don’t let Abe also kill me.”
In the audio, the voice says he is Kenji Goto Jogo, but it remained unclear late Saturday why that was different from the name given by the Japanese gov- ernment and his website.
The devastating attack in Jordan in November 2005 — a triple bombing of hotels in Jordan’s capital, Amman — killed 57 people. Rishawi’s husband blew himself up in a wedding hall, but her suicide belt failed to detonate.
Rishawi is Iraqi, and her family comes from a prominent tribe in Anbar province, where in 2005 al-Qaida in Iraq was entrenched and which the Islamic State holds sway today.
The Islamic State has beheaded three Americans and two Britons in recent months and show- cased the killings via Internet video postings. The release of the video came after Goto’s mother, Junko Ishido, issued a tearful plea at a Tokyo news conference Friday to the kidnappers, beseeching them to spare his life. and asserting that he was not an enemy of Islam.