THE ASAHI SHIMBUN


 

Recently freed hostage Jumpei Yasuda said that while he does not know the identity of his captors, he believes that his citing of words from the Koran may have helped with his release.

Yasuda, who spoke about his ordeal to an Asahi Shimbun reporter on a Turkish Airlines flight to Japan, traveled from Turkey to Syria on June 22, 2015, and was captured by terrorists the following morning.

While he was subject to extensive psychological abuse during his 40 months in captivity, Yasuda, who was released Oct. 23, said he had a gut feeling that the hostage takers would not kill him.

“Some took pleasure committing inhuman acts, but others were sympathetic,” Yasuda said. “If they really do kill (hostages), I suspect that would cause a split in the group.”

Early on, when the Japanese side was in communication with the group to negotiate Yasuda’s release, he was treated like a guest.

“I was fed kebabs and chicken nearly every day,” he said. “About a year after the Japanese side cut off communication, they started abusing me.”
It has been speculated that the journalist's kidnappers were members of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, formerly Nusra Front, al-Qaida’s branch in Syria. However, Yasuda doubts this is the case.

“I didn’t have time to find out exactly who there were, but I believe it’s a secular organization,” Yasuda said. “They said they weren’t Nusra Front, and I didn’t see any Nusra (Front) flags.”

He added that while he was being held captive, “many Nusra Front members were being interrogated.”

The journalist said he was kept at a residential house for about a year at first, then moved to a large-scale detention facility where a few hundred prisoners of war were kept, including soldiers of the administration of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Nusra Front fighters.

The facility also held hostages from Pakistan, Iran, Canada and Syria, he added.

While being moved to various locations, Yasuda said he was always blindfolded, but he believes that he was returned several times to the same locations and remained in northwestern Syria’s Idlib Governorate the entire time.

In his last days of captivity, his captors agreed that there was no point in keeping him anymore, according to Yasuda, leading him to take desperate actions.

“I pleaded with them, saying I believed they would not kill me because they are Muslim,” Yasuda recounted.

He said he repeatedly negotiated for his release, citing words from the Koran and saying that detaining him any longer like this would be an un-Muslim-like act.

One week before being freed, he said he was moved to a small compartment that he was once kept in when he went on a hunger strike. He was then moved to solitary confinement in a house at another location on Oct. 22.

The following day, the hostage takers took him to the Turkish border, where they released him, he added.

Yasuda said he has doubts regarding the Japanese government’s announcement that Qatar played a part in realizing his release.

“If Qatar was in the negotiations, I would have been treated like a guest (in the last days),” Yasuda said.

The central government has also denied that any ransom was paid to Yasuda’s captors, although a Britain-based nongovernmental organization said Qatar paid the ransom.

The journalist expressed concern that “if (extremists) regard Japan as a nation that would pay money for a captured national, then more Japanese would be targeted.”