February 11, 2009 4:36 PM
- Text
Freed BBC Reporter Recounts Ordeal
(CBS/AP)
The first night after he was snatched in Gaza nearly four months ago, BBC reporter Alan Johnston feared he was about to die. The kidnappers' masked leader appeared in the doorway, and moments later the prisoner was handcuffed, hooded and taken outside.
But the Palestinian gunmen were just moving him to another hideout, and Johnston settled into a grim captivity, much of which he spent in a dark room, often watched over by a guard who rarely spoke but was prone to flying into rages.
The guards were dangerous — dangerous enough to release a video of Johnston wearing a suicide belt, warning that he'd be killed if anyone tried to rescue him from the hideout deep in the squalor of Gaza, CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports.
Until his release before dawn early Wednesday in a murky deal between his kidnappers and Gaza's Hamas rulers, Johnston said he had only one link to the world - a radio that picked up British Broadcasting Corp. reports on the frantic efforts to free its correspondent.
Johnston, who emerged gaunt but smiling, told the BBC he was often unsure if he "was going to live or die," and expressed thanks for all those who worked for his release.
"I'm so immensely grateful for that, and I will be all my life," Johnston said in Jerusalem, addressing a BBC rally in London celebrating his release.
Johnston, a native of Scotland who reported from Gaza for the BBC for three years, was grabbed on a Gaza City street by masked gunmen March 12, shoved into a car and spirited away.
He was the latest in a string of foreigners kidnapped in Gaza, and his time in captivity was by far the longest. Even before it happened, he said, he had often envisioned being kidnapped.
"It was a vaguely surreal experience, as if I'd lived it before, because I'd imagined it so many times. And there I was, before I knew it, on my back in the back seat with a hood over my head," Johnston said at a news conference at Britain's consulate in Jerusalem, where reporters greeted him with applause.
That first night, Johnston said, he feared he was about to die.
At 2 a.m., the gunmen's leader appeared in the doorway, his face concealed by a red-and-white checkered headscarf, and told the journalist he wouldn't be hurt, the reporter recalled.
He wasn't sure whether to believe that. Not long afterward, Johnston said, "They woke me up, and put a hood over my head again, and handcuffed me, and took me out into the night, and of course you really wonder how that might end." But they only moved him to another hideout.
Johnston was held by the Army of Islam - a group inspired by al Qaeda and run by one of Gaza's most notorious and heavily armed crime families, the Doghmush clan.
"The last 16 weeks, of course, were just the very worst you can imagine of my life, like being buried alive, really, removed from the world," Johnston said.
During his captivity, the world saw Johnston only twice, in two videos his captors posted on the Internet. In the first, he condemned Britain, Israel and the U.S. In the second, he was shown wearing an explosive belt that he said would be detonated should anyone try to rescue him.
On Wednesday, Johnston said he was forced to read a prepared script and he didn't know if the belt was real. "To be honest, they hold all the cards in that situation, those guys, and I just decided that nobody takes these kind of videos very seriously."
But the Palestinian gunmen were just moving him to another hideout, and Johnston settled into a grim captivity, much of which he spent in a dark room, often watched over by a guard who rarely spoke but was prone to flying into rages.
The guards were dangerous — dangerous enough to release a video of Johnston wearing a suicide belt, warning that he'd be killed if anyone tried to rescue him from the hideout deep in the squalor of Gaza, CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports.
Until his release before dawn early Wednesday in a murky deal between his kidnappers and Gaza's Hamas rulers, Johnston said he had only one link to the world - a radio that picked up British Broadcasting Corp. reports on the frantic efforts to free its correspondent.
Johnston, who emerged gaunt but smiling, told the BBC he was often unsure if he "was going to live or die," and expressed thanks for all those who worked for his release.
"I'm so immensely grateful for that, and I will be all my life," Johnston said in Jerusalem, addressing a BBC rally in London celebrating his release.
Johnston, a native of Scotland who reported from Gaza for the BBC for three years, was grabbed on a Gaza City street by masked gunmen March 12, shoved into a car and spirited away.
He was the latest in a string of foreigners kidnapped in Gaza, and his time in captivity was by far the longest. Even before it happened, he said, he had often envisioned being kidnapped.
"It was a vaguely surreal experience, as if I'd lived it before, because I'd imagined it so many times. And there I was, before I knew it, on my back in the back seat with a hood over my head," Johnston said at a news conference at Britain's consulate in Jerusalem, where reporters greeted him with applause.
That first night, Johnston said, he feared he was about to die.
At 2 a.m., the gunmen's leader appeared in the doorway, his face concealed by a red-and-white checkered headscarf, and told the journalist he wouldn't be hurt, the reporter recalled.
He wasn't sure whether to believe that. Not long afterward, Johnston said, "They woke me up, and put a hood over my head again, and handcuffed me, and took me out into the night, and of course you really wonder how that might end." But they only moved him to another hideout.
Johnston was held by the Army of Islam - a group inspired by al Qaeda and run by one of Gaza's most notorious and heavily armed crime families, the Doghmush clan.
"The last 16 weeks, of course, were just the very worst you can imagine of my life, like being buried alive, really, removed from the world," Johnston said.
During his captivity, the world saw Johnston only twice, in two videos his captors posted on the Internet. In the first, he condemned Britain, Israel and the U.S. In the second, he was shown wearing an explosive belt that he said would be detonated should anyone try to rescue him.
On Wednesday, Johnston said he was forced to read a prepared script and he didn't know if the belt was real. "To be honest, they hold all the cards in that situation, those guys, and I just decided that nobody takes these kind of videos very seriously."
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