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(TOKYO) – A man considered a Japanese freelance journalist who disappeared three years ago in Syria has been released and is currently in Turkey, a Japanese official said.
The man is protected by the Turkish authorities in Antakya, near the border between Turkey and Syria, but he is most likely the journalist Jumpei Yasuda, said Tuesday the Secretary General of Cabinet Yoshihide Suga at a press conference organized in a hurry.
According to Suga, the Japanese government has been informed by Qatar of the release of this man. He informed Yasuda's family and sent embassy representatives to the man's site. The released man is mentally stable and healthy, reported Kyodo News Agency.
Yasuda was kidnapped in 2015 by the al Qaeda branch in Syria, known at the time as Front Nusra.
The Nusra Front later became known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or Levant Liberation Committee. The group handed Yasuda over to the Islamic party of Turkistan, which is largely composed of Chinese jihadists based in Syria, according to Rami Abdurrahman, president of the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights based in Britain.
Abdurrahman said that Yasuda was recently arrested in the village of Khirbet el-Joz by a Syrian commander of the Islamic Party of Turkistan, a powerful ally of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, who released him.
Yasuda began reporting on the Middle East in the early 2000s. Taken hostage in Iraq in 2004 along with three other Japanese, he was released after Islamic clerics had negotiated his release.
His latest work in Syria was on his friend Kenji Goto, a Japanese journalist who was taken hostage and killed by the Islamic State group.
The contact was lost with Yasuda after sending a message to another Japanese freelancer on June 23, 2015. In his latest tweet two days earlier, Yasuda said his reports were often blocked and that he would stop tweeting on its activities and location.
Several videos showing a man suspected of being Yasuda have been released over the past year.
In a video broadcast in July, the man with the beard suspected of being Yasuda said that he was in a hostile environment and needed to be rescued immediately.
Yasuda's family and friends were delighted with the news of his release.
"I'm so happy, that's all I can say," Yasuda's mother, Sachiko, told NHK's public channel in Japan. "I just want to congratulate him for doing it."
Kosuke Tsuneoka, who had received Yasuda's last message in 2015, said that he felt relieved. "I'm sure he's now experiencing a lot of details about terrorist organizations in Syria and I hope he'll talk to the world as much as he can."
Syria is one of the most dangerous places for journalists since the beginning of the conflict in March 2011, with dozens of deaths or kidnappings.
Several journalists are still missing in Syria and their fate is unknown.
Among the missing is Austin Tice, of Houston, Texas, who disappeared in August 2012 while covering the conflict that claimed the lives of some 400,000 people. A video released a month later showed him blindfolded and held by gunmen saying, "Oh, Jesus." He has not heard from him since.
Tice is a former sailor who has worked for the Washington Post, McClatchy Newspapers, CBS and other media. He disappeared shortly after his 31st birthday.
British photojournalist John Cantlie, who appeared in the Islamic State's propaganda videos, is another example. Cantlie has worked for several publications, including The Sunday Times, The Sun and The Sunday Telegraph. He was kidnapped by American journalist James Foley in November 2012. The IS has beheaded Foley in August 2014.
Lebanese journalist Samir Kassab, who worked for Sky News, was kidnapped on October 14, 2013, accompanied by a Mauritanian colleague, Ishak Moctar, and a Syrian driver on a trip to the north. from Syria.
In March 2014, two Spanish journalists – correspondent Javier Espinosa and photographer Ricardo Garcia Vilanova – were released six months after being abducted by a group linked to al-Qaida.
