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Japanese journalist Jumpei Yasuda, who has been held in Syria for more than three years, gave details for the first time about his captivity and his uncertainty about the future as he prepared to return home.
Expressing himself on board a flight connecting southern Turkey to Istanbul, from where he was supposed to travel to Tokyo on Thursday, the 44-year-old freelance journalist said he had a lot to say. bad to speak fluently his mother tongue after 40 months of detention as a prisoner of a group. with links to al-Qaeda.
"I am happy to be able to return to Japan. At the same time, I do not know what's going to happen here or what I should do, "Yasuda told Reuters a day after his release." I'm thinking of what I need to do. "
Earlier, in a short video published by Turkish officials, Yasuda, who had lost weight and developed a thick beard, confirmed his identity. "I'm calling Jumpei Yasuda, a Japanese journalist," he said in English. "I have been detained in Syria for 40 months, now in Turkey. Now, I am safe. Thank you so much."
He is expected to be pressured to give a more detailed account of his stay as a hostage. It began when he was captured, apparently by the Nusra Front, a militant group linked to al-Qaeda, shortly after entering northern Syria in Turkey in 2015.
"What he witnessed during his captivity is valuable information. We want to hear from him to use his experience to help end the war [in Syria]", Maki Sato, secretary general of the Japan Iraq Medical Network, told Kyodo.
It was the second time that Yasuda, who had been traveling to the war zones of the Middle East for nearly two decades, was captured. He was detained in Iraq in 2004 along with three other Japanese citizens, but they were released after an intervention by Muslim clerics.
In front of their home near Tokyo, Yasuda's parents suppressed their tears. "I could do nothing but pray, so I prayed every day," said his mother, Sachiko. She said she folded more than 10,000 paper cranes during her son's trial in the desperate hope that her wish would be granted.
His father, Hideaki, said, "Above all, I want to see that he's fine. When he comes back, I want to tell him one thing: he did a good job.
Yasuda's wife, a singer named Myu, appeared on live television when the news was announced that her husband's safety had been confirmed. "I want to welcome him first and then congratulate him on enduring his ordeal," she said. "I'm so happy that he survived."
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he called Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani to thank them for their country's role in the liberation of Yasuda.
"He seems to be in good health, but our staff will check his condition and bring him to Japan as soon as possible," Foreign Minister Taro Kono told reporters. A spokesman for the Japanese government said that no ransom had been paid.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based surveillance group, said Yasuda was recently detained by a Syrian commander of the Islamic Party of Turkistan, a group of mainly Chinese jihadists in Syria.
His latest reports in Syria included one of his friends, Kenji Goto, an independent Japanese journalist beheaded by the Islamic State with his friend Haruna Yukawa in January 2015.
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, he said his reports were often blocked and that he would stop tweeting on his travels and activities.
Several videos showing a man suspected of being Yasuda have been released over the past year.
News agencies contributed to this report
