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Japanese journalist Jumpei Yasuda, who was held hostage by Islamist militants in Syria for more than three years, lands at Tokyo’s Narita airport on Oct. 25 after being released. (Kyodo News/Reuters)
Louisa Loveluck
Reporter in The Washington Post’s Beirut bureau, focusing on Syria.
BEIRUT — A Japanese journalist held hostage for more than three years in Syria returned home Thursday, ending an ordeal that he described as a personal “hell.”
Jumpei Yasuda, 44, was kidnapped by militants in June 2015 during a reporting trip to northern Syria. The freelance reporter was last seen, bedraggled and drawn, in a video circulated online earlier this year.
The circumstances surrounding Yasuda’s release were not clear Thursday as he was reunited with his family at Tokyo’s Narita airport. “The moment I saw him in the hallway, I ran up to him and hugged him,” his wife, Myu, said at a news conference. “He was being a little shy when I told him, ‘Welcome home.’ ”
Although Yasuda is thought to have been captured by fighters linked to al-Qaeda, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said he had been transferred under the custody of a Syrian commander to the Turkistan Islamic Party, a hard-line group dominated by Chinese Uighurs.
[Austin Tice has been missing in Syria for six years]
On Thursday, Yasuda described his detention as a physical and mental “hell.” Torture was frequent. At one point, he said, he was unable to bathe for eight months.
“Day after day, I thought, ‘Oh, I couldn’t go home again,’ and the thought took over my head and gradually made it difficult for me to control myself,” he told the Japanese NHK television station.
Syria is one of the most dangerous countries for journalists. Dozens have been killed or taken hostage, all but severing access for international reporters to opposition-held swaths of the country.
President Bashar al-Assad’s government also has controlled the flow of information by denying visas to reporters from most Western publications.
Among Yasuda’s final dispatches was a report on Kenji Goto, another Japanese journalist and a friend, held hostage in Syria before he was beheaded on camera by Islamic State militants.
“I’m so happy to be free,” Yasuda said Thursday, speaking on a flight from Antakya in southern Turkey to Istanbul, before heading home to Japan. “But I’m a bit worried about what will happen to me or what I should do from now on.”
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