A reporter with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) was kidnapped Monday by masked gunmen as violence returned to Gaza.
According to a senior Palestinian Authority security official, four terrorists dragged reporter Alan Johnston from his vehicle and forced him into a white car which then drove off. Jerusalem Bureau Chief Simon Wilson confirmed that the network had lost contact with the reporter, but would not say whether he had been kidnapped.
A car that was discovered abandoned near Johnston’s Gaza City apartment was identified as belonging to the Scottish national, who apparently tossed a business card onto the seat as he was pulled out of the car. A leasing contract further identified the car as having been rented to the BBC.
PA security personnel set up checkpoints on roads leading out of the city, as a spokesman for PA Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh’s Hamas terrorist organization condemned the abduction. “We call on these criminal groups to stop this destruction of our reputation and to let this journalist go free,” he told the Associated Press. There was no immediate comment from PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction.
A number of network news reporters have been kidnapped within the past year. Most were released immediately; one exception was last summer’s kidnapping of two Fox News journalists.
Sixty-year-old American Steve Centanni and his 36-year-old cameraman Olaf Wiig of New Zealand were held for two weeks by a Hamas-linked group called the Holy Jihad Brigades.
In an interview an hour after being freed, Centanni said the two had been forced at gunpoint to convert to Islam and also to tape a video they did not want to tape. “Now, don’t get me wrong here,” said the reporter, “I have the highest regard for Islam and I learned some very interesting things about it, but we only did that because they had the guns.”
Associated Press photographer Emiliio Morenatti, an Italian national, was kidnapped in October 2006, also in Gaza City and released unharmed 15 hours later.
Most recently, a 50-year-old Peruvian photographer with the French news agency Agence France Presse (AFP) was abducted by masked gunmen at the beginning of this year. The hostage, Jaime Razuri, was released a week later.
Kidnappings have not been confined to journalists. PA terrorists returned to the practice of abducting each other’s operatives as violence began once again to escalate, despite the promise of a unity government to be announced later in the week.