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From a poster calling for the liberation of Alan Johnston. The BBC admitted he was about to be reassigned from Gaza.
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| By israelinsider staff April 9, 2007 |
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The British Broadcasting Corporation has denied Palestinian reports that missing BBC journalist Alan Johnston may have staged his own kidnapping in the Gaza Strip.
Chief of the BBC's Middle East Bureau Simon Wilson told The Jerusalem Post that there was no truth in any suggestion that Johnston abducted himself or colluded with Palestinian colleagues in the supposed kidnapping. "There is no truth in any suggestion that Alan Johnston may have staged his own kidnap, nor that the BBC was about to dismiss him," the BBC said in a statement sent to UPI.
"Alan is a highly respected journalist. He was due to return to London in April after a three-year position in Gaza, to resume a full-time staff job with the BBC World Service," Wilson added. The statement did not deny that Wilson was to be, or has been, terminated from his Gaza post, and seemed to imply that reports of his reassignment were correct.
Earlier Monday, the London-based Al-Hayat had reported that Palestinian security forces were investigating the possibility that Johnston had staged his own abduction after he received a notice from his superiors that he would be fired in the near future.
According to Al-Hayat, Johnston waited 15 minutes for his "captors" to pick him up, and has been willingly sequestered in an undisclosed location for more than a month.
Last week, Palestinian journalists called on the local and foreign media to boycott the Palestinian Authority in response to the alleged kidnapping.
Johnston, 44, has been missing since March 12.
Speaking on BBC radio, the corporation's head of newsgathering, Fran Unsworth, voiced fears for Johnston's well-being after four weeks in presumed captivity. She has spent the past two weeks in Gaza liaising with officials, and said the local politicians were doing what they could.
"The longer it goes on the more concerned that we become," she said. "He is incarcerated, and what that must be doing to his mental state and his general health, we have no idea."
Johnston was reportedly highly sympathetic to the Palesitnian cause.
The British government used the purported abduction to shmooze for the first time with PA Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, until now boycotted by the UK and US governments as the head of a terrorist organization.
In an unprecedented contact between the British government and Hamas-affiliated ministers from the Palestinian unity government, Haniyeh hosted in his Gaza office the British consul general in Jerusalem, Richard Makepeace, in order to discuss the issue of the abducted BBC reporter, Alan Johnston.
According to a UN report, Haniyeh expressed his happiness regarding the visit and affirmed that he stands for the freedom of Alan Johnston. He depicted the abduction as contrary to the good nature of the Palestinian people, while affirming that the perpetrators of such an action will never represent the Palestinian people, who he said appreciate the role which Johnston played in telling the world about the situation in Palestine.
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