BBC reporter Alan Johnston has appeared in a video posted on an Islamic terrorist, al-Ekhlaas website, the first video released of him since his abduction on 12 March.
It is not clear when the video, which appeared on the al-Ekhlaas website, was recorded, or under which conditions Johnston was speaking. Showing strain, he strongly criticized Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States.
The reporter, known for his strong sympathies with the Palestinian cause, makes a number of slips in various places, including mentioning the suffering of the Israeli people rather than the Palestinian before correcting himself. In other places, he reads the statement without affect, and running sentences together, as if he is trying to communicate that he is reading under duress, and reading something written by others.
Here is the transcript in full of what he said, provided and analyzed by the BBC:
"First of all my captors have treated me very well. They've fed me well. There's been no violence towards me at all, and I'm in good health.
In three years here in the Palestinian territories, I've witnessed the huge suffering of the Palestinian people.
And my message is that their suffering is continuing, and that it is unacceptable.
Everyday there are Palestinians arrested, imprisoned for no reason. People are killed on a daily basis.
The economic suffering is terrible, especially here in Gaza where there's an Israeli [audio jumps] absolute despair after nearly 40 years of Israeli occupation which has been supported by the West.
The situation in Iraq is even worse, we see every day maybe 100 or more Iraqis being killed, in the violence there which followed the failed invasion of Iraq by America and Britain.
Ordinary people who are losing everything and can't live their lives properly. Because of not just the violence, but the shortage of everything they need for normal lives for bringing up their children.
Errr... Afghanistan, the situation again terrible.
You see on your television screens ordinary people [audio jumps] suffering as the armies of America and Brit... [audio jumps] attack.
In all this, we can see the British government endlessly working to occupy, err, the Muslim lands, against the will of the people in those places.
From history, the British worked to bring about the state of Israel, which is the cause of all the suffering of the Israeli ... err ... of the Palestinian people, and we, the British, are completely to blame, along with the Americans, for the situation in Iraq, and the British are the main force in Afghanistan, causing all the trouble to ordinary, simple Afghans who simply want to live.
To my family, my family... [audio cuts off abruptly]"
Britain's Foreign Office said it was aware of the video and investigating the claims. "We are urgently investigating these reports," said a spokesman, speaking on customary condition of anonymity. British officials were studying the video, the Foreign Office spokesman said, but "it is far too early to say whether this is a recent tape or to make any further comment."
"We are aware of the reports and we are investigating urgently," Said Simon Wilson, BBC bureau chief in Jerusalem.
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