Masked Palestinian gunmen abducted a BBC correspondent from his car in Gaza City on Monday. As he was being taken away, the journalist threw a business card on the street that identified him as Alan Johnston of BBC, Palestinian security officials said.
Four gunmen carried out the abduction, and Johnston’s car was found abandoned near his Gaza City apartment, the officials told the Associated Press (AP). Police found the lease of the rental car, which showed it was rented to BBC. After the incident, Palestinian forces set up security checks on roads leading out of Gaza City to the south.
The news network said Johnston was from Scotland and has been reporting from Gaza for the past three years. BBC bureau chief in Jerusalem Simon Wilson said his news network had lost contact with Johnston but Wilson could not immediately confirm an abduction.
The BBC press office in London issued a brief statement saying it was “currently unable to contact him and are concerned for his safety. We are trying to gather as much information as possible.”
“We demand that those holding Alan Johnston free him at once,” Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) Executive Director Joel Simon said. “He is a respected journalist who was simply doing his job reporting the story from Gaza, as he has for the last three years.”
“We call for the immediate release of this journalist, who has lived and worked in the Palestinian territories for years,” Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said. “We urge both President Mahmud Abbas and Prime Minister Ismael Haniyeh to react at once to speed up his release. A response from all of us is essential.”
BBC described Johnston, 43, as a “highly experienced and respected reporter”. “It is his job to bring us day after day reports of the Palestinian predicament in the Gaza Strip,” said the BBC’s diplomatic correspondent, Paul Adams, himself a former Middle East reporter.
Johnston was born in Tanzania and educated in Scotland. He joined BBC World Service in 1991 and has spent eight of the last 16 years as a correspondent, including periods in Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. He became Gaza correspondent in April 2004 and is in the last few weeks of his posting there.
In the past 18 months, more than a dozen foreign journalists and aid workers have been abducted in Gaza, an area plagued by crime, political violence and lawlessness. Most of the kidnappings have been carried out by gunmen seeking favours from the government or trying to settle scores with rivals. Johnston is the 15th journalist abducted in the Gaza Strip since 2004, according to CPJ research.
CPJ research shows that all of the 14 previously abducted journalists were released unharmed, the majority after several hours in captivity. But on January 1, Agence France-Presse photographer (AFP) Jaime Razuri was abducted in Gaza and held in captivity for a week. In August 2006, a group called Holy Jihad Brigades held Fox News Channel correspondent Steve Centanni and freelance cameraman Olaf Wiig for 13 days before releasing them unharmed.
Past kidnappings appeared to be the work of private individuals or groups seeking to exploit foreign hostages for political purposes or to use them as bargaining chips to secure the release of jailed relatives or to win government jobs. To CPJ’s knowledge, none of those responsible for abducting members of the media have ever been apprehended or brought to justice for their actions.
RSF said, “The grim series of abductions of foreign journalists continues in the Gaza Strip without the authorities so far finding a way to bring it to an end. None of the people responsible for kidnapping journalists since 2005 has been arrested or tried. This impunity encourages potential hostage-takers to act.”
Johnston , the Guardian said, was one of the few foreign journalists who continued to work there despite the fear of abduction. Johnston divided his time between Gaza and Jerusalem and had only arrived in Gaza Monday morning. Most journalists would contact Johnston before travelling to Gaza to ask his advice on the level of risk and what precautions to take.
In December 2005, a British aid worker, Kate Burton, was kidnapped for three days along with her parents. The last foreigner taken hostage was Jaime Razuri, 50, a Peruvian photographer with Agence France-Presse (AFP) who was abducted at gunpoint on January 1 and released a week later.
The Tel Aviv-based Foreign Press Association (FPA), which represents foreign journalists in Israel and the Palestinian areas, appealed for Johnston’s immediate release. “We ask all in Gaza to respect the rights and safety of the press,” it said in a statement.
In Gaza City, a spokesman for Hamas, the Islamic militant group which heads the Palestinian government, condemned Johnston’s abduction. “We call on these criminal groups to stop this destruction of our reputation and to let this journalist free,” he told AP.
