Even by the barbaric standards of the Islamic State, the video distributed on Saturday by the jihadists plumbs new depths of depravity. It shows a Japanese captive, 47-year-old journalist Kenji Goto Jogo, holding up a picture of his fellow hostage and friend Haruna Yukawa, who has been decapitated.
The nearly three-minute-long video was released after a 72-hour ransom deadline for the two Japanese hostages expired. In it Goto is heard speaking in halting English. He blames Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for Yukawa’s beheading and pleads for his own life. He says the Islamic militants no longer want money for his release—they had been asking $200 million for him and his friend. They will spare him now, he said, in exchange for an al Qaeda female suicide bomber, Sajida al Rishawi, captured in Jordan in 2005.
“I am Kenji Goto Jogo,” he says. “You have seen the photo of my cellmate Haruna slaughtered in the land of the Islamic Caliphate. You were warned. You were given a deadline and so my captors acted upon their words. [Prime Minister Shinzo] Abe, you killed Haruna. You did not take the threats of my captors seriously and you did not act within the 72 hours.”
According to the Japanese government and other sources, the video was uploaded on a jihadist web site and to YouTube sometime after 11pm Japan time.
There are some oddities about Saturday’s video. It has no ISIS logo and no footage of the execution. While Goto purportedly pleads for the Japanese government to get al Rishawi released in exchange for his freedom, he speaks no Japanese at all in the audio. Moreover, the voice of the man who is presented as Goto seems different from previous news videos featuring the journalist. The delivery is strange and halting.
In a previous video released on Tuesday, the self-styled Islamic State, widely known as ISIS or ISIL, threatened to kill both men within 72 hours. The deadline expired Friday.
The terrorists tied their demand to a pledge by Prime Minister Abe during a Middle East tour to give $200 million in aid for refugees displaced by the fighting in the Syrian civil war. In Tuesday’s video, the militants accused the Japanese government of funding the killing of Muslim women and children, a charge vehemently rejected by Japanese officials.
In today’s video the remaining Japanese hostage begs his wife to pressure Japan’s government. “Rinko, my beloved wife, I love you, and I miss my two daughters. Please don’t let Abe do the same for my case. Don’t give up. You along with our family, friends, and my colleagues in the independent press must continue to pressure our government. Their demand is easier. They are being fair. They no longer want money. So you don’t need to worry about funding terrorists. “
Kenji Goto had ventured into the ISIS-controlled eastern Syrian city of Raqqa to try to help save his friend, 42-year-old Yukawa, a security contractor-turned adventurer. It is not clear why the militants have shifted their demands in his case a trade for al Rishawi, who was captured after her explosive belt failed to detonate in an attack in Amman in 2005.
Al Rishawi was the wife of Ali Hussein Ali al Shamar, who killed 38 people when he blew himself up in the middle of a wedding party at a luxury hotel in Jordan. Al Rishawi was supposed to have died in the same attack. After her capture she was shown on Jordanian television wearing the explosives and wires around her body under a loose coat. She is believed to be the sister of a close associate of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former head of al Qaeda in Iraq and a mentor of the ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. She is currently appealing a death sentence imposed by a Jordanian court.