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  • Japanese man feared kidnapped by Islamic State in Syria

    Darwinian

    Japanese man feared kidnapped by Islamic State in Syria - Telegraph

    Japanese man feared kidnapped by Islamic State in Syria

    By Julian Ryall, Tokyo

    11:27AM BST 18 Aug 2014

    The Japanese government is investigating a video that purportedly shows a Japanese national being interrogated by fighters of the Islamic State after being captured in northern Syria.

    Officials said in a statement that Tokyo was looking into reports that Haruna Yukawa, 42, is in the hands of the jihaidist group - formerly known as Isis - and that the government is treating the case as an abduction.

    It is not clear why Yukawa had travelled to Syria, but he is believed to have linked up with the Islamic Front, a rival rebel group, after entering from Turkey on the border near the city of Kilis in late July,

    (Facebook)

    Pictures on Mr Yukawa's Facebook page (above) apparently show him alongside rebels and firing an AK47 machine gun in the desert. His profile describes him as the CEO of a Tokyo-based organisation called Private Military Company.
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    Media reports have suggested that he is a self-styled mercenary, although it appears he is more of a war enthusiast who wanted to get close to the fighting in Syria.

    The video released by Islamic State shows Mr Yukawa lying on the ground with blood on his face and his clothes and hair dishevelled.

    Questioned in English by an interrogator who remains out of the shot, Mr Yukawa initially indicates he is a photographer reporting on the war before claiming to be a doctor.

    His interrogator points out that photographers and doctors do not dress in combat clothing and do not carry weapons. He also accuses Mr Yukawa of being a member of the CIA.

    Mr Yukawa replies that he picked the weapon up from a dead militiaman and denies that he is a soldier himself.

    The Japanese government says it has not received information from any group claiming responsibility for holding Mr Yukawa. Nor has it received a ransom demand.

    "This is an area where a various groups are carrying out battle. We are focusing on confirming if such capturing has really taken place, as well as the safety of the captured," a Japanese foreign ministry official told reporters.

    Warning on the below
    Last edited by troung; 24 Aug 14,, 22:46.
    To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

  • #2
    James Foley: Up to twenty more Westerners held hostage by Isil
    The group which killed American journalist James Foley have many more hostages
    Greta Ramelli (L) and Vanessa Marzullo - kidnapped in Syria
    Greta Ramelli (L) and Vanessa Marzullo - kidnapped in Syria Photo: Facebook
    Gordon Rayner

    By Gordon Rayner, and David Chazan

    10:15PM BST 21 Aug 2014

    » Live updates on the Iraq crisis «

    Up to 20 Western hostages are being held by the jihadi group that beheaded James Foley.

    As well as the journalist Steven Sotloff, who was threatened with beheading by the same man who murdered Foley, Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil) is holding a number of aid workers, thought to include Vanessa Marzullo, 21, and Greta Ramelli, 20, both Italian.

    Three aid workers employed by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) are also being held hostage after they were abducted last October.

    As fears grew that Isil could make good on its threat to murder more hostages, families of those being held defended their loved ones’ decisions to travel to Syria.

    Ms Ramelli’s mother, Antonella, said her daughter had been determined from an early age to look after others, starting by helping out in a retirement home when she was 12.

    Responding to suggestions that she should not have allowed her daughter to travel to Syria, Mrs Ramelli said: “When you hear your daughter say 'Mamma, in that country they are killing children, I must go and help,’ what can you say?”

    “Can you go back on all the teaching and the values you have tried to instill for a lifetime?” she told Prealpina, an Italian newspaper. “Can you change your daughter, who has these values and has strong ideals about solidarity and human empathy?”

    The two women went missing near Aleppo in Syria at the beginning of this month. On Thursday the Italian foreign office declined to comment on whether they were now in the hands of Isil.

    The Red Cross has not released details of the nationality, gender or age of their aid workers currently being held hostage. The three were among a group of seven who were kidnapped, four of whom were released shortly afterwards.

    A spokesman for the charity said: “Intensive efforts are ongoing behind the scenes to secure the release of the remaining three colleagues, through the ICRC’s broad network on the ground.

    "We cannot provide details about this for the sake of the ongoing safety of our colleagues still abducted.”

    Former hostages who had been held with Foley described how he had been singled out for beatings because he was an American.

    Didier Francois, a 53-year-old reporter with the French radio station Europe 1, said Mr Foley was tortured after his captors found pictures on his computer of his brother, who works for the US Air Force.

    Foley was subjected to mock executions, including one in which he was “crucified against a wall”.

    Paying tribute to the American, Mr Francois said: “He was an extraordinary guy — a companion in imprisonment who was very agreeable, very solid.”

    Mr Francois spent eight months held hostage in Syria with Foley, mostly in underground cells with no natural light.

    For two-and-a-half months, Mr Francois was chained to fellow French hostages Nicolas Henin, Edouard Elias, and Pierre Torres. Mr Francois said he had never spoken publicly about Mr Foley or Mr Sotloff before because of threats of reprisals.

    Mr Henin also paid tribute to Mr Foley, saying: “James was a very good friend and a great support. He was always there when you were feeling not so well with some kind words. He managed to make seven months of captivity easier.”

    Mr Henin, however, was sceptical about reports that a group of British jihadists nicknamed “The Beatles” were the prime culprits. “If investigators were to go in that direction, they would be misleading themselves,” he said.

    Jeroen Oerlemans, a Dutch journalist who was held hostage in Syria with a British colleague, John Cantlie, for nine days last year before the two men were freed, said Foley had worked tirelessly trying to secure their release.

    He said: “The colleague with whom I was abducted was good friends with James. When we missed our appointment with him, somewhere in Syria, alarm bells immediately went off for Foley. He pulled back across the border to Turkey, and put all his journalistic contacts gathering information on us.”

    When the two men were freed by opposition forces, he said: “James was the first to hug me. I did not know him, but because he had been so closely involved with our liberation he knew me well.”

    Mr Oerlemans decided Syria was too dangerous to return to, saying: “You must know very well who you go into business with, your contacts must be one hundred per cent reliable. And even then, James was hugely experienced and had those contacts. Yet it happened to him.”
    James Foley: Up to twenty more Westerners held hostage by Isil - Telegraph
    To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

    Comment


    • #3
      A mentally ill cross dresser who tried to cut off his nuts - Syria is flypaper for the stupid.

      A broken man living on dreams pulls Japan into Islamic State hostage drama
      by Teppei Kasai and Antoni Slodkowski

      Reuters

      Aug 28, 2014
      Article history
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      When Haruna Yukawa was captured in Syria earlier this month, a video apparently released by his captors showed them pressing the Japanese man to answer questions friends say he had struggled with for years: Who are you? Why are you here?

      In fact, Yukawa, 42, had first traveled to Aleppo four months earlier on what amounted to a hardship course in self-discovery, according to people who know him and his account.

      Changes in Yukawa’s life in suburban Tokyo had been fast and disorienting. Over the past decade, he had lost his wife to lung cancer, lost a business and his house to bankruptcy and been forced to live in a public park for almost a month, according to Yukawa’s father and an online journal he maintained.

      The hard times led to soul searching. By his own account, he had changed his name to the feminine-sounding Haruna, attempted to kill himself by cutting off his genitals and came to believe he was the reincarnation of a cross-dressing Manchu princess who had spied for Japan in World War II.

      By late 2013, Yukawa had also begun a flirtation with Japan’s extreme right-wing politics and cultivated a new persona as a self-styled security consultant, according to his Facebook page and blog posts, though he never did any work as a consultant.

      He borrowed money to travel to Syria and dreamed of providing security to big Japanese companies in conflict areas like the coast of Somalia. The Syrian civil war was a new start — and his last chance to find success in life, he told friends and family. Later this year, he planned to head to Somalia “where the danger factor will be amped up.”

      “He felt his life had reached its limit,” said Yukawa’s father, Shoichi, 74.

      Yukawa’s capture by fighters believed to be with Islamic State has pulled Japan into a scramble by various governments to free dozens of foreigners held hostage in Iraq and Syria. The incident marks the first hostage situation for the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe since January 2013, when 10 Japanese were killed by Islamist militants at a gas complex in Algeria.

      The Foreign Ministry has declined to identify the captured person or to comment on reports. “We are doing our best to gather information,” a spokeswoman told Reuters.

      The picture of Yukawa that emerges from his writing and the accounts of his father and people who had met him in Japan and in Syria is at odds with the tough image he tried to cultivate in video posts from Syria, wearing a black T-shirt and fatigues.

      “He was a very friendly, gentle guy. I hosted him at my house for five days,” said Fadi Qarmesh, who met and spent time with Yukawa in Irbil, northern Iraq, in June. Qarmesh showed pictures from that time of Yukawa holding a girl on his shoulders.

      Two months earlier, Yukawa had been in Syria and was stopped and briefly detained for questioning by fighters from the Free Syrian Army and he befriended an Asian member of the group, according to Kenji Goto, a Japanese journalist who met Yukawa then. Reuters could not verify this aspect of the account.

      In Syria, Yukawa said he became particularly close to a part-Korean, part-Japanese fighter who had been born in Yugoslavia. Over time, Goto said, the FSA fighters took a liking to him, sharing meals and introducing him to their families in refugee camps. He was also given an Arabic nickname.

      For his part, Yukawa spoke of wanting to bring badly needed medicine and shoes to Syrian hospitals, and developed an interest in Islam, according to his father and Yukawa’s blog.

      After his first visit to Syria in April, Yukawa had a short stay back in Japan before returning to the Middle East, first to Iraq with Goto in June to observe the veteran reporter and learn how to work in a conflict zone and then to Syria again in late July after traveling through Turkey.

      Although he had never learned to handle a weapon and described himself as a “very gentle” person, Yukawa portrayed himself online as a soldier of fortune. A visit to the Tokyo address of his paper company, Private Military Company, revealed a building with numerous small, unmarked offices. The firm was set up for a range of businesses, including handling pet goods, according to a company registry.

      In effect, it existed only on the Internet.

      In video blogs shot from Syria and loaded to the company website, Yukawa showed himself awkwardly firing an AK-47 in Aleppo.

      “My bodyguards are five minutes away so I keep this for protection,” he said in one posting, picking up an assault rifle to show the camera.

      But it was his gentle personality that helped Yukawa win over FSA rebels, said Goto, who first met Yukawa in Aleppo in April.

      “Yukawa has this soft, nonthreatening approach that makes people trust him and puts them at ease,” Goto said.

      In his online journal, Yukawa talked about how he and the Asian FSA fighter talked until three in the morning.

      “The friendship between the two was a big factor in Yukawa forming a bond with the other soldiers,” Goto said.

      In a blog post from October, Yukawa said his cheerfulness was something he learned from being bullied as a child.

      “I would pretend to be happy even if I felt lonely or in pain so that others couldn’t read my mind,” Yukawa said. “Hiding my true feelings became my second nature. It also came in handy in business later.”

      Yukawa’s road to Aleppo started in a sleepy suburb of Chiba, about an hour’s drive east of Tokyo. After graduating from high school, Yukawa, then still known as Masayuki, started a military surplus store selling helmets, belts and other equipment.

      But Yukawa’s store failed around 2005, leaving him in debt, his father said. Around 2008, Yukawa described an attempt to kill himself by cutting off his genitals, an act he likened to the ritual suicide of a samurai.

      “I thought if I failed I would live as a woman and leave the rest to destiny.”

      Yukawa was saved by the intervention of his wife, who rushed him to a hospital. She died about two years later, according to Yukawa’s father, who said he was forced to sell an apartment he had bought for the couple to pay off his son’s debts.

      Yukawa did not return to his father’s house until last year. When he came home again, he looked different, his father said. With rounder cheeks and long brown hair, he told his father that he had consulted a fortune-teller and decided to change his name from the masculine Masayuki to Haruna.

      Over the next few months, Yukawa attended events of the Japanese nationalist group Gambare Nippon (Stand Firm, Japan), which has made several trips to the islands at the heart of a territorial dispute between China and Japan. The group wants Japan to stand up to China and the United States and promotes a return to what it calls Japan’s traditional values, including reverence for the Emperor.

      Yukawa posted photos posing with Toshio Tamogami, a former Japanese Air Self-Defense Force chief of staff who was sacked in 2008 for saying Japan was not the aggressor in World War II. Yukawa also persuaded a local leader of the nationalist group, Nobuo Kimoto, 70, to become an adviser to his company, Kimoto said.

      Yukawa was looking forward to his final, solo trip to Syria.

      “It seems like the Free Syrian Army soldiers are all waiting for me. I’m very happy and I too want to quickly meet up with them,” he said in a blog post from June. “I want to devote the rest of my life to others and save many people. I want to make my mark on history one more time.”

      On Aug. 14, the fighters with Yukawa were overrun by the Islamic State militant group. Amid the fighting, Yukawa suffered a leg injury and was captured, Goto said, citing information he had been given by local contacts. At the time, Goto was already back in Japan.

      In a YouTube video uploaded by an unidentified person this month of an interrogation that followed Yukawa’s capture, he can be seen lying on the sand, his face bleeding as he is questioned by a group of unidentified men. Yukawa tells them his name. The men press him on why he has a gun.

      “You thief? Why you have gun? You kill soldier?” one of the men says.

      In the exchange, Yukawa tells them he is a photographer and “half doctor.”

      “I am no soldier,” Yukawa says.
      A broken man living on dreams pulls Japan into Islamic State hostage drama | The Japan Times
      Last edited by troung; 29 Aug 14,, 21:16.
      To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by troung View Post
        Changes in Yukawa’s life in suburban Tokyo had been fast and disorienting. Over the past decade, he had lost his wife to lung cancer, lost a business and his house to bankruptcy and been forced to live in a public park for almost a month, according to Yukawa’s father and an online journal he maintained
        That's quite sad tbh. Still nothing to go to Syria for.

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by troung View Post
          A mentally ill cross dresser who tried to cut off his nuts - Syria is flypaper for the stupid.
          Think we could set up tours?

          Comment


          • #6
            I think we could turn a good profit - failed reporters who are trying to discover themself at 40, cross dressing Asians, fake navy seals, liberal do gooders, and the usual cadre of dudes who convert to radical Islam in hopes of losing their virginity (with women) with the 72 virgins. Even if the tour boat goes down nothing of value was lost excluding the fuel and anchor.
            Last edited by troung; 31 Aug 14,, 03:46.
            To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

            Comment


            • #7
              heres his youtube channel...

              http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWNsh_PsmBZvV-MtgpQT1Gg
              Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none; be able for thine enemy rather in power than use; and keep thy friend under thine own life's key; be checked for silence, but never taxed for speech.

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by troung View Post
                I think we could turn a good profit - failed reporters who are trying to discover themself at 40, cross dressing Asians, fake navy seals, liberal do gooders, and the usual cadre of dudes who convert to radical Islam in hopes of losing their virginity (with women) with the 72 virgins. Even if the tour boat goes down nothing of value was lost excluding the fuel and anchor.
                Throw in schizophrenic Australians. The guy who is now famous for having his kiddie parade around with a severed head is a diagnosed schizophrenic. Apparently our government is now stopping people from leaving for the conflict. I'm happy for them to leave, they just don't get to come back....ever.
                sigpic

                Win nervously lose tragically - Reds C C

                Comment


                • #9
                  THIS is the man ISIL threatens to behead? Where's the glory in that, I wonder? What's the value, monetary or strategic? :slap:
                  All those who are merciful with the cruel will come to be cruel to the merciful.
                  -Talmud Kohelet Rabbah, 7:16.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Triple C View Post
                    THIS is the man ISIL threatens to behead? Where's the glory in that, I wonder? What's the value, monetary or strategic? :slap:
                    Pray tell me since when have they been rational?

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Can we add Congressional junkets to the tourist list?

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        We can take Al Queda John on the tour boat...
                        To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by Bigfella View Post
                          Throw in schizophrenic Australians. The guy who is now famous for having his kiddie parade around with a severed head is a diagnosed schizophrenic. Apparently our government is now stopping people from leaving for the conflict. I'm happy for them to leave, they just don't get to come back....ever.
                          It always amazes me when I see how imbecile these decision makers in our government can be.

                          Not that they should not stop them from leaving they should actually try to assist and may even facilitate their journey. Only stop them when/if they make it back to the port of entry.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by Aryajet View Post
                            It always amazes me when I see how imbecile these decision makers in our government can be.

                            Not that they should not stop them from leaving they should actually try to assist and may even facilitate their journey. Only stop them when/if they make it back to the port of entry.
                            I think the concern is that they might come back using false documents & slip in anyway. The other problem then is what to do with them. Apparently it is against our international treaty obligations to render them stateless, so we'd have to deal with them. Even if we can jail them (not guaranteed) they aren't going to stay there for long. I think the attitude is to try to deal with these folk before they acquire battlefield training, not after. Additionally it makes a tough sounding press release. I think the US is doing the same.

                            The down side risk is something that has already happened - innocent Muslims who just have the misfortune to know the wrong person getting hauled off aircraft. Risk there of simply increasing the sense within our Muslim community that they are viewed as a threat first & Australians second. Something the government's hamfisted & self serving handling of issues surrounding this has simply reinforced.

                            No easy solutions I'm afraid.
                            sigpic

                            Win nervously lose tragically - Reds C C

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by Aryajet View Post
                              It always amazes me when I see how imbecile these decision makers in our government can be.

                              Not that they should not stop them from leaving they should actually try to assist and may even facilitate their journey. Only stop them when/if they make it back to the port of entry.
                              Phoenix program.
                              Those who know don't speak
                              He said to them, "But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. Luke 22:36

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