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| BBC's Johnston arrives back in UK | |
| (20 minutes later) | |
| Freed BBC reporter Alan Johnston has arrived back in the UK. | |
| Johnston, 45, boarded a British Airways flight from Tel Aviv, which touched down at London's Heathrow Airport at about 1230 BST. | |
| The Gaza correspondent is expected to continue on to Scotland to be reunited with his family later in the day. | The Gaza correspondent is expected to continue on to Scotland to be reunited with his family later in the day. |
| Johnston was handed over to Palestinian militant movement Hamas in Gaza City on Wednesday after being held for 114 days by the Army of Islam group. | Johnston was handed over to Palestinian militant movement Hamas in Gaza City on Wednesday after being held for 114 days by the Army of Islam group. |
| He had been on his way home in Gaza when taken at gunpoint on 12 March. | |
| He was kept in chains for 24 hours but was not harmed physically until the last half hour of his captivity, when his captors roughed him up "a bit". | |
| I literally dreamed many times of being free and always woke up back in that room Alan Johnston | |
| Johnston said he was able to see the sun in the first month but was then kept in a shuttered room until a week before his release. | |
| He said he was not tortured during captivity but he did fall ill from the food he was served. | |
| Johnston, who has spent the last few days at the British Consulate in Jerusalem, says he was looking forward to seeing his family in Argyll, expressing sorrow that his "actions" had brought turmoil to their lives. | |
| Shortly after his release, he appeared with a cleanly-shaven head, saying one of his first acts was "go ing to the barbers and getting rid of that just-kidnapped look". | |
| 'Normal life' | |
| Rallies worldwide had called for his release and an online petition was signed by some 200,000 people. | |
| Johnston said he had been comforted by efforts to free him, which he knew about because he had access to the BBC World Service on the radio for much of his confinement. | |
| He described the experience as frightening "because I didn't know how it was going to end," but said he never considered escape as a real possibility. Johnston said during his captivity "it became quite hard to imagine normal life again". | |
| "The last 16 weeks have been the very worst of my life," he added. "I was in the hands of people who were dangerous and unpredictable. | |
| "I literally dreamed many times of being free and always woke up back in that room." |