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Japan Vows to Continue Effort to Win Hostages’ Release
Japan Seeks to Verify Video of Hostage Death
(about 3 hours later)
Japanese officials said Saturday that they were continuing efforts to win the release of two Japanese men taken hostage by the Islamic State, even though the militants’ stated deadline for paying an enormous ransom had passed.
TOKYO — The Japanese government expressed outrage at an image released Saturday that purported to show the decapitated body of one of two Japanese hostages captured by Islamic State militants, but the chief government spokesman did not confirm the authenticty of the video.
Japan seemed to be waiting for a sign from the militants, who had not offered a clear signal of their intentions even after a Friday deadline passed without Japan's paying a $200 million demand. The hostage crisis began on Tuesday, when a video appeared online showing a masked militant threatening to kill the men, the journalist Kenji Goto and Haruna Yukawa, a wanderer apparently drawn to Syria by war. The video demanded the money be paid within 72 hours.
The kidnappers had threatened to kill the men if a Friday deadline had passed for a $200 million ransom from Japan.
Japanese officials said that they still had not reached the kidnappers or confirmed their location, or even determined whether the men are even still alive, despite days of what they described as frantic efforts to do so. A top-ranking Japanese diplomat sent to Jordan to take charge of those efforts, Yasuhide Nakayama, said he had not given up hope.
According to SITE Intelligence, an organization that tracks jihadist propaganda, the image was shown in a video posted on Islamic State-linked Twitter accounts. Al Furqan, an ISIS-linked website that has posted videos of beheadings in the past, had not released any video or message confirming the killing by mid-day Saturday.
“We are doing all we can to gather and analyze information,” Mr. Nakayama told reporters in Amman, Jordan. “We will not give up until the very end. It is my mission to bring those two home.”
An audio clip that accompanied the video said the dead hostage was Haruna Yukawa, 42, who has been described as an adventurer. The other hostage, Kenji Goto, 47, a journalist, appeared to be alive in the video.
However, it remains unclear what efforts the Japanese government have actually made to achieve this. Officials have provided few details, beyond saying that Japan had reached out to several countries in the region as well as local religious and tribal leaders.
“This action is an unforgivable act of violence that leaves us at a loss for words, and we condemn it,” the Japanese government spokesman, Yoshihide Suga, said at a hastily arranged midnight press conference. “We strongly urge that the remaining hostage, Mr. Goto, not be harmed and be immediately released.”
They say Japan has been trying to get the message to the kidnappers that Japan is not involved in United States-led military actions aimed at the Islamic State, a militant group that has taken control of large parts of Syria and Iraq. The $200 million ransom demand is the same amount as an aid package that the Japanese prime minster, Shinzo Abe, announced last weekend during a trip to the Middle East to help refugees and nations opposing the Islamic State.
The two men’s fate has become a fixation in Japan and a major challenge for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. A grim-faced Mr. Abe returned to the prime minister’s office in the middle of the night to oversee this latest twist to the hostage crisis, which began Tuesday when a video appeared online showing the two hostages kneeling as a knife-wielding militant threatened to kill them.
When Mr. Abe first unveiled the package, it was seen at home as a new step in his efforts to turn Japan into a global partner of the United States, and to raise his pacifist nation’s profile in international affairs. Since the hostage crisis began, officials in the Abe administration have played down that aspect, emphasizing instead that the money was meant for purely humanitarian purposes.
If the reports of Mr. Yukawa’s death prove to be true, he would be the first Japanese person to be killed by the Islamic State, which has established a self-proclaimed caliphate that is financed partly by extortion and kidnapping of foreigners.
As hope for the hostages has dwindled, Mr. Abe has faced criticism for embroiling Japan in a distant conflict of little direct import to his nation. On the whole, however, the political debate has been relatively muted, as the nation anxiously awaits the fate of the hostages.
The group has beheaded two Americans and two Britons in recent months and showcased the killings via Internet video postings.
However, amateur videos have appeared online calling for the release of the hostages. Some show people holding up signs saying “I am Kenji,” echoing the “I am Charlie” rallying cry that spread in France after the terror attack on Charlie Hebdo. The slogan refers to Mr. Goto, a 47-year-old freelance journalist with experience covering wars and humanitarian crises whose photos have appeared on the front pages of many Japanese newspapers.
News of the reported execution came after Mr. Goto’s mother, Junko Ishido, issued a tearful plea at a Tokyo news conference Friday to the kidnappers, beseeching them to spare his life and asserting that he was not an enemy of Islam.
Mr. Goto vanished in late October, after reportedly going into Syria to seek the release of Mr. Yukawa, who was captured by Islamic State fighters in August.
As the deadline on Friday afternoon Tokyo time passed, with no immediate word on the fate of the hostages, the Japanese government said it was still trying to contact the kidnappers and confirm whether the men were alive.
Japan paid to free kidnapped citizens in at least one previous case, in 1999, spending $3 million to secure the release of four mining experts held in Kyrgyzstan.
Japanese officials never specified whether they were willing to pay any ransom to the Islamic State.
