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Time ticks away for thrillseeker, journalist held by Islamic State

TOKYO — One is a freelance journalist respected for his reporting on refugees and children in war zones. The other is a man who seems obsessed with guns and went to Syria to train with fighters.

An unverified photograph of a man purported to be Japanese journalist Kenji Goto from the website www.reportr.co, which said he was reporting in Kobani in October last year. Photo: REUTERS

An unverified photograph of a man purported to be Japanese journalist Kenji Goto from the website www.reportr.co, which said he was reporting in Kobani in October last year. Photo: REUTERS

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TOKYO — One is a freelance journalist respected for his reporting on refugees and children in war zones. The other is a man who seems obsessed with guns and went to Syria to train with fighters.

Despite their differing backgrounds and passions, their paths had crossed before. Now, in a chilling video released this week, the two Japanese men were seen kneeling on the ground in orange jumpsuits with a masked, knife-wielding figure from Islamic State threatening to kill them if their government failed to pay a US$200 million (S$266.7 million) ransom by today.

“The government is doing everything it can, and saving lives is the top priority,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters in Tokyo yesterday. The government’s efforts to reach the group holding them have failed and it had no news on the safety of the hostages, Mr Suga said, adding that Japan considered today at 2.50pm in Tokyo to be the deadline to respond to Islamic State’s demands.

Mr Kenji Goto, the journalist, and Mr Haruna Yukawa are in some ways outliers in Japan, a relatively risk-averse society. Their capture by the Islamic State group, the militants who have seized part of Syria and Iraq, has created a sudden crisis for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose government is working feverishly to try to free them.

Mr Yukawa, 42, set up a company a year ago offering security services in conflict areas after running an online business selling military-related items. But then he went to Syria to train with militants, a post on his blog showed. Photos posted in July on his Facebook page showed him holding a Kalashnikov rifle, and his personal blog included entries about his visits to Iraq and Syria, along with videos of him and bloody scenes from the region.

The images seemed at odds with the description of him as a “gentle, likable person” by Mr Nobuo Kimoto, a retired former local assemblyman who also served as an adviser to Mr Yukawa’s business, Private Military Company. The outfit’s website says it provides security services for Japanese nationals overseas, but the company isn’t functioning.

“His idea sounded interesting at the beginning, but he had no money or experience,” Mr Kimoto said.

Mr Yukawa and Mr Goto met last April, after Mr Yukawa had been caught and detained by an anti-government militant group in Syria called Free Syrian Army, or FSA, in northern Syria.

Mr Goto, who was coincidentally in the area, was brought as an interpreter for the group to interrogate Mr Yukawa, who spoke only limited English, about why he was there. Mr Goto, who apparently had won the group’s trust from his previous reporting visits, virtually negotiated his release.

Mr Yukawa was thrilled by the meeting, he said on his blog, because he had regarded Mr Goto, 47, as a hero for his journalistic work. He posted some photos of the two of them together in their subsequent meetings on Facebook. They both then returned to Japan and were separately in and out of Syria.

Mr Goto started a video news company called Independent Press in 1996, covering mainly conflicts, poverty, refugees and children in war zones. He was not a war reporter interested in bloody conflict, said a friend, Mr Toshi Maeda, also a freelance journalist. “Children, the poor and the needy, those are where he is coming from. He just wants to meet children in conflicted areas and tell the rest of the world their suffering,” Mr Maeda said. “As he follows their stories, he ends up in war zones.”

Mr Yukawa was captured again sometime after July 21, when his blog entries stopped. In August, the Islamic State released a YouTube video showing him with his face bleeding and lying on the ground, identifying himself as Japanese and not a spy.

Mr Goto re-entered Syria via Turkey in early October, uploading footage he filmed in northern Syria on Twitter. After making a quick trip back to Japan to edit his videos for NHK World, the English language channel for Japan’s public broadcaster, he abruptly returned to the Middle East on Oct 22, saying he would return in a week but never did, his friend Mr Maeda said. AP

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