Johnston: captors treating me well

Kidnapped BBC Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston said that his captors have been treating him well in a video released today.

The BBC reporter, who was kidnapped at gunpoint in Gaza City on March 12, appears in a red top, filmed from the waist up and talking to camera in the video posted on the Al-Ekhlaas website, which is frequently used by Islamic militants.

"First of all, my captors have treated me very well," Johnston said on the video. "They have fed me well, there has been no violence towards me at all and I'm in good health."

The video, which bears the logo of the Army of Islam, the Palestinian group that is believed to be holding the 45-year-old reporter, also shows Johnston calling for the lifting of international sanctions against the Palestinian government and criticising the British military presence alongside the US in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In is unclear when the video was filmed.

"In all this, you can see the British government is endlessly working to occupy Muslim lands against the will of the people in those places," Johnston said, in comments he is likely to have been told to make by his captors.

The tape was interrupted as Johnston started addressing his family members, and a text appeared on screen in which the Army of Islam said the BBC had refused to take Johnston's message to his family.

Chancellor Gordon Brown today called on those holding Alan Johnston to release him "as a matter of urgency", adding that the video of the BBC reporter was being studied by government officials.

The BBC and the Foreign Office both said they were investigating the video.

A BBC spokesman said: "We are studying the video very carefully. We have been working very closely with Alan's family for the past 81 days. This is a highly distressing time for them and for his friends and his colleagues. We repeat our call for his immediate release."

Johnston, 45, who is from Argyllshire, was kidnapped in Gaza City on his way home. The BBC, his family and the British government have been leading a campaign to seek his release.

At the weekend, Ghazi Hamad, a Hamas member of the Palestinian government, said that Mr Johnston was healthy and unharmed and efforts to release him were "continuous".

He said he was dealing personally with his captors as part of the efforts to secure his release.

"It is a small group which is holding Alan," Mr Hamad told an audience at the Guardian Hay literary festival. "It is not secret, I met with them, what I know is that Alan is healthy, well and in a very good situation - this is my certain information."

The Army of Islam is a little-known group but has previously claimed responsibility for Mr Johnston's kidnapping and demanded that Britain frees Muslim prisoners.

It has previously been reported that Palestinian officials have said they knew where to find Johnston, but have held back on raiding the hideout at Britain's request, for fear of harming him.

At the International Federation of Journalists World Congress in Moscow, Jeremy Dear, the National Union of Journalists general secretary, and Naim Toubassi, the Palestine Journalists Syndicate president, jointly moved an emergency motion condemning Johnston's kidnapping and calling for further action to secure his release.

"We reject the statement that Alan Johnston can be linked to the actions of the British government in Palestine and the wider Middle East," Mr Toubassi said.

"Alan Johnston has always acted as a professional journalist who described to the world what was happening in Gaza. For this reason he has the respect of the Palestinian people as a whole.

"We strongly reject this demand from the Army of Islam and call on them to release him straight away."

Mr Dear said it was not clear when the video was made.

"We take some assurance from his words over his treatment. But at the same time the video gives us a glimpse of the anguish and difficulties he must be facing in the words we believe he is being instructed to say," he added.

"Today more than ever this strengthens our resolve and that of the international journalistic community to continue to campaign until we secure his freedom."

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