John Cantlie | |
---|---|
Born | John Henry Cantlie 7 November 1970 Winchester, Hampshire, England |
Disappeared | 22 November 2012 (aged 42) [1] Syria [1] |
Status | Missing for 12 years, 1 month and 29 days; presumed dead |
Nationality | British |
Occupation(s) | War photographer and correspondent |
Parents |
|
John Henry Cantlie (born 7 November 1970) was a British [2] [3] war photographer and correspondent last seen alive in 2016 when he was held hostage by Islamic State. Cantlie was abducted by IS in Syria along with the later executed American journalist James Foley in November 2012. [4] Previously, he had been kidnapped in Syria alongside Dutch photographer Jeroen Oerlemans in July 2012, but was rescued a week later. [5] Between 2014 and 2016, while held in IS captivity, Cantlie repeatedly appeared narrating a series of their propaganda videos from Syria and Iraq.
In 2017, reports surfaced in Iraqi media claiming Cantlie had been killed by an airstrike in Mosul. [6] [7] There were also rumours and reports in 2017 and 2019 that he was still alive. [8] [9] [10] [11] In 2022, Cantlie's family accepted that he is dead. [12]
John Henry Cantlie was the great-grandson of Sir James Cantlie, [13] a doctor who co-founded the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese in 1887 (later the University of Hong Kong). In 1896, he was instrumental in the protection of the Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen who might otherwise have been executed by the Qing dynasty secret service. [14] His grandfather Colonel Kenneth Cantlie [13] designed the China Railways KF locomotive, at 260 tons the largest locomotive of post-war China that remained in service until 1972. [15] Cantlie's father, Paul, died on 16 October 2014, having released a video pleading for his son's release on his deathbed. [16] [17]
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (November 2023) |
Cantlie started his journalistic career in the early 1990s as a tester for Sega video games. [18] [19] [20]
Cantlie was reportedly kidnapped by fighters while crossing illegally into Syria from Turkey on 19 July 2012, near Bab al-Hawa. [21] Along with Dutch photographer Jeroen Oerlemans, Cantlie was shot whilst trying to escape their captors. In an interview with The Sun newspaper on 26 August 2012, Cantlie said it was "every Englishman's duty to try and escape if captured." [22] [23] In an account in The Sunday Times on 5 August 2012, Cantlie described his experience. [24] [25]
Oerlemans was shot in the left leg and Cantlie in the left arm during their escape attempt, Cantlie suffering ulnar nerve entrapment (loss of feeling and use of the hand) as a result. [26] In an account of the shooting, Cantlie said some of the British Muslims in the group repeatedly shouted, "die, kafir!". [27] Oerlemans then stated that "the British guys were the most vindictive of them all". [28] They were taken back to the camp where a fighter who claimed to be an NHS doctor stabilised them and treated their wounds. [29] The pair were threatened with execution. [30] Oerlemans stated that it was unclear who held them, but the group of militants were of multiple ethnicities. [31]
This section needs additional citations for verification .(November 2023) |
On 26 July 2012, one week after being kidnapped, they were rescued by four members of the Free Syrian Army. [32] The rebels came into the camp shooting their weapons and held at least one jihadist fighter at gunpoint while Cantlie and Oerlemans were helped into a waiting vehicle. Both photographers had to be assisted as their feet had been seriously injured when they tried to escape and neither could walk. They had lost all their camera equipment, passports and clothes in the incident, and were smuggled back across the border at a crossing used primarily by Syrian refugees. Both photographers claimed they were about to be handed over to a jihad unit affiliated with al-Qaeda for ransom when they were rescued. They were initially treated by a medic for The New York Times in Antakya before being debriefed by Turkish and then British intelligence. On 9 October 2012, an individual suspected of being involved in the kidnapping was arrested at Heathrow Airport, after arriving on a flight from Egypt. [33] [34]
This was Cantlie's second visit to Syria. In March 2012, he became the first Western photographer to witness first-hand an incursion by government ground troops into a city when T-72 tanks rolled into the city of Saraqib in Idlib province and started shelling indiscriminately. In a feature in The Sunday Telegraph published on 31 March, Cantlie wrote: "Then the tanks opened fire. Fist-sized pieces of shrapnel sliced through the air, decapitating one rebel immediately. His rifle clattered to the ground as his friends dragged his headless torso from the line of fire." To illustrate what the Syrian rebels were up against, Cantlie took a photograph looking down the barrel of an advancing T-72. [35]
Cantlie has been missing since late 2012, and the trial of one of his alleged captors collapsed in 2013, when he could not be summoned as a witness. [36] [37] In September 2014, [4] it was revealed that Cantlie had been abducted a second time, along with American journalist James Foley. Their taxi driver and Foley's translator were not taken, however. [38] [39] They had reportedly been working together on a film about Cantlie's first abduction. [40] Foley was beheaded by Islamic State in August 2014. [41]
After disappearing for almost two years following his second abduction in late 2012, Cantlie resurfaced on 18 September 2014 in a video [42] posted by IS in the first episode of a multi-part series entitled Lend Me Your Ears. As of February 2015, IS had released a total of six videos in the Lend Me Your Ears series, all of which featured Cantlie speaking while sitting at a wooden table and wearing orange prison garb (a typical costume of IS hostages in their execution videos) against a black backdrop. In the videos, Cantlie adopts a critical position toward Western foreign policy, including military actions, political statements, and media coverage. Cantlie was particularly critical of U.S. and British hostage policy, comparing it unfavourably to the policy of other European countries that negotiate and pay for the release of hostages. [6]
IS released three more videos in addition to the Lend Me Your Ears series. These videos are noteworthy for depicting Cantlie as a Western journalist rather than a Western hostage. In all videos, Cantlie describes the situation in Kobani, Mosul and IS-controlled parts of the Aleppo Province in a manner favourable to his captors. [43]
Since he was speaking as an IS prisoner, it is unclear whether and to what degree he held the views he states. His sister, Jessica, has stated that her brother "believes two-thirds" of what he says in the videos. [44] His family urged IS jihadist captors to make contact with them. [45]
IS media wing, al Hayat Media Center, released 7 videos (counting the Introduction) in the Lend Me Your Ears series. [46] [47]
Video | Release date | Length | Comments | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 18 September 2014 | 3:21 | Introduction | [48] |
2 | 18 September 2014 | 5:56 | "Episode 1" | [49] |
3 | 30 September 2014 | 5:35 | "Episode 2" | [50] |
4 | 12 October 2014 | 6:54 | "Episode 3" | [51] |
5 | 16 October 2014 | 7:49 | "Episode 4" | [52] |
6 | 12 November 2014 | 6:31 | "Episode 5" | [53] |
7 | 24 November 2014 | 8:53 | "Episode 6" | [54] |
These include:
Cantlie published articles in Dabiq , an IS online magazine. [67] One of them was titled "Paradigm Shift", which depicts the "failure Obama". [68]
On 28 July 2017, the Iraqi Al-Sura News Agency alleged that Cantlie had been killed in an airstrike sometime during the battle of Mosul, after the agency conducted interviews with three captured IS militants. [69] In October 2017, a French IS member told Paris Match that he had seen Cantlie "seven or eight months ago" in Raqqa. [8] In January 2019, an official of the Syrian Democratic Forces stated Cantlie may still be alive inside Deir ez-Zor Governorate, Syria. [9] [10] [11]
In February 2019, British Security Minister Ben Wallace stated that Cantlie was believed to still be alive. [70] A British Home Office spokesman said: "We do not discuss individual kidnap cases and speculation is unhelpful." [71] Wallace declined to give details of where British intelligence believed Cantlie was still being held by IS. [72]
In 2020, accorsing to SDF director Mustafi Bali, Cantlie might still be alive in Syria and is moving around Hajin. [73] As of December 2024 he still hasn't been found. [74] However, Cantlie's family believes he was killed and held a funeral for him in 2022. [75]
Members of the Iraqi insurgency began taking foreign hostages in Iraq beginning in April 2004. Since then, in a dramatic instance of Islamist kidnapping they have taken captive more than 200 foreigners and thousands of Iraqis; among them, dozens of hostages were killed and others rescued or freed. In 2004, executions of captives were often filmed, and many were beheaded. However, the number of the recorded killings decreased significantly. Many hostages remain missing with no clue as to their whereabouts. The United States Department of State Hostage Working Group was organized by the U.S. Embassy, Baghdad, in the summer of 2004 to monitor foreign hostages in Iraq.
The persecution of Christians by the Islamic State involves the systematic mass murder of Christian minorities, within the regions of Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mozambique and Nigeria controlled by the Islamic extremist group Islamic State. Persecution of Christian minorities climaxed following the Syrian civil war and later by its spillover but has since intensified further. Christians have been subjected to massacres, forced conversions, rape, sexual slavery, and the systematic destruction of their historical sites, churches and other places of worship.
James Wright Foley was an American journalist and video reporter. While working as a freelance war correspondent during the Syrian Civil War, he was abducted on November 22, 2012, in northwestern Syria. He was murdered by decapitation in August 2014 purportedly as a response to American airstrikes in Iraq, thus becoming the first American citizen executed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
Steven Joel Sotloff was an American-Israeli journalist. In August 2013, he was kidnapped in Aleppo, Syria, and held captive by militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). On September 2, 2014, ISIS released a beheading video, showing one of its members beheading Sotloff. Following Sotloff's beheading, U.S. President Barack Obama stated that the United States would take action to "degrade and destroy" ISIS. President Obama also signed an Executive Order dated June 24, 2015, in the presence of the Sotloff family and other hostage families, overhauling how the U.S. handles American hostages held abroad by groups such as ISIS.
Mohammed Emwazi was a British militant of Kuwaiti origin seen in several videos produced by the Islamist extremist group Islamic State (IS) showing the beheadings of a number of captives in 2014 and 2015. A group of his hostages nicknamed him "John" since he was part of a four-person terrorist cell with English accents whom they called 'The Beatles'; the press later began calling him "Jihadi John".
Beginning in 2014, a number of people from various countries were beheaded by the Islamic State (IS), a radical Sunni Jihadist group operating in Iraq and Syria as well as elsewhere. In January 2014, a copy of an IS penal code surfaced describing the penalties it enforces in areas under its control, including multiple beheadings. Beheading videos have been frequently posted by IS members to social media. Several of the recorded beheadings were conducted by Mohammed Emwazi, whom the media referred to as "Jihadi John" before his identification. The beheadings received wide coverage around the world and attracted international condemnation. Political scientist Max Abrahms posited that IS may be using well-publicized beheadings as a means of differentiating itself from Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and identifying itself with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the al-Qaeda member who beheaded Daniel Pearl. The publicised beheadings represent a small proportion of a larger number of total people killed following capture by IS.
"The Beatles" was the nickname for an Islamic State terrorist group composed of four British militants. The group was named by their hostages after the English rock group The Beatles, who referred to the members as "John", "Paul", "George", and "Ringo".
David Haines was a British aid worker who was captured by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in early 2013 and beheaded in early September 2014.
The siege of Kobanî was launched by the Islamic State (IS) on 13 September 2014, in order to capture the Kobanî Canton and its main city of Kobanî in northern Syria, in the de facto autonomous region of Rojava.
Peter Edward Kassig, also known as Abdul-Rahman Kassig, was an American aid worker who was beheaded by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
Alan Henning was an English taxicab driver-turned-volunteer humanitarian aid worker. He became the fourth Western hostage killed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) with his killing publicised in a beheading video.
The condition of human rights in the territory controlled by the Islamic State (IS) is considered to be among the worst in the world. The Islamic State's policies included acts of genocide, torture and slavery. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) stated in November 2014 that the Islamic State "seeks to subjugate civilians under its control and dominate every aspect of their lives through terror, indoctrination, and the provision of services to those who obey". Many Islamic State actions of extreme criminality, terror, recruitment and other activities have been documented in the Middle East.
Executions by ISIS refers here to killing by beheading, immolation, shooting, or other means of soldiers and civilians by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). ISIL has released a number of propaganda/publicity videos of beheadings or shootings of captives. Houtat Sulūk is reported to be a mass grave.
Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently is a citizen journalist group reporting Syrian war news and human rights abuses by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and other forces occupying the northern Syrian city of Raqqa which ISIL used as its de facto capital. RBSS works to counter the suggestion that citizens of Raqqa welcomed the presence of ISIL. Some sources described the group as one of the few reliable sources of information from the city. It was founded by Abu Ibrahim a-Raqqawi. RBSS has described itself as an "nonpartisan and independent" news page.
Al-Bayan is the Islamic State's official radio station, based in Iraq, owned and operated by the Islamic State, which broadcast at 92.5 on the FM dial. The station aired a news-talk format and broadcasts in the Arabic, Kurdish, English, French, and Russian languages.
The Turkey–Islamic State conflict were a series of attacks and clashes between the state of Turkey and the Islamic State. Turkey joined the War against the Islamic State in 2016, after the Islamic State attacks in Turkey. The Turkish Armed Forces' Operation Euphrates Shield was aimed against both the Islamic State and the SDF. Part of Turkish-occupied northern Syria, around Jarabulus and al-Bab, was taken after Turkey drove the Islamic State out of it.
In early 2014, the jihadist group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant captured extensive territory in Western Iraq in the Anbar campaign, while counter-offensives against it were mounted in Syria. Raqqa in Syria became its headquarters. The Wall Street Journal estimated that eight million people lived under its control in the two countries.
This article contains a timeline of events from January 2015 to December 2015 related to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/ISIS). This article contains information about events committed by or on behalf of the Islamic State, as well as events performed by groups who oppose them.
Jeroen Oerlemans was a Dutch photographer and war correspondent who reported mainly from the Near East and Afghanistan. His photographs were published in Newsweek,Time,The Guardian,International Herald Tribune,The Sunday Times and Courrier International. He was killed by an Islamic State sniper in the Libyan city of Sirte. He had previously been kidnapped whilst working in Syria alongside British journalist John Cantlie. The Jeroen Oerlemans Foundation is dedicated to his life's work, and finances accumulated from the purchase of certain pieces via the Foundation's website are dedicated to an educational fund for his three children.