IS militants take two Japanese as hostage – demand ransom of $200-million

#ShinzoAbe #ISIS #Japan #hostages The IS militants have taken two Japanese as hostages and have demanded a ransom of $200-million from the Japanese government for their release. The captors have released a video of 1min 40sec entitled “A message to the government at the people of Japan”.
It seems the action taken by the IS appears to be in retaliation of a multimillion-dollar Middle Eastern aid package that had been announced just a few days ago by the prime minister, Shinzo Abe.
The hostages are Kenji Goto Jogo and Huruna Yukawa.
Incidentally, Yukawa had been captured in August. He was suffering from a series of misfortunes in his personal life. These included the death of his wife from cancer, and losing his business and home to bankruptcy. It seems he had gone to the Syrian city of Aleppo in spring 2014.
The other hostage is Goto – it is believed that he is a respected freelance journalist. He had gone to Syria last year to report on Syria’s civil war last year and was aware of Yukawa’s detention before his own incarceration.
The Japanese chief cabinet secretary, Yoshihide Suga, did not elaborate on whether Japan would pay the ransom. Prime minister, Shinzo Abe, speaking in Jerusalem has described the threat to kill the two hostages in 72 hours as unforgivable and demanded that ISIS release them immediately.
It may be recalled that last week, at the beginning of his tour of the Middle East, he had indicated that Japan would be donating $200m in non-military aid to countries fighting Islamic State to help them build “human capacities” and “infrastructure”. It was part of a $2.5bn in humanitarian and development aid for the Middle East.