Islamic State releases new video featuring British captive
In latest propaganda, journalist John Cantlie speaks to camera in style of news report, deriding campaign against IS
BEIRUT, Lebanon — British journalist John Cantlie, who is being held prisoner by the Islamic State group, appeared in a new video released Saturday supposedly filmed in the jihadists’ Iraqi stronghold of Mosul.
In the latest installment in a series of propaganda videos released by IS, Cantlie speaks to the camera in the style of a news report.
It is unclear when it was shot, but Cantlie last appeared in an IS video in early 2015.
In Saturday’s video, a gaunt-looking Cantlie says he is in Mosul, IS’s main city in northern Iraq.
Dressed in black and squinting in the sunshine, he is seen standing in front of a metal shack he describes as a media kiosk that distributes IS pamphlets, which was destroyed in an air strike by a US-led coalition.
Speaking in English with Arabic subtitles, as in previous clips of the same style, Cantlie criticizes and derides the US-led campaign launched in 2014 against IS.
He was kidnapped along with journalist James Foley in November 2012 in Syria while covering the war there.
Foley then became the first of several hostages to be slain by the jihadists.
Media rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders has condemned IS for its “cowardly” use of a hostage in a forced role to push the jihadists’ propaganda.