Japan follows up on hostage case from Amman

AMMAN – Japan has set up an operations room in Jordan to deal with the issue of two Japanese citizens held captive by the Islamic State (IS) terror group, an official at the Japanese embassy in Amman said Thursday. 

The operations room is headed by Japan’s State Minister for Foreign Affairs Yasuhide Nakayama, the embassy official told The Jordan Times over the phone, adding that Japan is in contact with other regional countries to secure the release of the two hostages.

His Majesty King Abdullah met with Nakayama on Wednesday. A Royal Court statement said the meeting was a follow-up on the outcome of Abe’s recent visit to the Kingdom and ways to build on it to activate aspects of cooperation between the two countries in various fields.

In a video posted online Tuesday, IS threatened to execute the Japanese citizens it is holding within 72 hours if Tokyo fails to deliver a $200 million ransom. The deadline expires Friday. 

A masked man shown standing between the two hostages, linked the group’s ransom demand to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s recent pledge of $200 million in financial aid to countries fighting terror.

But in a statement e-mailed to The Jordan Times by the Japanese embassy in Amman, Tokyo insisted the $200 million grant was “for humanitarian assistance and infrastructure development, and it is non-military in nature”.

A statement by the Japanese government described the demand for the ransom to spare the lives of the hostages as an act of blackmail, calling on the group not to harm the two men and to release them immediately.

“In any case, Japan will not give in to terrorism, and our position of contributing to counter-terrorism efforts by the international community remains unchanged,” said the statement.

Following a Cabinet meeting Wednesday, Abe’s office released a statement quoting the Japanese prime minister as saying that he “hurriedly” made requests by phone for cooperation to help release the hostages from King Abdullah in addition to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. 

The Japanese government said Nakayama was dispatched to Jordan to follow up on the IS threats, which Abe described as a “formidable battle against time”. 

According to The Japan Times, the hostages are identified as Kenji Goto, a 47-year-old independent journalist, and Haruna Yukawa, a 42-year-old private security contractor.