Japan’s government said Tuesday that a man believed to be a Japanese freelance journalist who went missing three years ago while in Syria has been released and is now in Turkey. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a hastily arranged news conference late Tuesday that Japan was informed by
Japan’s government said Tuesday that a man believed to be a Japanese freelance journalist who went missing three years ago while in Syria has been released and is now in Turkey.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a hastily arranged news conference late Tuesday that Japan was informed by Qatar that the man, believed to be journalist Jumpei Yasuda, has been released.
Yasuda was last heard from in Syria in 2015.
Suga said Qatar’s government told Japanese officials that the man is being protected by the Turkish authorities in Antakya in southern Turkey near its border with Syria and is being identified, and that he most likely is Yasuda.
Suga said Japan’s government has notified Yasuda’s family of the news.
The government has dispatched Japanese Embassy officials in Turkey to the country’s immigration facility in Antakya. The man released is mentally stable and in good health, Japan’s Kyodo News agency reported.
Yasuda was kidnapped by al-Qaida’s branch in Syria, known at the time as Nusra Front.
Nusra Front later became known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or Levant Liberation Committee. The group handed Yasuda over to the Turkistan Islamic Party, which mostly comprises Chinese jihadis based in Syria, according to Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor.
Abdurrahman said Yasuda was most recently held in the village of Khirbet el-Joz near the Turkish border by a Syrian commander with the Turkistan Islamic Party, a strong ally of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, who released him.
