Kidnapped: The Alan Johnston Story

PANORAMA SPECIAL Kidnapped: The Alan Johnston Story, BBC One 9pm Thursday 25 October 2007

Tonight's Panorama Special tells the extraordinary story of BBC Correspondent Alan Johnston's 114 days of captivity, held by the Army of Islam - a fanatical Jihadist group linked to the Dogmush Clan in Gaza.

Alan had just 16 days left before he was due to leave Gaza at the end of a three year assignment - his plane ticket home was already booked.

He describes how his ordeal began, when driving through Gaza City he was snatched at gunpoint:

"The car pulled up just ahead of me, door flung open on the passenger front side and out stepped a young guy with a pistol. Very quickly he was alongside me pointing the gun through the door. I was vaguely aware of another gunman coming out of the other side of the kidnappers' car and I knew immediately what was happening."

Lowest point

Alan was hooded and handcuffed then taken to an apartment and left in an empty room:

"The kidnappers had forced me to lie face down on the floor. But after they left, and the small, bare room had fallen silent, I rolled over and pulled myself slowly into a sitting position. My wrists were handcuffed behind my back, and a black hood had been pulled down over my head.

I and my parents - would need to suffer in the way that Muslim prisoners and their families suffer

And as I sat there - in danger, and afraid - I had a great sense of being at the very lowest point of my life."

He tells Panorama of his first meeting with the Jihadi leader:

"As I lay on a thin mattress on the floor, late on the first night of my captivity, the door opened. Its frame was filled by a tall figure in a long white robe. He stood for a moment, looking down at me - swathed in a red chequered headdress that completely masked his face. The Jihadi leader had arrived.

"Alan Johnston," he said in English, "We know everything."

Alan Johnston had been reporting from Gaza for three years

The Jihadi leader explained that Alan's kidnapping was about securing the release of Muslims jailed in Britain.

Later, The Army of Islam, would describe him as a prisoner in what they see as the war between Muslims and non-Muslims.

Alan said: "He makes very clear - one of the first things he says is that I won't be killed and I won't be tortured.

"He said, though, that I and my parents - would need to suffer really in the way that Muslim prisoners and their families suffer."

Death threat

"Khamees (one of the guards) said that it was being decided whether I would be put to death, maybe Friday, maybe before Friday, maybe afterwards. I asked him how it would be done? And he said it would be done in 'the Zakawi way'.

At any moment it seemed, in that checkpoint and the next, the car just might be filled with bullets at any point.

"I imagined being put into that red suit that they would make me wear for any video work. I imagined perhaps one of them in a hood, imagined one of them stepping up, imagined having a knee in my back or the back of my neck and then my throat being cut."

During his captivity, a Palestinian group claimed that Alan had been killed and this was widely reported:

"And when I heard that, that I was said to have been executed I just felt the air come out of my lungs, you know it was the most shocking thing I ever, perhaps will ever, hear in my life. And I just of course thought of how that would play for my parents."

Freed, after 114 days in captivity

Alan describes how the kidnap reached a climax as the fighting intensified between Fatah and Hamas in the streets below the kidnappers hide-out and how he was finally released, fearing he would be shot right up until the moment of his dramatic handover:

"At any moment it seemed, in that checkpoint and the next, the car just might be filled with bullets at any point. It was truly terrifying. "

This documentary also reveals the behind-the-scenes story of the hostage negotiators who corresponded by email with shadowy go-betweens to try and secure Alan's release from the Army of Islam.

Kidnapped: The Alan Johnston Story, BBC One 9pm, Thursday 25 October 2007