A video of kidnapped BBC journalist Alan Johnston has been posted on the internet.
"First of all my captors have treated me very well. They've fed me well. There's been no violence towards me at all, and I'm in good health.
In three years here in the Palestinian territories, I've witnessed the huge suffering of the Palestinian people.
And my message is that their suffering is continuing, and that it is unacceptable.
Every day there are Palestinians arrested, imprisoned for no reason. People are killed on a daily basis.
The economic suffering is terrible, especially here in Gaza where there's an Israeli [audio jumps] absolute despair after nearly 40 years of Israeli occupation which has been supported by the West.
The situation in Iraq is even worse, we see every day maybe 100 or more Iraqis being killed, in the violence there which followed the failed invasion of Iraq by America and Britain.
Ordinary people who are losing everything and can't live their lives properly. Because of not just the violence, but the shortage of everything they need for normal lives, for bringing up their children.
Errr... Afghanistan, the situation again terrible.
You see on your television screens ordinary people [audio jumps] suffering as the armies of America and B... [audio jumps] America attack [audio jumps] attack.
In all this, we can see the British government endlessly working to occupy, err, the Muslim lands, against the will of the people in those places.
From history, the British worked to bring about the state of Israel, which is the cause of all the suffering of the Israeli... of the Palestinian people, and we, the British, are completely to blame, along with the Americans, for the situation in Iraq, and the British are the main force in Afghanistan, causing all the trouble to ordinary, simple Afghans who simply want to live.
To my family, my family... [audio cuts off abruptly].
[An on-screen caption says: "BBC refused to take this message to his family."]
My captors say that my release is subject to the following...""
[The video then plays an audio message from an unidentified man speaking in Arabic.]
""We want Britain to free our prisoners and we specify Sheikh Abu Qatada al-Filistini, and at this position we won't forget our prisoners in the other infidel states and we say to them, free our prisoners or we will deal with you the same.
We don't specify a state without the others. And we say if you want the ransom to free them we will give you to the last piece of gold as the Prophet, peace be upon him, told us to do. ""
thanks to Memri Video
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