Tokyo // Before a trip to Syria that left him an ISIL hostage with a $100 million ransom on his head, Haruna Yukawa said he knew his “name would be added to an assassination list.”
Mr Yukawa, 42, made the comment on his personal blog in April as he sought to reinvent himself as a soldier-of-fortune after a failed business career, a suicide attempt by castration and the death of his wife.
His new career as a self-styled security contractor led him in July to Syria, where he was captured by ISIL, prompting Kenji Goto, a Japanese war correspondent and devout Christian, to head to Aleppo seeking his release.
Goto, born in 1967, ended up himself a hostage facing the same death sentence and $100m (Dh367m) ransom demand, after leaving a video message in which he said his fate was his own responsibility.
The two were seen in a video released by ISIL on Tuesday that shows a knife-wielding militant standing between the kneeling men wearing orange jumpsuits. He threatens to execute them if Japan does not pay by Friday a total ransom of $200m, which matches the amount that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had pledged days earlier to countries fighting the group.
“He spoke very enthusiastically about the job he wanted to do, his dream,” said Nobuo Kimoto, a former provincial politician in Ibaraki Prefecture near Tokyo, who tried to help Mr Yukawa launch his business after they met in December 2013.
“The dream job was to work on security for cargo shipping. He was young and so enthusiastic that I felt I wanted to do what I could to help.”
Mr Kimoto said he introduced Mr Yukawa to contacts in politics and the bureaucracy and tried to persuade him to cut his long hair, which he felt was oddly feminine for someone seeking to work with the military. On his blog, Mr Yukawa wrote that he had an “androgynous character” inside, and at some point adopted a female name, Haruna.
They also discussed a trip to Syria in April, where Mr Yukawa hoped to gain experience. While he was there, Mr Yukawa met independent journalist Goto, whose documentary features on war zones have often been shown on Japanese television. Mr Yukawa was taken hostage for the first time by a local Syrian militia, and only released after Goto managed to intervene with his captors, Mr Kimoto said.
The experience did not deter Mr Yukawa from returning to Syria in July, telling Mr Kimoto he had prospects of work there. Among videos posted online from his travels, one shows him dressed in military garb firing an AK47 machine gun in Aleppo.
Within weeks of his return to Syria, he was captured again, this time by ISIL. The group released a video in August showing a disheveled and bloodied Yukawa lying on the ground and being interrogated in English about his reasons for being in the area.
Goto, born in the northern Japanese city of Sendai and married with children, founded his Independent Press agency 19 years ago after working for a television production company. His acquaintances expressed surprise that the experienced reporter had taken the risk of seeking to rescue Yukawa once again.
“He’s not someone who does crazy things,” said Takashi Takatsu, pastor at Goto’s parish church in Denenchofu, Tokyo, who said he has known the reporter for a decade.
Goto became involved in covering Syria because it was of interest to Japanese television channels, according to Hiromasa Nakai, the chief spokesman for the Japan Committee for Unicef, who has known the journalist for about 10 years. The apparent rescue attempt may have resulted from his great sense of duty, he added.
“Whatever may happen, the responsibility is mine,” a long-haired Goto says in a video message recorded before he entered the danger zone. “I will certainly come back alive, though,” he adds with a laugh.
*Bloomberg
