BRITISH HOSTAGE JOHN CANTLIE SEEN IN IS PROPAGANDA VIDEO
- Source: Islamic State via Al-Hayat Media Centre (Confirmed)
- Location: Mosul (Confirmed)
- Date: Range – October, 2014, to January, 2015 (Confirmed)
Al-Hayat Media Centre released a video on January 3, 2015, showing British hostage John Cantlie speaking in Mosul. Cantlie is a British journalist kidnapped in Syria in November 2012. This was the eighth propaganda video of Cantlie released by IS since his capture.
In this video, titled From Inside Mosul, Cantlie is described as being in the “bustling” city of Mosul, visiting children at a hospital, riding a motorbike on the city’s streets. He is seen shouting at a drone circling the city.
In his narration, Cantlie suggests that Western media reports of the situation in Mosul are incorrect. He says that prices have not gone up; that people have money to spend; that the electricity supply in the city had lasted “a lot longer than two hours in the last four days”.
Source:
The footage is marked with the Al-Hayat group’s logo. The link was widely circulated on Twitter and jihadist media forums on January 3, 2015. Note: these links were not archived at the time.
Location:
Cantlie appears at multiple locations in this video. The location of the souk (market) and hospital have not been independently confirmed. However, it was possible to confirm that Cantlie was in Mosul.
Storyful confirmed that Cantlie was at the Mashki Gate (5’34’’ in the video), a gate in Mosul’s ancient city walls, via this Wikipedia commons image. Note the street lights, the metal roofing atop the structure in the background, and the hill beyond it as seen in both the video and image. The video also shows the Old Bridge, which is a metal bridge that links Mosul’s Left and Right Banks.
This 2012 New York Times picture of the wall further corroborates the location.
Date:
The video was released by Al-Hayat Media Centre. The link was widely circulated on Twitter and jihadist media forums on January 3. Note: these links were not archived at the time.
We cannot confirm the date that the video was shot, though Cantlie speaks of a news article published by The Guardian on October 27 (3’05’’ in the video) which gives a date range of between October 2014 and January 2015.
