Islamic State militants fighting in Iraq and Syria released a video on Monday (February 9) apparently showing captive British journalist John Cantlie “reporting” from Syria’s largest city of Aleppo.
The documentary-style 12 minute video was posted on social media sites.
It is called ‘Inside Aleppo’ and features Cantlie touring the city, which he calls by its ancient name, Haleb.
Speaking directly to the camera, a pale looking Cantlie, dressed in a brown jacket and black trousers, said this would be his “last film in this series.”
The freelance photo journalist was kidnapped in Syria with American freelance journalist James Foley in November 2012.
IS executed Foley and released a video of his beheading in August. Since then, Cantlie has appeared in several IS propaganda videos, entitled ‘Lend Me Your Ears’.
The highly-produced film from the Islamic State’s media wing, Al Hayat, sees Cantlie visiting a religious school in the suburb of al-Bab where young boys learn to recite the Koran.
“These young men here are learning are Koran recital and languages and, with any luck, they will form the mujahideen for the next generation in this region,” said Cantlie.
In another clip, the camera focuses on a drone in the sky. Later in the film, Cantlie stands in front of buildings that he says have just been struck by a Syrian airstrike, suggesting that the U.S. may be secretly colluding with the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad.
“All this follows a drone which we saw five minutes ago and then Assad’s airforce comes in and drops bombs on the market. Now as far as I know, the Syrian airforce doesn’t have drones; that must have been an American drone, but that was definitely Assad’s bomb dropping here on the market,” he said.
The journalist then visits an IS media kiosk which distributes information that “counters the news that comes out from the West and so it gives the people here on the ground an idea of what the Islamic State is really doing and not the distorted view that people get from the western media,” Cantlie tells viewers.
The film ends with an interview with a French militant who praised last month’s Paris attacks in which 17 people were killed in three days of violence.
The unidentified fighter called on French Muslims to start carrying out individual attacks and to “kill with knives.”
Reuters/Social Media Website