New demands made by Islamic state group
ISIS hostage Kenji Goto’s life is in the hands of a brutal force, according to terrorism analyst Craig Smith.
“I don’t think we’ve seen something this brutal or systemic since Nazi Germany,” Smith said. “The only way this can be stopped is the systematic destruction of ISIS.”
The latest in a string of executions led to crowded streets in Tokyo, where protesters criticized Japan’s prime minister for his handling of two Japanese hostages.
Goto made a statement in a new hostage video released online.
“They are being fair. They no longer want money, so you don’t need to worry about funding terrorists,” he said in the video.
Japan’s prime minister said Sunday he was speechless after an online video purportedly showed that one of two Japanese hostages of the extremist Islamic State group had been killed, and he demanded the release of the other.
The story has become all too common. Five ISIS videos released last year announced the beheadings of U.S. journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, British aid worker David Haines, British taxi driver Alan Henning and U.S. aid worker Peter Kassig. In each video, a masked man is shown making a statement and sometimes putting a knife to the hostages’ necks.
“This isn’t even about countries,” Smith said. “This is about an evil, decrepit ideology and a group of people that will stop at nothing to dominate the whole world.”
In a statement released by the White House, President Barack Obama offered “condolences for the murder” of Haruna Yukawa and conveyed “solidarity with the Japanese people.”
