John Cantlie, a British journalist captured in late 2012 by the Islamic State, is featured in a new video released by the militant organization on Thursday. In it, he promises a series of upcoming "programs" that will convey "facts that if you contemplate, might help [in] preserving lives."
Unlike the three previous beheading videos featuring two Americans and one British man in recent weeks, the new video does not feature a member of the Islamic State (sometimes called ISIS or ISIL). Its tone is measured, and features only Cantlie as he sits calmly at a table introducing the series.
Reuters reported that the video first surfaced on social media sites. The video was uploaded to several video sites such as YouTube and Daily Motion, and subsequently spread via Twitter and Facebook. Some sites like Twitter have policies of deleting content related to the group and its supporters, which generate dead links, and lead the group to make multiple postings across a number of accounts.
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The video's message seemed to discourage the West's military campaign to stop the growth of the Islamic State, and also attempted to shame the U.S. and U.K. for not negotiating for their respective citizen hostages.
"After two disastrous and hugely unpopular wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, why is it that our governments appear so keen to get involved in yet another unwinnable conflict? I'm going to show you the truth behind the systems and motivation of the Islamic State, and how the Western media, the very organization I used to work for, can twist and manipulate that truth for the public back home," Cantlie says in the video.
"I'll show you the truth behind what happened when many European citizens were imprisoned and later released by the Islamic State, and how the British and American governments thought they could do it differently to every other European country. They negotiated with the Islamic State and got their people home while the British and Americans were left behind [sic]."
This August, at the command of President Barack Obama, the U.S. resumed airstrikes in Iraq against the occupying Islamic State. The airstrikes are the first since the withdrawal of its troops in 2011.
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