Islamic State has set a deadline of sunset on Thursday for the release of a failed suicide bomber after Jordan agreed to free her in return for a Jordanian pilot being held hostage by the group. But the fate of the Japanese journalist Kenji Goto, also in Isis captivity, was thrown into confusion by the latest developments.
In a newly released audio message from the Islamist militants, a man identifying himself as Goto says that Sajida al-Rishawi, a convicted terrorist, should be taken to the Turkish border by sunset Iraqi time on Thursday.
If Rishawi does not appear by the deadline, Isis has warned that Muath al-Kasasbeh, who has been held by Isis since his aircraft crashed during a bombing raid over Syria in December, will be “killed immediately”.
Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, said analysis of the message suggested it had been issued by Isis.
The new message appeared after a previous 24-hour deadline for Rishawi’s release expired. Isis had threatened to kill both hostages unless Jordan freed Rishawi, who was sentenced to death for her involvement in a 2005 terrorist attack that killed 60 people.
Although Thursday’s message appeared to confirm Goto was still alive, concern grew in Japan after Jordan and Isis stopped mentioning him as part of a possible prisoner swap.
Having initially accepted Isis’s demand to release Rishawi, Jordanian officials backtracked, saying they had been unable to confirm that Kasasbeh was still alive.
The Jordanian foreign minister, Nasser Judeh, tweeted early on Thursday that Jordan had requested assurances that the 26-year-old pilot was safe but had received no response from Isis. CNN quoted Judeh as saying that “of course” Goto’s release would be part of any exchange.
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Government spokesman Mohammad al-Momani said Jordan was ready to release Rishawi as long as Kasasbeh was spared, but added that she would be held until the pilot was freed. “It’s not true she has been released,” he told Reuters in the Jordanian capital, Amman. “Her release is tied to freeing our pilot.”
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Japan’s foreign minister, Fumio Kishida, said there had been “no major developments” in efforts to secure Goto’s release. “There are lots of pieces of information swirling around, so we need to scrutinise them all very carefully,” Kishida told reporters in Tokyo.
Goto, 47, was captured last year after going to Syria to attempt to persuade Isis to release another Japanese hostage, Haruna Yukawa.
Yukawa, a 42-year-old security consultant who had been held by Isis since the summer, was beheaded last weekend after Japan refused to pay a ransom of US$200m by the end of a 72-hour deadline.
In a separate message issued on Tuesday, Isis militants said Goto and Kasasbeh had 24 hours to live unless Rishawi was released.
Rishawi, 44, was sentenced to death after being convicted for her part in an al-Qaida attack on a string of hotels in Amman in 2005 that killed 60 people.
The attack was a seminal moment in the arc of Isis – it led directly to one of its biggest setbacks, the killing of the then head of the Islamic State of Iraq, an earlier incarnation of the terror group that now controls much of eastern Syria and western Iraq.
Rishawi was captured after one of three explosions in central Amman on 9 November 2005, which were ordered by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Her husband, Ali Hussein al-Shamari, detonated his bomb in the Radisson SAS hotel but Rishawi’s bomb was faulty.
Riled Jordanian intelligence officials then launched a concerted effort to find Zarqawi, who was nearing the peak of his powers in Iraq, where a Sunni insurgency he was driving had taken hold.
Zarqawi’s hideout was found seven months later after a source cultivated by the Jordanians pinpointed his location. He was killed by a bomb dropped from a US air force jet in June 2006 in the town of Hibhib, 40 miles north of Baghdad.
Rishawi was moved from her prison cell hours after Abe condemned as “despicable” the release of the video purporting to show Goto, accompanied by a warning that he and Kasasbeh had hours to live unless Rishawi was released.
Goto says in the clip: “She [Rishawi] has been a prisoner for a decade and I’ve only been a prisoner for a few months. Her for me, a straight exchange.”
Three days earlier Goto was heard in another audio clip announcing that Yukawa had been beheaded.
The country’s prisoner swap with Isis will horrify some governments but it is a more effective strategy than stonewalling the terror group.
Isis had previously demanded cash ransoms for all foreign hostages it had seized since late 2012. The decision to instead demand a prisoner swap for Goto is being seen by some close to the organisation as a symbolic bid to retrieve something from the Amman attack, which is widely considered among senior members to have been a serious mistake.
