'Dark figure' guarded BBC man

From the moment he was kidnapped, Alan Johnston found himself in the hands of unpredictable captors whose moods alternated between friendliness and terrifying rage.

The BBC reporter said he spent most of his 114-day ordeal guarded by an unfathomable “dark figure”.

“Mostly, I was under the guard of one man, a strange guy who barely spoke to me for days and would just glare at me and fly into rages at tiny things – a door slamming or whatever – and then at other times, once a fortnight, he would come across completely different and friendly, especially if he thought it might be coming to and end, the whole kidnapping,” Mr Johnston told the Today programme.

He added: “He would invite me through and we would watch television in his room, almost as if we were friends – of course we weren’t.”

Mr Johnston said his kidnappers initially told him they did not intend to kill or torture him, but at 3am on the first night, he was handcuffed and his face was covered with a hood.

He said the captors were often “rude and unpleasant”, threatening his life on numerous occasions.

In one 24 hour period his captors appeared to become “very angry” and chained him up.

Mr Johnston said: “It was like being buried alive and removed from the world, in the hands of people who were dangerous and unpredictable.”

And, although there had been no violence towards him throughout his kidnapping, in the final moments of his ordeal, during a “terrible, highly-charged ride” into the centre of Gaza, Mr Johnston said the man who had guarded him for so long lashed out at him.

He said: “Obviously it was tense, but he was just beside himself with anger and he had a go at me and slapped me in the face and so did his mate, the other guard.

“It was a grim, grim ending to it, but he was a dark figure who I didn’t in any way get to know and couldn’t quite fathom, a shifty man with angry moods.”