LONDON (AFP) — BBC journalist Alan Johnston told Thursday of his fear of having his throat cut in a Jihadi-style video execution, in a revealing account of his nearly four months held by an extremist group in Gaza.
In a special edition of BBC radio's From Our Own Correspondent programme, he also recounted his struggle to "keep my mind in the right place," helped by hearing news of the BBC-led campaign for his release.
Johnston, who was the only Western journalist still based permanently in Gaza, was taken captive by Palestinian extremists the Army of Islam on March 12 as he returned to his flat. He was released on July 4.
The 45-year-old told how he was kept in a room with "a narrow, sagging bed and two plastic chairs" and said that he had been stripped of his watch, and could only tell the time by the sun's movements and sound of calls to prayer.
On his first day in captivity, he was forced to remove his contact lenses, "and my eyes are very weak. And so, in this blurred, empty room I began to try to come to terms with the disaster that had engulfed me," he said.
"As one empty day slid slowly into another, the seriousness of my situation became more and more important ... Britain never does deals with kidnappers, so why -- I couldn't help worrying -- would I ever be freed?"
His fear that he would be killed was fueled when he heard a broadcast citing reports that he had been executed.
"It was a shocking moment. I had been declared dead. And I thought how appalling it was that my family should have to endure that.
"But of course, I knew that I was far from dead, and after a few minutes I could not help recalling that famous Mark Twain line: 'Reports of my death are exaggerated'."
Nevertheless, it set his mind racing.
"I was sure that if I was to be put to death, the act would be video-taped in the style of Jihadi executions in Iraq ... I imagined being put into that red suit that they would make me wear for any video work.
"I imagined perhaps one of them in a hood, imagined one of them stepping up, imagined having a knee in my back or the back of my neck and then my throat being cut."
But he vowed that, if it came to it, he would battle to remain dignified.
"If that was to be the last image my family and the world was to have of me -- if at all possible -- I did not want it to be one of a weeping, pleading, broken man," he said.
Johnston said that one of the few bright spots was the fact that his guards allowed him a radio, with which he became aware of the BBC's campaign to win his freedom, which he described as "an enormous psychological boost."
He spoke of his struggle to "keep my mind in the right place," prompting him to "strangle" negative thoughts and encourage positive ones.
"The fact was that I hadn't been killed, and I wasn't being beaten around. I was being fed reasonably, and I decided that my conditions could have been much, much worse."
Eventually, the politics of Gaza worked in Johnston's favour, as the hardline Palestinian group Hamas seized control of the territory and negotiated his release.
Since returning to Britain, Johnston said he dreams "sometimes that I'm in captivity again, and I cannot tell you how good it is to wake, and gradually realise that, actually, I'm free."
"The kidnap's legacy is not all bad ... it was a kind of dark education," he said.
"I lived through things which before I would have struggled to imagine ... I've gained too a deeper sense of the value of freedom ... it can still seem faintly magical to do the simplest things -- like walk down a street in the sunshine or sit in a cafe with a newspaper."
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