John Cantlie at Nangalam base, Pech Valley, Afghanistan 2012

John Cantlie is a British war photographer and correspondent who was kidnapped by British Islamic extremists while crossing into Syria on July 19, 2012, near Bab al Hawa. Along with Dutch photographer Jeroen Oerlemans, Cantlie was shot while trying to escape their captors. In an interview with The Sun newspaper on 26 August 2012 Cantlie said it was "every Englishman's duty to try and escape if captured." Both photographers claimed they were about to be handed over to a jihad unit affiliated with al-Qaeda for ransom when they were rescued by the Free Syrian Army. Cantlie's kidnap is the first recorded case of a British journalist being held, shot and then rescued from fellow Britons during the revolutions of the Arab Spring.

The pair were held by the jihad group al-Dawla al-Islamiyya (The Islamic State) whose leader, Abo Mohamad Al-Shami, encouraged British Muslims to join the group to fight a Holy War against the government of Bashar al-Assad. It is alleged the group used the cover of online aid agencies to smuggle European fighters across the Turkish border into Syria. In an account in The Sunday Times on 5 August 2012, Cantlie wrote: "I ended up running for my life, barefoot and handcuffed, while British jihadists - young men with south London accents - shot to kill. They were aiming their Kalashnikovs at a British journalist, Londoner against Londoner in a rocky landscape that looked like the Scottish Highlands. Bullets kicking up dirt as I ran. A bullet through my arm, another grazing my ear. And not a Syrian in sight. This wasn't what I had expected."

Oerlemans was shot in the left leg and Cantlie in the left arm during their escape attempt, Cantlie suffering ulnar nerve palsy (loss of feeling and use to the hand) as a result. In an account of the shooting, Oerlemans says some of the British Muslims stood over him holding a rock as though to smash it onto his head and shouted, "die, kaffir, die!" Oerlemans then stated that "the British guys were the most vindictive of them all." They were taken back to the camp where a fighter who claimed to be an NHS doctor stabilized them and treated their wounds. The pair said the doctor gave them information and extra food. Cantlie later wrote in the October 2012 edition of FHM magazine that this was Stockholm Syndrome, where a hostage befriends one or more of their captors.

They were subjected to mock executions, beaten and at one point believed they would be beheaded when their captors started sharpening knives. "I honestly thought that was it," Cantlie wrote in The Sunday Times. Then on 26 July, one week after being kidnapped, they were rescued by four members of the FSA. The rebels came into the camp shooting their weapons and held at least one jihad fighter at gunpoint while Cantlie and Oerlemans were helped into a waiting vehicle. Both photographers had to be assisted as their feet had been seriously injured when they tried to escape and neither could walk. They had lost all their camera equipment, passports and clothes in the incident, and were smuggled back across the border at a crossing used primarily by Syrian refugees. They were initially treated by a medic for the New York Times in Antakya before being debriefed by Turkish and then British intelligence.

One month later Abo Mohamad Al-Shami was killed in unclear circumstances, reportedly by an officer in the Farouq Brigades, a rival jihad group. Reports say he was kidnapped by the unit, held for three days and then executed by repeated stabbing in the stomach. His body was recovered and buried by his brother in the area near to the Syrian town of Samarda. There were unconfirmed reports of British special forces operating in the area at the same time, while the members of al-Dawla al-Islamiyya headed south for Homs or left Syria soon afterwards. On 9 October 2012 an individual suspected of being involved in the kidnap was arrested at Heathrow airport after arriving on a flight from Egypt.

This was Cantlie's second visit to Syria. In March 2012 he became the first Western photographer to witness first-hand an incursion by government ground troops into a city when T72 heavy tanks rolled in to the city of Saraquib in Idlib province and started shelling indiscriminately. In a feature in the Sunday Telegraph published on March 31, Cantlie wrote: "Then the tanks opened fire. Fist-sized pieces of shrapnel sliced through the air, decapitating one rebel immediately. His rifle clattered to the ground as his friends dragged his headless torso from the line of fire." To illustrate what the Syrian rebels were up against, Cantlie took a photograph looking down the barrel of an advancing T72. In an interview he later described taking the picture as "not terribly comfortable."

John Cantlie is the great grandson of Dr James Cantlie, who in 1896 was instrumental in the protection of the famous Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat Sen who would otherwise have been executed by the Chinese secret service. His grandfather, Colonel Kenneth Cantlie, designed the China Railways KF locomotive, at 260 tons the largest locomotive of post-war China that remained in service until 1972.

References[link]

The Sunday Times, 6 August 2012:^[1]

1. ^ Cantlie, John (6 August 2012). "Are you ready to die?". The Sunday Times. http://www.fastfeatures.com/FEATURES/.

BBC Radio 4, 6 August 2012: ^[1]

1. ^ O'Connell, Paddy (5 August 2012). "'We feared beheading'". BBC Radio4. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-19135839.

The Guardian, 3 August 2012: ^[1]

1. ^ Meikle, James (3 August 2012). "Photojournalists captured by British jihadis". The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/03/syria-islamists-capture-john-cantile.

Channel 4 News: ^[1]

1. ^ Guru-Murthy, Krishnan (5 August 2012). "British photographer freed by FSA". Channel 4. http://www.channel4.com/news/fighting-rages-in-syrian-city-of-aleppo.

The Sun, 26 August 2012: ^[1]

1. ^ Willetts, David (26 August 2012). "NHS doctor was terror chief". The Sun. http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4505176/NHS-doctor-is-terror-chief.html.

Sunday Telegraph, 31 March 2012:^[1]