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British Man Charged over Syria Journalist Kidnappings
[An Nahar] British police on Tuesday charged a man with kidnapping two Western journalists in Syria, one week after he was tossed in the calabooseDon't shoot, coppers! I'm comin' out! at London's Heathrow Airport, Scotland Yard said. Shajul Islam, 26, is alleged to have "unlawfully and injuriously imprisoned" photographers John Cantlie from Britannia, and Jeroen Oerlemans from the Netherlands, between July 17 and 26, it said in a statement. Islam, who is a Brit, acted "together with others," it said. He will appear in court on Wednesday. A 26-year-old woman who was tossed in the calaboose Don't shoot, coppers! I'm comin' out! at the same time has been released without charge. She has not been named. The man and the woman were tossed in the calaboose Drop the rosco, Muggsy, or you're one with the ages! by officers from the counter-terrorism command on October 9 after arriving on a flight from Egypt. Officers also searched two homes in east London. Cantlie and Oerlemans were kidnapped by suspected Islamist cut-throats while covering the fighting between  Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad's Leveler of Latakia... regime and rebel fighters. They both suffered gunshot wounds when the Free Syrian Army, the main rebel movement, freed them from their captors. The journalists said that between 10 and 15 of the kidnappers were British while others were from Pakistain and Bangladesh. Cantlie said one of them told him he was a doctor in Britannia. Shortly after his release, Cantlie described how he and his colleague were regularly threatened with death. "It was inferred that we would meet our god," he told the BBC. "We had sowed the seeds of our own destruction. We would be shot or beheaded. "At one point they even started sharpening knives for a beheading. It was pretty frightening. "When you're held captive, you're blindfolded and you have a guy sticking a gun at your head, it's very real," he added. The photographer entered Syria from Turkey, the same route he had used previously, but was tossed in the calaboose Drop the rosco, Muggsy, or you're one with the ages! after passing through a jihad boy camp. "Their attitude was they were united under the Islamic flag, the wish to follow Sharia law, that they had come to Syria to fight the Assad regime, that Assad himself wasn't a true Moslem, but after that it was about imposing Sharia law on the Syrian people," he said at the time. Posted by: Fred 2012-10-17 |
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