TOKYO: Japan confirmed Wednesday that a man freed from Syria is a Japanese freelance journalist who was kidnapped three years ago and said he appears to be in good health.
The man was identified as Jumpei Yasuda, Foreign Minister Taro Kono said.
"We are extremely pleased that we have confirmed the safety of Mr. Jumpei Yasuda," Kono told reporters. He said Japanese Embassy officials met with Yasuda at an immigration center in southern Turkey near the border with Syria, where he has been protected since he was freed Tuesday. Kono said Yasuda appeared to be in good health.
Yasuda was kidnapped in 2015 by al-Qaeda's branch in Syria, known at the time as the Nusra Front, after contact with him was lost in June that year. A war monitoring group said he was most recently held by a Syrian commander with the Turkistan Islamic Party, which mostly comprises Chinese extremists in Syria.
The news of Yasuda's release came late Tuesday from Qatar, which helped in efforts for his release along with Turkey and other countries in the region, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said, thanking them for their support.
Asked if any ransom was paid, Suga said, "There is no fact that ransom money was paid."
Yasuda's parents earlier said they couldn't wait to see their son return home.
"I was just praying for his safe return," his mother Sachiko Yasuda, 75, told Japan's NHK public television as she and her husband stood in front of their home outside Tokyo, holding a "thousand cranes" well-wishing origami ornament that she had added to every day for three years.
Yasuda started reporting on the Middle East in the early 2000s. He was taken hostage in Iraq in 2004 with three other Japanese, but was freed after Islamic clerics negotiated his release.
His last work in Syria involved reporting on his friend Kenji Goto, a Japanese journalist who was taken hostage and killed by Daesh.
Contact was lost with Yasuda after he sent a message to another Japanese freelancer on June 23, 2015. In his last tweet two days earlier, Yasuda said his reporting was often obstructed and that he would stop tweeting his location and activities.
Several videos showing a man believed to be Yasuda have been released in the past year.
In one video released in July, a bearded man thought to be Yasuda said he was in a harsh environment and needed to be rescued immediately.
Syria has been one of the most dangerous places for journalists since the conflict there began in March 2011, with dozens killed or kidnapped.
Several journalists are still missing in Syria and their fates are unknown.
Those missing include Austin Tice of Houston, Texas, who disappeared in August 2012 while covering the conflict, which has killed some 400,000 people. A video released a month later showed him blindfolded and held by armed men, saying "Oh, Jesus." He has not been heard from since.
Tice is a former Marine who has reported for The Washington Post, McClatchy Newspapers, CBS and other outlets, and disappeared shortly after his 31st birthday.
Another is British photojournalist John Cantlie, who appeared in Daesh propaganda videos. Cantlie has worked for several publications, including The Sunday Times, The Sun and The Sunday Telegraph. He was kidnapped with American journalist James Foley in November 2012. The IS beheaded Foley in August 2014.
Lebanese journalist Samir Kassab, who worked for Sky News, was kidnapped on Oct. 14, 2013, along with a colleague from Mauritania, Ishak Moctar, and a Syrian driver while on a trip in northern Syria.
In March 2014, two Spanish journalists — correspondent Javier Espinosa and photographer Ricardo Garcia Vilanova — were released six months after being kidnapped by an al-Qaeda-linked group.
Japan confirms ID of journalist freed from Syria
Japan confirms ID of journalist freed from Syria
- Yasuda was kidnapped in 2015 by Al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, known at the time as Nusra Front, after his contact was lost in June that year
- Several videos showing a man believed to be Yasuda have been released in the past year
Disinformation the new enemy in disaster zones, says Red Cross
- “Harmful information and dehumanizing narratives” undermines humanitarian aid and putting lives of aid workers at risk
- Between 2020 and 2024, disasters affected nearly 700 million people, displaced over 105 million, and killed more than 270,000 — doubling the number in need of humanitarian aid
GENEVA: The rise of disinformation is undermining humanitarian aid and putting lives at risk, while disasters are affecting ever more people, the Red Cross warned Thursday.
“Between 2020 and 2024, disasters affected nearly 700 million people, caused more than 105 million displacements, and claimed over 270,000 lives,” the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said.
The number of people needing humanitarian assistance more than doubled in the same timeframe, the IFRC said in its World Disasters Report 2026.
But the world’s largest humanitarian network said that “harmful information and dehumanizing narratives” were increasingly undermining trust, putting the lives of aid workers at risk.
“In polarized and politically-charged contexts, humanitarian principles such as neutrality and impartiality are increasingly misunderstood, misrepresented or deliberately attacked online,” it said.
The IFRC has more than 17 million volunteers across more than 191 countries.
“In every crisis I have witnessed, information is as essential as food, water and shelter,” said the Geneva-based federation’s secretary general Jagan Chapagain.
“But when information is false, misleading or deliberately manipulated, it can deepen fear, obstruct humanitarian access and cost lives.”
He said harmful information was not a new phenomenon, but it was now moving “with unprecedented speed and reach.”
Chapagain said digital platforms were proving “fertile ground for lies.”
The IFRC report said the challenge nowadays was no longer about the availability of information but its reliability, noting that the production and spread of disinformation was easily amplified by artificial intelligence.
- ‘Life and death’ -
The report cited numerous recent examples of harmful information hampering crisis response.
During the 2024 floods in Valencia, false narratives online accused the Spanish Red Cross of diverting aid to migrants, which in turn fueled “xenophobic attacks on volunteers,” the IFRC said.
In South Sudan, rumors that humanitarian agencies were distributing poisoned food “caused people to avoid life-saving aid” and led to threats against Red Cross staff.
In Lebanon, false claims that volunteers were spreading Covid-19, favoring certain groups with aid and providing unsafe cholera vaccines eroded trust and endangered vulnerable communities, the IFRC said.
And in Bangladesh, during political unrest, volunteers faced “widespread accusations of inaction and political alignment,” leading to harassment and reputational damage, it added.
Similar events were registered by the IFRC in Sudan, Myanmar, Peru, the United States, New Zealand, Canada, Kenya and Bulgaria.
The report underlined that around 94 percent of disasters were handled by national authorities and local communities, without international interventions.
“However, while volunteers, local leaders and community media are often the most trusted messengers, they operate in increasingly hostile and polarized information environments,” the IFRC said.
The federation called on governments, tech firms, humanitarian agencies and local actors to recognize that reliable information “is a matter of life and death.”
“Without trust, people are less likely to prepare, seek help or follow life-saving guidance; with it, communities act together, absorb shocks and recover more effectively,” said Chapagain.
The organization urged technology platforms to prioritize authoritative information from trusted sources in crisis contexts, and transparently moderate harmful content.
And it said humanitarian agencies needed to make preparing to deal with disinformation “a core function” of their operations, with trained teams and analytics.
