TOKYO, Jan 26 – Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Sunday branded the murder of a Japanese hostage by Islamic State militants as “outrageous and unforgivable” and demanded the immediate release of a second captive, amid growing global revulsion. The apparent beheading of self-employed security contractor Haruna Yukawa was announced in a video posted online by militants, and appeared to mark a grave turn of events in a crisis that has gripped Japan for nearly a week.
“Such an act of terrorism is outrageous and unforgivable,” Abe told broadcaster NHK. “I condemn it strongly and resolutely,” he said, calling for the immediate freeing of Yukawa’s fellow captive, freelance journalist Kenji Goto. In a city outside Tokyo, Shoichi Yukawa told of the horror he had felt when he learnt that threats to kill his son had been carried out.
“I thought ‘Ah, this finally happened’ and was filled with regret,” he said. “I went totally blank, I was only sorry… I had no words,” he said. “In my mind Iwish very much that this wasn’t true.” US President Barack Obama led the worldwide condemnation of what he called the Islamic State group’s “brutal murder” of Yukawa.
British Prime Minister David Cameron decried the movement’s “murderous barbarity”, and French President Francois Hollande labelled it a “barbaric assassination”. Australia’s Tony Abbot called it “an absolute atrocity” carried out by a “death cult”.
