AMMAN
The Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) militant group has threatened to kill two foreign hostages – one Japanese and one Jordanian national – within 24 hours unless an Iraqi woman recently detained in Jordan is released.
In video footage posted on YouTube, Kenji Goto, a Japanese freelance journalist abducted while covering the Syrian conflict last year, called on the Jordanian government to swap him – along with a captured Jordanian pilot – in return for Sajda Rishawi, an Iraqi woman detained in Jordan.
"Any delay on the part of the Jordanian government means they [ISIL] will kill the pilot and me," Goto says in the video.
"We have only 24 hours to live," he adds.
Rishawi was arrested in 2005 and later sentenced to death in connection with a triple bomb attack on a hotel in Amman.
Rishawi's husband and two other Iraqis are said to have blown themselves up in the Jordanian capital, killing at least 60 people.
In a televised confession after her arrest, Rishawi said that she too had tried but failed to detonate her explosives at a wedding reception.
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