Tokyo
\nJapanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Wednesday he was relieved that a Japanese hostage believed to have been captured in Syria three years ago had been released, but added that the government still needed to confirm the man\u2019s identity.<\/p>\n
Japan had received information that a man believed to be Jumpei Yasuda, a freelance journalist, had been released, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said late on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The government had notified Yasuda\u2019s wife, but still needed to confirm his identity, he said.<\/p>\n
Yasuda, 44, had been captured by an al Qaeda affiliate after entering Syria from Turkey in 2015, according to Japanese media.<\/p>\n
Since then he has appeared occasionally in online videos.<\/p>\n
Speaking to reporters, Abe thanked Qatar and Turkey for their cooperation in freeing the man.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m relieved to hear the information. We want to confirm whether the man is Mr Jumpei Yasuda as soon as possible,\u201d Abe said.<\/p>\n
Yasuda\u2019s parents spoke to reporters outside their house near Tokyo.<\/p>\n
\u201cAbove everything else, I want to see him being fine,\u201d said his father, Hideaki Yasuda.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen he\u2019s back, I want to tell him one thing, and that\u2019ll be \u2018good job hanging in there\u2019,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tokyo Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Wednesday he was relieved that a Japanese hostage believed to have been captured in Syria three years ago had been released, but added that the government still needed to confirm the man\u2019s identity. Japan had received information that a man believed to be Jumpei Yasuda, a freelance […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45283,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45282"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45284,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45282\/revisions\/45284"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}