Alan Johnston, the BBC journalist held hostage in the Gaza Strip, was freed on Wednesday after a deal between the ruling Hamas Islamists and the al Qaeda-inspired clan group that kidnapped him in March.
"It is just the most fantastic thing to be free. It was an appalling experience," he told the British public broadcaster from the home of local Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh after his 114-day ordeal at the hands of the shadowy Army of Islam.
Johnston said he was ill at times but only at the last did they "hit me a bit" during a midnight drive to freedom. Often in solitary confinement, he did not see the sun for three months.
Haniyeh, whose movement routed the forces of the secular, Western-backed Palestinian president last month to seize full control of the coastal enclave, said the outcome "confirms (Hamas) is serious in imposing security and stability".
Khaled Meshaal, Hamas's exiled overall leader, told Reuters it contrasted with "anarchy" prevailing when the Fatah faction of West Bank-based President Mahmoud Abbas was active in Gaza. But, in a mark of the bitterness dividing Palestinians, a senior aide to Abbas dismissed Hamas's statements as "a movie" and "falling out among thieves" between Hamas and the Army of Islam, whose rhetoric echoes that of al Qaeda groups elsewhere.
Abbas himself welcomed the end of an abduction he said had harmed all Palestinians and said that armed groups must be dissolved. Johnston, the only Western correspondent based full-time in the troubled coastal strip, said he sensed his captors felt new pressure after Hamas defeated Fatah three weeks ago. "When Hamas took control, that changed the atmosphere completely," he said.
He described them as "a small jihadi group" more interested in harming Britain than in the Palestinian conflict with Israel. Israel said that Hamas should now free an Israeli soldier whom Hamas's own militants have held captive in Gaza for a year.
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