How convenient:

By Tim Butcher in Jerusalem
Last Updated: 7:43am BST 16/04/2007

A Jihadist group released a statement in Gaza yesterday claiming it had killed Alan Johnston, the kidnapped BBC journalist, and promised to release a video of the murder.

While there was no independent confirmation, the BBC and Foreign Office said they were investigating the statement, sent to Palestinian media outlets in the name of The Brigades of Holy War and Unity.

A group by that name used to operate in Iraq after the US-led invasion. Last month a group with the same name issued a statement claiming to be behind the bombings of some local internet cafes.

But apart from the two statements, little is known about the Palestinian version of the group. It has no spokesmen, no confirmed members and no public profile. The Palestinian security services claim that even they have no knowlege of its existence.

While colleagues and friends were last night hoping that the statement was some sort of grim hoax, it was the first public announcement about the 44-year-old reporter since he was abducted five weeks ago today.

If it proves to be true, it will change radically the character of the Gaza Strip where no western kidnap victim has been murdered.

"We are deeply concerned about what we are hearing - but we stress, at this stage, it is rumour with no independent verification," the BBC said.

Mr Johnston's parents today issued a fresh appeal for anyone with information about their son to come forward to end their ordeal.

The Foreign Office, which took the unprecedented step of suspending its ban on links with the Hamas-led Palestinian government so that diplomats could raise Johnston's case, said it was looking into every aspect of the statement.

Before yesterday, there had been few leads about the reporter since he was abducted while driving home from the BBC office in Gaza City.

It had been thought the kidnapping was the work of criminals from the Dogmush clan, a large Gaza family with scant respect for the law and a large private arsenal.

It is possible they may have sold him on to the highest bidder, possibly a jihadist group.

The five weeks since he went missing have been particularly hard on his father, Graham, mother, Margaret and sister, Katriona, at the family home in west Scotland.

The jihadists' statement was rambling and incoherent but, crucially, it claimed that Johnston had been killed.

It suggested that the group had demanded that Israel release Palestinian political prisoners and the demands had been passed to the local authorities in Gaza - although there is no record of this.

Johnston, the only western resident journalist in Gaza, was within days of completing three years in the area.

This has Mossad's fingerprints all over it.

---------------------------------------
"Money" has no value - people do.