They are demanding the release of female prisoners from Egypt’s prisons.
Advertisement
Terror tracker SITE Intel Group’s head Rita Katz tweeted a grab from the video which showed the Croatian man dressed in a faded yellow jumpsuit kneeling before a knife-weilding ISIS fighter in fatigues.
He identified himself as Tomislav Salopek, 30, from Croatia. “They want to exchange me for Muslim women who were arrested and are now in Egyptian prisons”, Salopek said in the message.
Wilyat Sina is the Arabic phrase for the Egyptian group calling itself the Sinai Province of the Islamic State.
The Egyptian government had no immediate comment on the video Wednesday.
Salopek, a father of two, is the first foreigner to be abducted and threatened with death by militants in Egypt since the Islamist insurgency broke out after the army’s ouster of president Mohamed Morsi two years ago.
The hostage said he was abducted on July 22 by the Sinai Province group, ISIS’ Egyptian affiliate. He says he works for CGG and was kidnapped July 22.
The Croatian Foreign Ministry released a statement saying it’s doing everything possible to resolve “this hard situation” and that “Croatia’s Foreign Minister Vesna Pusic will, following consultations with her Egyptian counterpart, travel to Cairo”.
Foreign interests have been increasingly targeted by Isil loyalists in Egypt. The Italian consulate was hit with a auto bomb last month, days after another bomb killed the prosecutor general, Hisham Barakat, in Cairo. Ansar Beit al-Maqdis changed its name to Wilayat Sinai in November, when it pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.
The timing of the video came as Egypt prepared to inaugurate the New Suez Canal, a megaproject that is the centrepiece of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s plans to revitalise the country’s economy.
Last December, the affiliate claimed responsibility for the killing of an American oil worker with Texas-based energy company Apache Corp. Hundreds of soldiers and police have been killed in militant attacks, largely in the Sinai Peninsula. Government forces have intensified their hunt for the militants in several northern towns in the peninsula.
Advertisement
Since 2014 IS has staged mass executions of Syrian, Iraqi and Afghan soldiers.
