Islamic State captive makes video of Mosul

BEIRUT – A video released Saturday shows a British photojournalist held captive by Islamic State giving a stylized media tour of the beleaguered northern Iraqi city of Mosul, visiting a market, a hospital and even climbing onto a police motorcycle to dispute reports that the city’s infrastructure has been crippled.

The video provides a window on a city that has largely been off-limits to journalists since Islamic State seized control in June, although reports have trickled out from residents and those who have escaped.

“The media likes to paint a picture of life in the Islamic State as depressed, people walking around as subjugated citizens in chains, beaten down by strict, totalitarian rule,” hostage John Cantlie says as he appears to be driving to the souk, or market.

“This isn’t a city living in fear, as the Western media would have you believe. This is just a normal city going about its daily business.”

The video, which lasts slightly more than eight minutes, is one of a series in which Cantlie, 43, has faulted Western governments while praising Islamic State and their new “caliphate.” Its authenticity was still being examined late Saturday. It was not immediately clear under what circumstances he made the video.

In the video, Cantlie visits a hospital where he says children are being treated for “psychiatric problems as a direct result of bombs and explosions falling from above,” a reference to U.S.-led airstrikes.

Cantlie, who has been held for two years, appears healthier and cleaner shaven than in the last video, wearing blue jeans and a Western winter coat instead of the black shirt and trousers from the last video, an outfit that replaced the orange U.S.-style prison jumpsuit he and other hostages had been forced to wear in earlier videos.