Four months on: The first print interview

Alan Johnston reckons he was "the luckiest kidnap victim in the world". Almost four months after he was released from captivity in Gaza City, Johnston agreed to give the Sunday Herald a rare interview in which he reflected on his kidnapping and his kidnappers, and the continuing crisis in the Middle East in general and Palestine in particular.

In a restaurant in Portobello Road near his west London home, the 45-year-old BBC correspondent, who was born in Tanzania and brought up in Scotland, sipped cappuccino and said: "It's been a funny old year: the first half was the living nightmare of a kidnap in Gaza and the second this really quite strange experience of being in some ways well-known in Britain just at the moment. Andy Warhol talked about 15 minutes of fame and I just hope that I'm in my 14th minute."

Celebrity does not sit easily on Johnston, a lean, modest man with a hesitant manner. As a correspondent he never courted the limelight and was rarely seen in front of a camera. He preferred the radio and, in particular, the programme From Our Own Correspondent, to which he regularly contributed short essays - newly gathered in a book - describing life in some of the most oppressed and beleaguered parts of the planet.

Johnston's cover, however, was blown on March 12. At the time he was the last Western journalist living in Gaza and was just 16 days from the end of a three-year posting which began in April 2004.

"I went to Gaza with little optimism for a solution to the conflict and I'm sad to say I left with even less. I know that's the bleakest signal to be sending. Most people on both sides Israeli and Palestinian just want to live peacefully, raise their kids in a secure environment, and that's the hope, I guess. But at the moment, if you look for momentum, there's little or none in my view."

As his tour of duty came to an end Johnston counted the days to his departure. His flight home was booked. He remembers writing an email to a friend, telling him he had three weeks to go, provided he wasn't kidnapped. Then he thought, no, that's not going to happen, and deleted the sentence. "I did used to think that when I leave on the last day I'll be very relieved if I manage to get through this without being kidnapped."

In Gaza, kidnapping was an almost daily occurrence, the targets the dwindling population of Westerners. Typically, victims were kept for about a week until the kidnappers' demands were met, which they often were. The great majority of kidnappings were carried out by small militia groups or disgruntled gangs looking to use Westerners as bargaining chips to get someone out of prison. The situation changed, however, in August 2006, when jihadist groups began to emerge.

"I knew from then on it was dangerous," said Johnston. "I was always frightened of being kidnapped even by the less serious groups. But I really worried after the jihadists emerged. I took all the steps I could to keep a lower profile. I used to think that because I had a low profile, living there was safer for me than for some of the visiting journalists who went to obvious places like the big hotel.

"My miscalculation was to imagine that Gaza was so small that nobody could hide a foreigner for long. But of course once I got taken, they seemed to be having no trouble and I began to worry very early on that this was something completely different and that I'd become the John McCarthy or Brian Keenan of Gaza.

Ialways had an unpleasant suspicion that it probably would happen to me. And I did used to think that the longer I stayed in these kind of places, inevitably the more likelihood there was that something would happen. Any bookie will tell you that and on March 12 it did. It just wasn't a surprise that my luck had run out."

Once, recalled Johnston, even before he was kidnapped, he thought he was about to be taken hostage. A jeep stopped in front of him in the middle of Gaza City and a man carrying a Kalashnikov got out. "Shit," thought Johnston. "This is it." However, the man was simply checking his back tyre.

Thus, when he was kidnapped for real, it felt as if he'd already been through it. "It was the weirdest dream-like sensation." Johnston felt as if he were reading a book or watching a movie with himself as the main character. He tried to stay focused, to live by the second, keep thinking. He knows now he was experiencing what the military term "the shock of capture".

His captors were known as the Army of Islam, a renegade organisation with no allegiance to either Hamas or Fatah, the two main rival factions in Gaza. The Army of Islam's object was global jihad and described Johnston as a prisoner in the war between Muslims and non-Muslims.

The first few days of his capture were the worst, an agony of uncertainty. On the first night the jihadi leader came into the room and said in English: "Alan Johnston, we know everything." He told him that he had been kidnapped to secure the release of Muslims jailed in Britain. When Johnston protested that Britain would not negotiate he was told that it would be forced to listen. He was also told that, in keeping with Islamic codes of conduct towards prisoners, he would be treated well and eventually would be freed. When Johnston asked when that might be, he was told: "When the time is right."

In his book, he writes: "I worried very much about the impact my abduction would have on my elderly parents and my sister at home in Scotland. And of course, with that wonderful clarity of hindsight, I deeply, deeply regretted having stayed in Gaza so long and having taken the risks that I had."

He worried how he would cope mentally. In the beginning, however, his main concern was his physical wellbeing. His stomach couldn't cope with the food his captors gave him and his trips to the foul-smelling toilet attached to his room, with its floor awash with water, made him fear for his health.

"I was frightened that I'd get sicker and sicker and decided I must try to get some control over my diet. In the first few weeks I'd occasionally been given potato chips and I knew that even the toughest Gazan bacteria couldn't survive the sizzling fat they were fried in. So I asked just for a plate of chips each day and for my water to be boiled. And those simple elements, along with bread, tomatoes, some fruit and eggs became the basis of my rather dull, but safer, two meals a day."

Perhaps even more crucial as time wore on was access to a radio, which was given to him after repeated requests. Suddenly, Johnston knew he was not forgotten. The attention, the concern, moved him profoundly. He soon realised that the BBC was mobilising, as only it can, an international campaign for his release, hence his belief that he was the luckiest kidnap victim in the world. Moreover ordinary Palestinians repeatedly took to the streets to protest, and friends and colleagues in the media in Gaza stormed the parliament and fought with police in a bid to get the legislature to focus on his case. "You can't ask for more than that."

He was freed after 114 days on July 4. That summer Gaza was in even more ferment than usual with Hamas and Fatah involved in a fatal duel. Hamas took control and began to impose its own idea of order. The effect on Johnston's captors was obvious. They seemed unsure and shaken. Johnston was made to wear a vest of the kind worn by suicide bombers, with explosives around his stomach. The message was plain: if Hamas attempted an attack, Johnston would be killed. Then, suddenly, one night a hood was put over his head and he was led out into the darkness and into a car. His captors were screaming at him and each other. The Army of Islam had done a deal with Hamas, but could either side be trusted?

"I guess nobody trusts anybody in a place like that in circumstances like that and you could certainly imagine their fear and their anxiety. The guard I'd been with had a go, smacked me in the face at that point, and the other guy as well."

Johnston was delivered into the safekeeping of Fayed Abu Shamalla of the BBC Arabic Service. Only then did he realise he was free. A few days later he was back in Scotland.

When he was in captivity, he dreamt of being free. The first night he was freed he dreamt of being captured. He still dreams about Gaza. Over time, they're becoming less frightening.

When he was released the BBC flew out a psychologist to assess him. They met again a couple of weeks ago. All appears to be well, not least, said Johnston, because he was not subjected to sustained violence. His fervent wish now is to return to anonymity. He intends to continue working for the BBC and on behalf of kidnapped journalists around the world, whose private lives, like his, have suffered because of their jobs.

"I haven't lived the normal pattern of life," he said. "When I look around I can't help noticing there's no wife or kids and things like that." There is, however, his family, with whom he will share Christmas in Lochgoilhead, in many respects as far from Gaza as it's possible to be.

Kidnapped And Other Dispatches is published by Profile Books, priced £7.99