Alan Johnston

[1] Johnston joined the BBC in 1991, and has spent eight years as a correspondent for them, including in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, as well as Kabul, Afghanistan.

[4] He was due to be the BBC's full-time correspondent in Gaza until 1 April 2007, and at the time of his kidnapping was the only foreign reporter with a major Western media organisation to still be based in the city.

[1][5][6] Johnston covered many major stories in Gaza for the BBC, including Israel's unilateral disengagement plan in 2005, Hamas winning the 2006 legislative elections, the 2006 Israel-Gaza conflict and the Palestinian factional violence of late 2006 to 2007.

Following his release he announced his intention to return to obscurity[8] though, as of January 2008, he took over the presentation of the BBC World Service version of the programme From Our Own Correspondent.

The day after he was released, Johnston was awarded a prize by Amnesty International for his radio reports on human rights in Gaza, praising him for his "commitment to telling ordinary peoples' stories.