Less than 24 hours after being freed from his Gaza captors, BBC reporter Alan Johnston said steady media coverage of his four-month plight helped him maintain hope that the world wouldn't forget about him.
Hamas had pushed for the journalist's release shortly after seizing power in the region. Late Tuesday Hamas militia members surrounded the stonghold where Johnston was being held, and he was handed over by his captors -- the little-known Army of Islam, led by the Doghmush clan -- early Wednesday.
Looking gaunt but happy, with a new haircut, white shirt and blazer, Johnston spoke to reporters on Wednesday for the second time since his release.
He said he was allowed to watch television news during his imprisonment and was encouraged by the constant media attention.
"How many kidnapping victims are able to sit and listen to their friends giving messages of support from around the world? I thought if I can't get through with that level of support than what chance does anyone else have?"
He thanked the news organizations that helped keep his "story alive."
"I felt at one point all the journalists in the world were coming to the rescue ... they couldn't rescue me but they weren't going to let go, they weren't going to let the story die, and any kidnap victim will probably tell you the thing they fear most of all is the world's going to go on with out them and they're going to be forgotten about."
In an earlier news conference with Hamas officials, Johnston described his ordeal as the worst period in his life and said it felt "like being buried alive, really, removed from the world."
Johnston said he was driving along a quiet Gaza street on March 12 -- one he had travelled down a thousand times before, when a car lurched up beside him, then cut off his vehicle. At first, Johnston said he thought it was typical Gaza driving, but then armed militants jumped out and he was taken prisoner.
"I'd been in Gaza three years, I'd covered 27 kidnappings and I knew what it was about. I'd imagined what it would be like dozens of times and it was exactly like that. It was a faintly surreal experience as if I'd lived it before because I'd imagined it so many times," he told reporters.
He said the group considered him a prisoner of war, and the leader wasn't impressed when he told him he had spent three years in Gaza reporting on the plight of the Palestinians.
"They described me as a prisoner in the war between Muslims and non-Muslims. I guess I'm a non-Muslim but I'm certainly not in a war with anybody," Johnston said.
Soon after he was abducted, Johnston was told he wouldn't be tortured or killed, and he said his captors kept their promise. He said he was fed simple food that his stomach could handle and was treated with respect as the weeks went by. Most of his time was spent watching television in a dark, shuttered room with a moody security guard who would often fly into rages.
Johnston said things began to change when Hamas took power in the Gaza strip. Security was stepped up and the kidnappers suddenly seemed worried after Hamas said Johnston's release was a priority.
"Hamas made it very clear in the wake of its violent takeover of the Gaza Strip a couple of weeks ago that the release of Alan Johnston was, for Hamas, priority one," CTV's Middle East Bureau Chief Janis Mackey Frayer said Wednesday.
"People were seeing it as Hamas' way of trying to achieve some sort of credibility in that it would show that Hamas was able to take control of the Gaza Strip, that they could return law and order."
Most journalists kidnapped in Gaza are held for a matter of days. But Johnston, 45, was seized on March 12.
The Army of Islam had released a video of Johnston last week, threatening to kill him if Hamas sent gunmen to free the reporter.
The group, which has demanded the release of al Qaeda-associated clerics, was also responsible in part for the capture of Israeli Cpl. Gilad Shalit more than one year ago.
Shalit, now 20, is presumed to be still alive and in captivity.
The Army of Islam, and by extension the Doghmush clan, have become increasingly at odds with Hamas.
According to the Guardian newspaper, another militant group, called the Popular Resistance Committees, may have helped secure Johnston's release by negotiating with a member of the clan.
With files from The Associated Press
