Last Man Standing is not for the faint hearted
The fate of ISIS hostage John Cantlie is investigated in a confronting new series from The Times called Last Man Standing. Brace yourself.
ISIS released a video in 2014 showing the beheading of American journalist James Foley.
He went missing in late 2012 with fellow journalist John Cantlie.
What happened to Cantlie is investigated in a new podcast from The Times called Last Man Standing.
The podcast is the work of The Times’ war correspondent Anthony Loyd and is co-hosted by journalist Manveen Rana.
Loyd and Cantlie were part of the small group of journalists who covered northern Syria at the peak of ISIS’s cruelty when men, women and children were butchered.
The series relies on Rana interviewing Loyd as a source of information, presumably because the actual sources are missing or in fear for their lives.
The podcast suffers from a lack of interviews, although the material is incredible and confronting, and the narration sounds forced.
Listeners hear what it’s like to work as a western journalist amid an unfolding humanitarian crisis, waiting for the moment when locals and contacts invariably turn on you.
“Every day I worked there it felt like walking on a kind of ice flow – you could hear it begin to crack,” says Loyd.
Just before Cantlie disappears, he and a cameraman are taken hostage.
Before they are taken hostage, the two men are shot at with Kalashnikovs. The cameraman is hit in the head but is somehow still able to run barefoot from jihadis.
They’re captured. Flies gather at their infected wounds. After about seven days they’re liberated by Syrian rebels.
Cantlie returns to the UK but then goes back to Syria, pulled by the drive to keep going.
Rana tries to explain the drive to listeners. “You don’t want the fear to set in,” she says. “Back on the horse or something like that. You’ve got to keep going … And you’re still doing your job as opposed to ‘I got kidnapped and that was it’.”
Cantlie was last seen at a restaurant on the Turkish border before he crossed the border.
Review doesn’t recommend for the faint hearted.
Listen to Last Man Standing on your favourite podcast app.
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