John Cantlie

John Henry Cantlie is the great-grandson of Sir James Cantlie, a doctor who co-founded the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese in 1887 (later the University of Hong Kong).

In 1896, he was instrumental in the protection of the Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen who might otherwise have been executed by the Qing dynasty secret service.

John Henry Cantlie (born 7 November 1970) was a British war photographer and correspondent last seen alive in 2016 when he was held hostage by Islamic State.

His grandfather, Colonel Kenneth Cantlie, designed the China Railways KF locomotive, at 260 tons the largest locomotive of post-war China that remained in service until 1972.

Cantlie started his journalistic career in the early 1990s as a tester for Sega video games.

Cantlie was abducted by IS in Syria along with the later executed American journalist James Foley in November 2012.

Previously, he had been kidnapped in Syria alongside Dutch photographer Jeroen Oerlemans in July 2012, but was rescued a week later.

Cantlie was reportedly kidnapped by fighters while crossing illegally into Syria from Turkey on 19 July 2012, near Bab al-Hawa.

Along with Dutch photographer Jeroen Oerlemans, Cantlie was shot whilst trying to escape their captors.

In an interview with The Sun newspaper on 26 August 2012, Cantlie said it was "every Englishman's duty to try and escape if captured."

In an account in The Sunday Times on 5 August 2012, Cantlie described his experience.

Oerlemans was shot in the left leg and Cantlie in the left arm during their escape attempt, Cantlie suffering ulnar nerve entrapment (loss of feeling and use of the hand) as a result.

In an account of the shooting, Cantlie said some of the British Muslims in the group repeatedly shouted, "die, kafir!".

Oerlemans then stated that "the British guys were the most vindictive of them all".

They were taken back to the camp where a fighter who claimed to be an NHS doctor stabilised them and treated their wounds.

The pair were threatened with execution.

Oerlemans stated that it was unclear who held them, but the group of militants were of multiple ethnicities.

On 26 July 2012, one week after being kidnapped, they were rescued by four members of the Free Syrian Army.

The rebels came into the camp shooting their weapons and held at least one jihadist fighter at gunpoint while Cantlie and Oerlemans were helped into a waiting vehicle.

Both photographers had to be assisted as their feet had been seriously injured when they tried to escape and neither could walk.

They had lost all their camera equipment, passports and clothes in the incident, and were smuggled back across the border at a crossing used primarily by Syrian refugees.

Both photographers claimed they were about to be handed over to a jihad unit affiliated with al-Qaeda for ransom when they were rescued.

They were initially treated by a medic for The New York Times in Antakya before being debriefed by Turkish and then British intelligence.

On 9 October 2012, an individual suspected of being involved in the kidnap was arrested at Heathrow Airport, after arriving on a flight from Egypt.

This was Cantlie's second visit to Syria.

In March 2012, he became the first Western photographer to witness first-hand an incursion by government ground troops into a city when T-72 tanks rolled into the city of Saraqib in Idlib province and started shelling indiscriminately.

In a feature in The Sunday Telegraph published 31 March, Cantlie wrote: "Then the tanks opened fire. Fist-sized pieces of shrapnel sliced through the air, decapitating one rebel immediately. His rifle clattered to the ground as his friends dragged his headless torso from the line of fire."

To illustrate what the Syrian rebels were up against, Cantlie took a photograph looking down the barrel of an advancing T-72.

Cantlie has been missing since late 2012, and the trial of one of his alleged captors collapsed in 2013, when he could not be summoned as a witness.

Between 2014 and 2016, while held in IS captivity, Cantlie repeatedly appeared narrating a series of their propaganda videos from Syria and Iraq.

Cantlie's father Paul died on 16 October 2014, having released a video pleading for his son's release on his deathbed.

In September 2014, it was revealed Cantlie had been abducted a second time, along with American journalist James Foley.

Their taxi driver and Foley's translator were not taken, however.

They had reportedly been working together on a film about Cantlie's first abduction.

Foley was beheaded by Islamic State in August 2014.

After disappearing for almost two years following his second abduction in late 2012, Cantlie resurfaced on 18 September 2014 in a video posted by IS in the first episode of a multi-part series entitled Lend Me Your Ears.

As of February 2015, IS has released a total of six videos in the Lend Me Your Ears series, all of which featured Cantlie speaking while sitting at a wooden table and wearing orange prison garb (a typical costume of IS hostages in their execution videos) against a black backdrop.

In 2017, reports surfaced in Iraqi media claiming Cantlie had been killed by an airstrike in Mosul.

There were also rumors and reports in 2017 and 2019 that he is still alive.

In 2022, Cantlie's family accepted that he is dead.