The Islamic State released a new propaganda video Tuesday featuring captured British journalist John Cantlie in the ISIS-controlled city of Mosul, Iraq.
The three-minute video features 45-year-old Cantlie standing in front of the decimated remains of Mosul University, which was bombed by U.S. forces after military intelligence reported the building was being used by ISIS for its headquarters.
The video, released by the terror group’s media arm, the Amaq news agency, is the twelfth release featuring Cantlie, who was kidnapped in 2012 alongside the late American journalist James Foley in Syria.
"Mosul University was the finest and biggest university in all of Iraq. Now if it was a military hub or if it was a weapons cache or if it was being used as a training ground by the mujahideen, perhaps you could understand," Cantile said, facing the camera. "But it was simply Mosul’s and in fact Iraq’s finest university, now reduced to a huge pile of rubble."
The final scenes of the video show Cantlie in Mosul’s central business district while residents ostensibly shop for Eid al-Fiter, the celebration at the end of Ramadan. The Washington Post noted that the timing could raise hopes that Cantlie is still alive.
Cantlie worked for the U.K.-based Daily Telegraph before his capture.
ISIS captured Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, in June 2014. The U.S. military is collaborating with Iraqi forces to ready an offense aimed at retaking the city after a series of recent advances by the international coalition against ISIS. Mosul serves as the jihadist group’s de facto capital inside Iraq.