Al Arabiya’s veteran correspondent Baker Atyani who was kidnapped and held by Filipino Islamist rebels for 18 months vowed on Thursday to continue chasing the truth without fear.
“I was on a journalistic mission and I do not regret it. It was a tragic and a painful experience, but it gave me more strength and faith to deliver the truth to people,” Atyani said in a program aired on Al Arabiya News Channel Thursday.
Atyani, a Jordanian journalist who interviewed Osama bin Laden months before the Sept. 11 attacks, had travelled to Manila on June 5, 2012 to shoot two documentary films, including one on the living conditions of Muslims in the south of the Philippines.
After his kidnap he was held in the Sulu Islands in the Philippine province of Mindanao. On Dec. 4, 2013 Atyani became free after he managed escape from his captors.
