Senior Japanese officials have met to discuss a video purporting to show Kenji Goto, a Japanese captive of Islamic State militants, warning that he and a Jordanian pilot being held with him had 24 hours to live unless Jordan released a would-be suicide bomber.
The video has yet to be verified as authentic. It claims to feature Goto, 47, a journalist who has been held hostage by Isis since late October, saying that unless Jordan frees Sajida al-Rishawi from death row, he and the pilot will be killed.
Three days ago Goto was heard in another audio clip announcing that his friend Haruna Yukawa, 42, had been beheaded after Isis’s 72-hour deadline for Japan to make a $200m payment expired.
The new 1m 50s clip is accompanied by a photo of Goto holding what appears to be a Photoshopped image of the Jordanian pilot, Muadh al-Kasasbeh, whom Isis have been holding since his aircraft crashed during a US-led bombing raid over eastern Syria in late December.
The man in the clip says: “She [Rishawi] has been a prisoner for a decade and I’ve only been a prisoner for a few months. Her for me, a straight exchange.”
The Japanese government spokesman Yoshihide Suga said he had seen the video, but did not comment on its authenticity.
“In this extremely tough situation, we are continuing as before to request the cooperation of the Jordanian government to work toward the immediate release of Mr Goto,” Suga said.
A report by Kyodo news agency had earlier raised hopes that Goto may be set free. Interviewing two members of the Jordanian parliament, the agency reported that despite opposition from the US, Jordan could release Rishawi in return for Goto and Kaseasbeh.
Japan’s envoy in the region, the deputy foreign minister Yasuhide Nakayama, gave further cause for guarded optimism when he said he hoped the pair would return home “with a smile on their faces”.
Rishawi is an Iraqi who is on death row in Jordan for her involvement in a 2005 suicide bombing that killed 60 people.
Tokyo has refused to give details of continuing discussions with Jordanian authorities, with the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, repeating his refusal to bow to demands from terrorists.
Abe, who has publicly allied Japan with the campaign against Isis, is under mounting pressure to secure the release of Goto following Yukawa’s execution.
In what could be a decisive development, Kyodo quoted Bassam al-Manaseer, who chairs the Jordanian parliament’s Arab and international affairs committee, and Ali Bani Ata, chair of the Japan-Jordan parliamentary friendship league, as saying Jordan “may comply” with Isis’s demand for Rishawi’s release.
The officials said Jordan had been in contact with Isis through a third party, according to the news agency’s report from the capital, Amman.
Manaseer said it was highly unlikely that Jordan would release Rishawi in return for Goto alone, since that would leave the Jordanian hostage in Isis’s hands with the swap already complete, Kyodo said.
Jordan’s King Abdullah was quoted as telling a Jordanian newspaper that the case of the pilot “tops the country’s priorities”.
Any deal between Jordan and Isis would anger the US, which opposes prisoner swaps and paying ransoms to terrorist groups. Jen Psaki, a US state department spokeswoman, told journalists in Washington that trading captives belonged “in the same category” as paying ransoms.
She said last year’s release of five Taliban commanders in return for the captive US army sergeant Bowe Bergdahl was “entirely different” since Bergdahl was being held as a prisoner of war.
