According to NYtimes,
A British hostage of the Islamic State has been shown in a video. The video showing Mr. Cantlie, a British photojournalist who was abducted over two years ago, was released late Monday. In it, he says, “Now the battle for Kobani is coming to an end.”The images could not immediately be verified, and it was not clear when the video was made. The British Foreign Office said it was “analyzing its contents.”
“Hello, I’m John Cantlie,” the hostage says, dressed in black, “and today we are in the city of Kobani on the Syrian-Turkish border. That is, in fact, Turkey right behind me.Two hundred thousand inhabitants of the city have been displaced because of the fighting that came here,” he adds. “You can see the refugee camps over my right shoulder over there in Turkey, where the inhabitants now are. But contrary to media reports, the fighting in Kobani is nearly over.Urban warfare is as about as nasty and tough as it gets, and it’s something of a specialty of the mujahedeen,” he says.
His appearances have been in contrast to the horrific images of four other hostages — two American and two British — who appear to have been beheaded while kneeling in a bare landscape, clad in orange and explaining their plight as a consequence of Western actions against the militants.