The government did not dispatch additional personnel to the embassy in Jordan until the first video showing two Japanese held at knife-point appeared two weeks ago, even though Tokyo knew the pair had been taken captive much earlier, Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said Tuesday.
Speaking to the Upper House Budget Committee, Kishida said the Foreign Ministry began dispatching additional Arab-world and Arabic-language experts from the ministry and other embassies and consulates from Jan. 20, the date when the video appeared online showing Kenji Goto and Haruna Yukawa wearing orange jumpsuits and kneeling in the presence of a masked captor.
From that time onward, a crisis center in Amman had about 10 additional Arabic experts at any one time, although the number fluctuated and even reached more than 30, he said.