Terry Waite spent time as a hostage himself

Terry Waite, who has been a successful hostage negotiator and was held hostage himself in Lebanon for more than four years said Mr Johnston appeared to be holding up well.

"Being a captive is a stressful situation, but when I saw him on the video I thought he was bearing up remarkably well. He spoke clearly, apart from some faltering at the end, and he'll be, of course, into the situation now where he recognises that he could be in for a reasonable length of time.

But what he'll find is he'll have resources within himself - he has resources within himself - which he can call on which he really didn't know he had when he started this ordeal."

"It genuinely is not in the interests of the Palestinian people to hold people such as Alan.

"Alan is absolutely vital in that situation, along with other reporters, to get the accurate news out about a situation that has gone on for far too long.

A video has been released which shows Alan Johnston

Now the Palestinians who are holding him, are people - they have families themselves.

"We've got to win their hearts and minds - and they could help win ours also, by releasing Alan - which I hope they will do promptly and soon."

Norman Kember was in Iraq as part of Canadian-based international peace group Christian Peacemaker Teams.

He was taken hostage in November 2005 with three other men and held for 117 days.

He said that the orange suits he was made to wear for the videos which were released by his captors were only put

on for the filming.

"What is interesting is that two videos were made of me in orange suits. They were only put on for the purposes of the video.

"I think the idea was to show the parallel to Guantanamo Bay and put the maximum stress on the government and relatives.

It requires an enormous amount of character to prevent yourself from actually flipping into madness Robin Plummer

"I think they showed us in handcuffs and blindfolded although that was not the conditions under which we were normally held.

"At one stage they wanted to ruffle my hair to make me look more desperate but I said 'No, I'm a human being' and they accepted that.

"I think they wanted to put the maximum strain on us by making those videos."

Mr Kember said that he was not physically abused during his time as a hostage.

"We were under fed but apart from that, we were not ill treated.

"When I talked on video, I only said things I personally held because I was and continue to be against the war in Iraq, so nobody forced me to say anything.

"My family actually shielded my wife from seeing any videos of me. They would not let her watch them because it was too distressing.

"I can only guess what effect they would have on Alan Johnston's relatives."

Armed abduction

Gary Teeley was held hostage for seven days in Iraq in 2004 while working as a civilian contractor.

"I was working in the city of Nasiriyah, I was staying in a villa in the city and doing my work upon the military base," he said.

"Approximately six or seven [men] came into the house, obviously fully armed, took me by force from the house, led me outside whereupon [there was] between 50 to 60 of them, a small army.

"To the best of my knowledge it's always been quoted as the Mehdi Army that took me, and I was then held for seven days."

Mr Teeley described his abduction as being very difficult to cope with.

"From the moment of being taken it's just a complete ordeal, it's something you just can't really prepare yourself for.

"Every minute of the day, for me anyway, I was just waiting for bad news at any stage, so it's quite terrible.

Norman Kember was taken hostage and filmed by his captors

"Someone like Alan's got immense bravery and courage with what he does for a living anyway and I'm sure he's used those assets to his true ability and that's why he's really stayed alive, I should think."

Robin Plummer was one of four hostages detained by Colonel Gadaffi's regime for nine months in 1984 after a diplomatic row broke out over Libyan nationals held in the UK on bomb charges.

Mr Plummer said Mr Johnston "looks in remarkably good shape for someone who's been in detention or captivity for over 10 weeks.

"He does look in good shape although you can hear the tension in his voice - not surprising."

Insanity fears

Mr Plummer said that sustaining oneself mentally through a sustained period of imprisonment was, for a hostage, "the most difficult thing of the lot".

He said: "Research has shown that, particularly when people are put into solitary confinement, they actually start to go insane within only three seconds of the door being slammed shut on them.

"It requires an enormous amount of character to prevent yourself from actually flipping into madness.

"Initially I considered keeping the dialogue with the captors open, but the guards were not interested in talking to me, they were just goons. Some of them were only 22-years-old or so.

Every minute of the day, for me anyway, I was just waiting for bad news at any stage, so it's quite terrible Gary Teeley

"Then they also had a couple of people from what you might regard as their own security service who tried to engage me in dialogue.

"Initially I started trying to get a dialogue going with them, but then it became clear that what they were trying to do was a form of interrogation."

These conversations, Mr Plummer said, eventually dried up.

"They were trying to find out what they could pin on me and it very, very soon became clear that anything I said to them had to be kept absolutely neutral and in the end I simply ceased to talk to them at all, because part of winning the psychological war with your guards is recognising right from the word go that you have to win.

"You cannot allow yourself to be beaten. And believe me, that is quite some challenge."