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“So this is not just suspicion, this is intent and that’s why the police and security agencies decided to act in the way they have.”

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The raids reportedly followed intercepted phone calls in which the arrested men discussed kidnapping strangers from public streets, beheading them and posting a film of the executions on social media.

The plot was likened to the murder of British soldier Lee Rigby, who was hacked to death on a street in London last year by two Muslim converts.

The arrests came as ISIS seemed to be trying a different tactic, with the release of a video featuring British journalist John Cantlie.

In a slick, three-minute video shot with three cameras, the photojournalist said he came to Syria in November 2012 when he was captured by ISIS

Entitled Lend Me Your Ears, it is previewed as the first in a series of lecture-like “programs” in which Mr. Cantlie says he will reveal “the truth” about ISIS.

Wearing an orange T-shirt and sitting behind a desk, he criticized the war on the group, and said he and other British and U.S. hostages have been abandoned by their governments. His name has not been mentioned among foreign hostages held by ISIS.

The language is that of the anti-war movement: the media is trying “to drag the public back to the abyss of another war.”

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Like many complaints raised in recent years, Mr. Cantlie, or his ISIS scriptwriter, says the “Western media” can “twist and manipulate that truth.”

“There are two sides to every story,” he says. “Think you’re getting the whole picture?”