Anthony Loyd and Jack Hill at the home of Hakim Abu Jamal before they were kidnapped in 2014

It was with some surprise watching a video of a victorious band of western-backed rebels that I noticed the face of America’s newest ally in the war against Isis in Syria.

It was the face of a man I last saw in May 2014 when he leant forward to shoot me twice in the left ankle at almost point-blank range while my hands were tied. It was punishment for having attempted to escape his gang of kidnappers in northern Syria who had hoped to sell me on.

He shot me in the middle of a crowd of onlookers, after a savage preliminary beating, denouncing me as “a CIA spy”. Now, it seems, he works with them.

Hakim Abu Jamal is now part of a CIA-backed Syrian rebel group <DIV XMLNS="HTTP://WWW.W3.ORG/1999/XHTML"/>

The grainy footage of the video — posted last