Jerusalem - Hamas leader Ismail Haniya had a reason to smile when he sat next to British journalist Alan Johnston addressing an impromptu news conference at his Gaza City home shortly after dawn Wednesday. The dismissed prime minister proudly placed a scarf in the colours of the Palestinian flag on the BBC correspondent's shoulders shortly after Johnston's release from nearly four months of captivity in Gaza by a militant group calling itself the Army of Islam.
Haniya's Hamas movement has secured Johnston's release in little more than two weeks since its seized full control of the Gaza Strip.
It succeeded in doing what the security forces of President Mahmoud Abbas and the unity government which Hamas shared with Abbas' Fatah party had failed to achieve in the three months that it ruled over the Palestinian autonomous areas prior to Hamas' take-over.
Since the Gaza take-over, in which Hamas militants and its Executive Force overpowered all of Abbas' Fatah-dominated security headquarters, Hamas has been eager to prove that unlike Fatah, it would be able to impose law and order in the volatile coastal salient.
It has also been eager to show the West that it respects human rights and to Gaza's 1.5 million inhabitants that it would bring calm and stability back to the strip's violent streets.
Its first tactic was to threaten to storm the area in Gaza City's southern Sabra neighbourhood where the Dughmush clan, which leads the Army of Islam, lives and where it was believed to have kept Johnston.
But after Johnston appeared last week in a video wearing a bomb vest which his captors threatened to blow up, it decided to resort to a combination of intense pressure and negotiations.
Hamas besieged the Sabra neighbourhood, placed snipers on rooftops and set up roadblocks, while also cutting off water and electricity to the area of the Dughmush clan.
At the same time, Hamas officials and commanders engaged in what Haniya called a "deep dialogue" with the hostage-takers.
Hamas said it secured Johnston's release with "no conditions" and Haniya would give no details of the deal it reached with the Army of Islam.
But observers said they believed the group had agreed to hand over Johnston in return for guarantees that its members would not be harmed or prosecuted.
By late Wednesday afternoon, more than 12 hours after his release, none of the hostage-takers had been arrested.
Johnston was snatched at gunpoint near his Gaza City office on March 12.
It took until May for the first news about him to be released, when the Army of Islam claimed responsibility.
The only time the group's name had been heard before was after the capture in June 2006 of Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit in a cross- border raid from Gaza led by Hamas but aided by two other groups, one of which was the Army of Islam.
It is still unclear whether the Army of Islam is a real militant group linked to al-Qaeda but led by the Dughmush clan, or just a name given by the clan leaders to its militants who were behind the capture of both Johnston and Shalit.
What is known is that the clan was initially close to Hamas, evident also in its cooperation with it in the capture of Shalit.
But it later had a fall-out with Hamas when its members killed two senior Hamas activists during the Gaza infighting earlier this year.
Initially the clan had demanded money - several million US dollars - in return for Johnston, but later it added the release of Abu Qatada, a Palestinian-born militant with links to al-Qaeda held in a British jail, to its demands.
This demand however has not been met and many Gazans have said they believe the captors were using him as an excuse to hold on to Johnston as a "life insurance" against Hamas.
Hamas made a smart tactical move when it had a leading Hamas cleric in Gaza, Sheikh Suleiman al-Daya, issue a "fatwa," or religious ruling, demanding Johnston be freed, which provided the Army of Islam with a face-saving pretext to climb down its tree without seeing all its demands met.
"This was never about Abu Qatada," said one Gaza resident who preferred not to be named. "It was all like a big theatre show."
