'Jihadi John made me dance the tango...

Photographer Daniel Rye Ottosen was held by the group for 13 months before being freed after his family paid a hefty ransom.

In a new interview, he now described how Jihadi John enjoyed humiliating his victims - and once forced him to dance the tango before threatening to cut off his nose with a pair of pliers.

Mr Ottosen told Danish broadcaster DR that Jihadi John - real name Mohammed Emwazi - and the three others militants known as The Beatles were the cruellest of all his captors.

He recalled Emwazi asking him: 'Do you want to dance?' before pulling him up and forcing him to dance, The Telegraph reported.

'I just looked at the ground because I didn't want to look at them – if you looked them in the eye you would just get beaten more.

'He led me around the prison and then suddenly it just changed and he threw me down and kicked and hit me. Then they ended by threatening to cut my nose off with side-cutting pliers.'

Mr Ottosen also recalled The Beatles stank, and the captives often smelt their presence before even seeing them.

He revealed he was kept in a cell in Aleppo immediately following his capture, where he was interrogated and tortured for two weeks as they tried to force him to admit being a CIA agent.

Mr Ottosen was kidnapped just three days after he went to Syria, where he planned to photograph the suffering of refugees from the civil war. 

It has also emerged that his captors first emailed his parents nine months after he was taken - asking for three questions only he would know the response to.

They stated that his responses would be proof for the family that he remained alive, DR reported.

Over the coming months, email correspondence continued. In once instance, his captors sent a close up photograph of a dead man shot through the face.

It was explained the man shared a cell with their son and he would meet the same fate should they not pay a ransom. 

After his release, Mr Ottosen telephoned fellow prisoner James Foley's mother, Diane, to pass on a letter that the despairing American had asked him to memorise during their time imprisoned together.

Mrs Foley visited Copenhagen to meet him. Just a week later, Mr Foley became the first hostage to be seen beheaded on camera.

Several months after his release in June 2014, Mr Ottosen's older sister Anita Rye Ottosen confirmed that a huge sum was paid for her brother's release when she launched a Facebook appeal to try and raise money for the financially struggling family.

She wrote: 'Daniel struggles every day - a struggle to make sense of the violent experiences and find his way back to normal life.

'Daniel's situation right now limits his ability to earn money, and he therefore hopes that anyone interested will be able to help him.'

Jihadi John savagely executed his four fellow hostages – US journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and the UK aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning – after the Obama and Cameron administrations told the families not to give in to a blitz of death threats.

(dailymail.co.uk)