Free Alan Johnston

As most readers of this website will know, the BBC is very concerned for the safety of our correspondent Alan Johnston who was abducted in Gaza on 12 March.

More than 35,000 people have signed a petition calling on anyone who has any influence on the situation to increase their efforts to secure Alan’s immediate release.

Today we are adding this button to BBC News blogs. We are inviting anyone who runs a blog or website to do the same to show support for Alan. It’s a simple but, we hope, effective way of spreading the message.

To add the button to your blog, just copy and paste the code below into your blog’s HTML. You could add it to an individual blog post, or, even better, to your blog’s sidebar.

<a href=”http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/world/2007/alan_johnston/default.stm”><img alt=”Alan Johnston banner” src=”http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/alan_johnston.gif” width=”150″ height=”90″></a>

Using the code above, the image will link to a page on the BBC News website which has more information about Alan’s situation and gives any of your blog’s readers the chance to add their names to the petition.

Thank you for your help, it’s much appreciated.

If you do publish this link on your blog or website, feel free to post a comment here to let us know.

Jon Williams is the BBC’s world news editor