Tape: Brit Hostage Plea To Blair
A weeping British hostage was shown pleading for help between the bars of a makeshift cage in a video that surfaced Wednesday, a sobering reminder of the grim reality for at least 18 foreign captives still held by Iraqi militants.
There is wide speculation that ransoms were paid for the freedom of a dozen other hostages, including two Italian aid workers.
The footage, which first aired on Arab news network Al-Jazeerah and was later posted on the Internet, showed Kenneth Bigley begging British Prime Minister Tony Blair to meet his captors' demands.
"Tony Blaire, I am begging you for my life," Bigley said between sobs. "Have some compassion. Only you can help me now."
He accused Blair of lying about efforts to secure his release, saying no negotiations were taking place.
"My life is cheap. He doesn't care about me. I am just one person" Bigley said. "I want to go home. Please, Mr. Blair don't leave me here."
It was the second tape in a week to surface showing Bigley appealing for help. Iraq's most feared terror group, Tawhid and Jihad, has beheaded two American hostages seized with Bigley and warned that he will be the next to die unless Iraqi women prisoners are freed.
Gruesome videotapes of the killings were posted on the Internet, and the men's decapitated bodies were found in Baghdad — not far from the upscale neighborhood where they were seized from their house in a daring Sept. 16 raid.
In the latest tape, Bigley sat hunched on the floor of a cage, his hands and legs in chains. He was dressed in an orange jumpsuit, similar to the ones worn by Americans Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley when they were slain. Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi beheaded Armstrong himself.
In other recent developments:
There have been conflicting, unsubstantiated reports of Bigley's fate. A spokesman for the British Foreign Office said the tape's release was "positive to the extent that it does appear to prove, as we'd hoped, that Ken is alive."
"It's undated, so that's not 100 percent," the spokesman added on customary condition of anonymity.
Blair's office at No. 10 Downing St. declined to comment on the tape. "It goes without saying that we are in contact with the family," a spokeswoman said.
Earlier, Blair said his government was trying to contact Bigley's kidnappers.
"The difficulty is that ...these are outside people, they are not Iraqis," Blair told Britain's ITV television. "We are trying to make contact with them and we are doing everything we possibly can."
Bigley's brother, Paul, told the British Broadcasting Corp. that the images of his brother chained and caged were "absolutely appalling, there's no other word for it, heart wrenching." But he said he was pleased to see his brother still alive.
"That's the good news I see through the smoke," he said. "This is a last ditch attempt, something has to be done and something has to be done very quickly."
More than 140 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq and at least 26 have been killed. Some, like Bigley, were seized by insurgents as leverage in their campaign against the United States and its allies. But others were taken by criminals seeking ransom.
"This kind of thing creates a broader contagion for people suffering for other reasons under the occupation," said Jonathan Stevenson, senior fellow for counterterrorism with the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Washington. "They get the idea that they can earn some extra cash by kidnapping people."
Stevenson said al-Zarqawi and his followers probably realize they can't drive the United States and Britain out of Iraq. But they hope that by taking Western hostages and beheading some of them, they can force the countries to take actions they wouldn't otherwise consider — such as releasing a few insignificant Iraqi prisoners — allowing them to declare victory against "the infidels."
The back-to-back releases this week of the two Italian aid workers and four Egyptian communications engineers raised questions about whether a ransom was paid to win their freedom.
Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi brushed off the questions, telling La Stampa newspaper: "About this business, we won't say anything. Even more, we won't talk about it any more."
Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini told state-run radio Wednesday that "no ransom at all" was paid.
But an Italian lawmaker said he believed the Italian government paid US$1 million for the women's release Tuesday as reported by a Kuwaiti newspaper.
"The government has denied it, but that's an official denial that comes in the context of the obligations of a government in order not to give the impression that it gave in to the ransom," Gustavo Selva, head of the Foreign Affairs committee, told French radio station RTL.
Simona Torretta and Simona Pari, both 29, work for the aid group "Un Ponte per..." (A bridge to ...), which carries out water projects and helps Iraqi children. They were kidnapped Sept. 7 from their agency's Baghdad office. Two Iraqis seized with them were also freed.
Orascom, parent company of the four Egyptians abducted last week, refused to say whether a ransom was paid for their release Monday and Tuesday or that of four Iraqis captured with them. Two other Egyptian engineers remain hostage.
The releases raised hopes among some for the fate of other hostages, including two French journalists captured with their Syrian driver Aug. 20. But analysts cautioned that with so many different groups involved in the kidnappings, it was too soon for optimism.
It is possible that the surge of condemnation throughout the Middle East of the beheadings may have had an effect of al-Zarqawi and other militants, said Dia'a Rashwan, a Cairo-based expert on Islamic militants whose book the "Electronic War" is to be published soon. But he said "kidnapping will go on. It has proven to be an efficient weapon."
A French lawmaker said Wednesday that a man believed to be an unofficial French negotiator, Philippe Brett, had met with the journalists and secured a promise for their release.
"Unfortunately, we have a problem of securing the exit of the French," Didier Julia said on LCI television.
He said the United States had secured a corridor that allowed the liberation of the two Italian hostages, and said the same needed to be done to free Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot.
In Baghdad, a U.S. military spokesman said he did not immediately know if the United States had assisted with a corridor. A U.S. Embassy spokesman declined to comment.
Brett has worked in Iraq for years — including when the country was under U.N. sanctions — mainly through the French Office for Development of Industry and Culture, which he helped found.
His claims could not be independently verified. Julia, who has worked with Brett for years, vouched for him as a "man incapable of inventing the least information."
But a Western official in Baghdad cast doubt on his claims, describing Brett as the latest in a line of independent operators hoping to claim a reward for helping to secure the journalists' release.
"Take everything he says with a great deal of caution," the official said on condition of anonymity.
Despite persistent violence, the United States and Iraqi forces say they are inflicting a heavy toll on insurgents blamed for an upsurge of kidnappings, bombings and other attacks this month.
Iraqi security forces backed by U.S. troops arrested a suspected terrorist operating on Baghdad's bloodied Haifa Street, cornering the panicked man in a closet as he tried to conceal his face with his wife's underwear, an Iraqi National Guard commander said.
Kadhim al-Dafan is believed to be a key neighborhood leader, responsible for car bombs and other attacks in the area, an insurgent enclave, said Col. Mohammed Abdullah. Five other suspected insurgents were also taken into custody as U.S. and Iraqi forces clashed with rebels on the street.