On video, British hostage faults Blair
LONDON -- A videotape broadcast yesterday showed a British hostage in Iraq shackled in a cage and wearing an orange jumpsuit, pleading with Prime Minister Tony Blair to help save his life and accusing him of not doing enough to secure his freedom.
"Tony Blair is lying. He doesn't care about me," said Kenneth Bigley, a 62-year-old engineer who is sobbing and distraught in the video, first aired on the Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera.
The undated videotape was the second of Bigley since he was kidnapped Sept. 16 in Baghdad along with two American coworkers, both of whom were beheaded within a week by a hard-line Islamic militant group called Tawhid and Jihad.
The distressing images of Bigley have gripped Britain and added to the heavy political burden Blair has faced over his support for the war. Many in his own Labor Party and the vast majority of the British public opposed the nation's entry into the conflict.
On Tuesday, at the party's conference in Brighton, Blair sought to restore trust in the government and heal the bitter divisions. The hostage issue has made it harder for him to move forward.
The prime minister has repeatedly said Britain would not negotiate with hostage takers, and that to do so would be to surrender to terrorism. But the pressure on him intensified Tuesday after insurgents freed two Italian women who were kidnapped from the Baghdad office of their aid agency and held for three weeks. A leading figure in Italy's ruling coalition spoke openly of a $1 million ransom paid to win their release.
In the footage of Bigley, rebroadcast in an edited form on British television news channels yesterday, he called on Blair to meet the demands of his kidnappers to free female prisoners in Iraq. He also said his captors did not want to kill him.
"I am begging you for my life," Bigley said. "Have some compassion, please."
Attending the party conference in Brighton, Blair was bombarded by reporters' questions about the new video.
"I feel absolutely sickened by what has happened. I feel desperately sorry not only for Ken Bigley but the whole of his family," he said.
"We are doing everything we possibly can," he said, adding that the hostage takers had "made no attempt to contact" the British government. "And we have no way of contacting them.
"If they did make contact we would immediately respond to them," he said.
The press office at 10 Downing Street moved quickly to dispel any notion that Blair had implied that the government was willing to negotiate with the captors.
Bigley's family responded to the chilling images with a renewed appeal for his release, a statement that began by thanking his captors for giving them the chance to see him alive again.
"My dad, Ken Bigley, is an elderly man who is only a few weeks from retirement -- and from becoming a grandfather for the first time," his son, Craig Bigley, said, reading from the statement.
"We, as a family, feel that the ultimate decision to release him rests with you, the people who are holding him. We once again ask you, please show mercy to my father and release him."
The family also emphasized the strain the ordeal was placing on Ken Bigley's elderly mother, Lil, who has been hospitalized for stress.
Italians, meanwhile, celebrated the return to Rome of the two aid workers. Foreign Minister Franco Frattini of Italy has said no money exchanged hands in return for their freedom. But Gustavo Selva, head of the Italian parliament's foreign affairs committee, said the denial was purely "official."
Selva, a member of the Northern League, a party in Italy's governing coalition, told French radio: "The young women's life was the most important thing. In principle, one should not give in to blackmail, but this time I think we had to give in -- even though this opens a dangerous path because it is obvious that both for political or criminal reasons, this path can make others want to take others hostage to make some money."
Scores of people have been kidnapped in Iraq, including Turks, Egyptians, other Americans, and most commonly, wealthy Iraqis who have been held for ransom. About 30 foreigners, including several from Arab countries, are still being held as are an undetermined number of Iraqis.
The group that is holding Bigley is purportedly inspired by Al Qaeda and believed to be headed by the Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Specialists in the psychology of hostage taking say that Bigley's orange jumpsuit and the crude cage in which he is being held are intended to evoke comparisons with detainees in the US prison for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- an image that is instantly recognizable throughout the Arab world.
The former Anglican envoy Terry Waite, who was held hostage in Lebanon for nearly five years, from 1987 to 1991, has visited the Bigley family and said in an interview with the BBC, "What I see is this poor man around whom the most complex, diplomatic game is being played."
Waite said the orange jumpsuit and cage were intended by the kidnappers to send a message that "this massive American military machine is torturing and killing what they believe are innocent people.
"They are saying they can also capture innocent people. They are saying, 'You can apply pressure and we can apply pressure,' " he said.
