Kiwi backs call for 'spy mission' inquiry

Daphne Halkyard and others served as

A Warkworth woman seized in Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait backs calls for an inquiry into claims her British Airways flight was used for a secret military operation.

Daphne Halkyard and her late husband Henry were among those held as "human shields" at suspected weapons development sites for 84 days after they and 365 other passengers and crew of BA Flight 149 were captured by Iraqi troops early on August 2, 1990.

They were heading home to New Zealand from visiting family in Britain, and heard only when checking in at Heathrow Airport that they were to stop at Kuwait for refuelling en route to Malaysia - advice Mrs Halkyard says alarmed passengers concerned about the build-up of Iraqi troops on Kuwait's border.

Although British Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major denied responsibility for allowing the flight to land there several hours after the border was in fact breached, a new book about to be published claims the civilian flight was used to drop as many as nine undercover agents into the danger zone.

Former Herald editor Stephen Davis, who will also detail his findings in a BBC documentary, says he has evidence from witnesses, including an organiser of a secret mission charged with gaining intelligence on the movements of Saddam Hussein's troops.

The claims are renewing pressure on the British Government to publish a classified military police report on the ordeal of the Halkyards and their fellow passengers, including three other New Zealanders.

Those three were detained but not held as human shields, a circumstance Mrs Halkyard attributes to the fact they were travelling on New Zealand passports.

She and her husband, who immigrated to New Zealand about 40 years ago, held dual citizenship but were carrying only British passports.

Crew and passengers joined Mr Davis at a press conference last week at Britain's House of Commons, in which they described how about nine men boarded the aircraft as it was delayed on the tarmac at Heathrow for two hours, allegedly because of an air-conditioning fault.

The group was seen disappearing off the aircraft immediately after it arrived in Kuwait, unlike the other passengers, who waited on board until they heard explosions and were ordered by the captain to flee to the airport terminal.

Although Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker has written to British Prime Minister Tony Blair asking him to meet a delegation of passengers and crew over their demand for an inquiry, the Foreign Office has said it is unprepared to discuss intelligence matters.

Mrs Halkyard told the Herald yesterday that she had heard rumours the flight was used as cover for some sort of secret operation, but had seen nothing herself. She hoped the new revelations would puncture what had been "a conspiracy of silence".

She also said proper compensation should be paid for the trauma she believed many passengers and their families were still suffering.

Although 61 French passengers won compensation of about £50,000 ($141,000) each from British Airways, and undisclosed payouts have been made to some Americans held as human shields, Mrs Halkyard and others got only token sums under a United Nations settlement.

That amounted to US$2500 ($3745) each and US$100 ($150) for every day spent in captivity.

Among those at the London press conference were a brother and sister who were teenagers at the time of being seized, an event which they said ended their childhood.

The brother, John Chappell, now 30, said he watched someone being shot dead and feared he was going to be executed when he and other hostages were driven into a desert.

Mrs Halkyard said she and her husband were not treated badly, but each day was an ordeal, especially when they were held at what she believed at the time was a biological or chemical weapons plant but could have been a nuclear facility.