UK hostage video pressures Blair, relieves family

1.00pm

DUBAI/LONDON - A British hostage in Iraq made an impassioned plea to Prime Minister Tony Blair to help free him in a videotape aired on Wednesday that left relatives relieved to see him alive but appalled at his caged conditions.

Chained, squatting behind metal meshing and looking distraught, Kenneth Bigley accused Blair of lying over the hostage crisis and urged the prime minister to meet his captors' demands to release Iraqi women from jail.

"Tony Blair is lying, he is lying when he said he's negotiated. He has not negotiated. My life is cheap. He doesn't care about me," Bigley said in the tape broadcast by Arabic television station Al Jazeera.

"Tony Blair, I am begging you for my life, I am begging you for my life. Have some compassion please," said Bigley, his voice cracking under the strain.

He said his captors did not want to kill him.

"They could have killed (me) a week, two, three weeks ago -- whatever," said Bigley dressed in an orange jumpsuit of the kind associated with Muslims held by US troops at Guantanamo Bay.

"All they want is their sisters out of prison..."

The fresh pressure on Blair, who says he is doing "all we can" while refusing to negotiate, came just as he sought to move past the Iraq war that has dogged him for 18 months and focus on domestic policy at this week's conference of his Labour Party.

Bigley's family responded to the hostage's appearance with a televised appeal in which they thanked 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.

"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."

British foreign minister Jack Straw told reporters the new video was a mixed blessing.

"The conditions in which Mr Bigley is being held are obviously of great concern but it will have come as great relief to the family as it is to me and indeed to everybody else to know that at least Mr Bigley is alive," Straw said.

Bigley had last appeared in a videotape on September 22, shortly after the al Qaeda-linked group holding him had beheaded two American colleagues kidnapped with him.

Wednesday's Al Jazeera tape showed the 62-year-old engineer with a chain around his neck and binding his hands and feet.

"It's absolutely appalling. There's no other word for it -- heart-wrenching. This is the age of technology doing its best, isn't it," Bigley's brother Paul told BBC TV.

A black banner bearing the name of his captors, the Tawhid wal-Jihad Group, hung on the wall above the cage in the new film. No militants appeared in the clips.

The group, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has said Bigley will meet the same fate as the Americans if its demands are not met, but have set no deadline.

London and Washington have said they will not negotiate. The United States says it holds only two women in Iraq, both top weapons scientists from the days of Saddam Hussein. The British say they are not holding any women.

At least two other Western hostages -- French journalists -- are still held in Iraq. Two Italian women were released on Tuesday. Some 30 foreign hostages are thought to have been killed in Iraq since a wave of kidnappings started in April.

Brother Paul Bigley told Sky TV the family would not show the latest video to Kenneth Bigley's mother for fear of upsetting her. Lily Bigley, 86, is in hospital being treated for stress related to the ordeal.

Paul Bigley said Blair should resign, a move he said would end the crisis. "I think if he leaves office, Ken'll be home tomorrow on a plane," he said.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq