'I will die like Mr Bigley'

2004-10-23 09:06

Doha - Kidnapped British aid worker Margaret Hassan begged Prime Minister Tony Blair in a video aired on Friday to save her life by scrapping the planned redeployment of British troops and pulling them out of Iraq.

"Please help me, please help me, these might be my last hours," a sobbing Hassan said on the tape broadcast by Qatar-based Al-Jazeera satellite television.

"Please the British people ask Mr Blair to take the troops out of Iraq and not to bring them here to Baghdad. That's why people like Mr Bigley and myself are being caught and maybe we will die. I will die like Mr Bigley," she said, referring to the British hostage executed in Iraq earlier this month.

Al-Jazeera, which initially had an Arabic voiceover, later aired the plea in the original English.

'Extremely distressing'

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the video of Hassan, the local director in Baghdad of the charity Care International, was "extremely distressing".

Hassan's plea came one day after Britain agreed to a United States request to redeploy 850 troops to Babil province south and south-west of Baghdad, freeing up US soldiers for an expected assault on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.

The soldiers from the Black Watch battalion had been stationed in the south of Iraq, a relatively calm region compared to the rebel heartlands near Baghdad.

"Please please please, the British people, please help me," said Hassan, as she broke down in tears.

Hassan, a dual British and Irish national who married an Iraqi and has lived in Iraq for the past 30 years, was kidnapped on her way to work in Baghdad on Tuesday.

Her call for not bringing British troops "here to Baghdad" suggested she was still in the Iraqi capital.

Care announced it was suspending operations in Iraq after her abduction.

Bigley had been abducted in Baghdad in September by the extremist Tawhid wal Jihad (Unity and Holy War) insurgent group of Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, Iraq's most wanted man, along with two US colleagues who were also beheaded.

Abductors not shown

No group has claimed responsibility for the abduction of Hassan, who is in her late 50s or early 60s.

Hassan was seen with a white wall in the background, but her presumed abductors were not shown or identified in the footage aired by Al-Jazeera. Footage of her ID documents was also shown.

Tahsin Ali Hassan, the Iraqi husband of the kidnapped aid worker, issued an appeal to her kidnappers on Arabic television on Wednesday.

"My wife has no involvement in political affairs. Her activities are purely humanitarian and are aimed at helping the Iraqi people, people she has helped for the last 30 years," he said on Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television from Baghdad.

- AFP