New hostage video received

2004-11-02 21:45

Dublin - Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern told parliament on Tuesday that the Arabic television channel Al-Jazeera had received a "disturbing" video of Margaret Hassan, the British-Irish aid official kidnapped in Iraq.

"Around lunchtime yesterday (Monday) the family of Margaret Hassan were made aware that there was a further video from the captors of Margaret. It was in the hands of Al-Jazeera," Ahern said.

"It is a distressing video which was decided by the station, on humanitarian grounds, not to show this. But they did make available early this morning the text of what was on the video.

"This video is quite disturbing and it shows Mrs Hassan being subjected to severe physical and psychological pressure in which she is shown to suffer severe emotional and physical distress," he said.

Hassan, 59, the head of Iraq operations for leading charity Care International, was snatched from her car on the way to work in the Iraqi capital on October 19.

- AFP