Envoys in bid to free hostage
2004-09-25 13:13
England - Britain's leading Muslim organisation dispatched two envoys to Iraq on Friday, hoping to help secure the release of a British engineer taken hostage by Muslim extremists eight days ago.
The respected Muslim Council of Britain joined a growing campaign to rescue Kenneth Bigley, 62, from Liverpool, after 50nbsp;000 leaflets were distributed in Baghdad asking ordinary Iraqis to help locate him.
"We appeal to the group that is holding Ken Bigley to release him without delay and without harm," said the council's secretary general Iqbal Sacranie as envoys Daud Abdullah and Musharraf Hussain prepared to depart.
"He is an elderly man and he is due to become a grandfather soon," he said in a statement. "Be merciful. Our religion Islam does not allow us to harm the innocent."
Bigley was snatched on September 16 - along with two American colleagues who have since been executed - by Tawhid wal Jihad (Unity and Holy War), a group led by Jordanian-born radical Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Close to 150 foreigners have been kidnapped by various groups since the US-led invasion of Iraq, including six Egyptian telecom workers on Friday.
Over the past few days, Bigley's family - including his son, his brothers, his Thai wife in Bangkok and his 86-year-old mother in Liverpool - have issued a dramatic series of emotional appeals to his captors for his safe release.
Discreet silence
Bigley himself has not been seen since he appeared in a fuzzy video on Wednesday on an internet site, in which he appealed directly to Prime Minister Tony Blair to intervene.
Blair has kept a discreet silence, leaving Downing Street and the Foreign Office to insist that the British government will never negotiate with terrorists.
Speaking to BBC television before flying out of London, Abdullah said he and Hussain planned first to make contact with Islamic scholars and other well-placed Iraqis in Baghdad.
"We are undertaking this mission with the hope that there is still a possibility that Mr Bigley is alive, and that there may be some hope that the hostage-takers are holding out for something."
"They have not announced that he's been killed, and probably they're holding out for something," he said.
"We believe we are well-placed, perhaps better than others, to convey our concerns, and the concerns and grief of his family and the wishes for his release."