Five hostages spend a year in captivity
May 29 2008 The Journal
THE families of five Britons being held hostage in Iraq mark the first anniversary of their kidnapping today.
The men, who were working as civilian contractors, were seized by armed militants at the Iraqi Ministry of Finance in Baghdad on May 29 last year.
Negotiations for the men’s release are ongoing but their relatives have grown increasingly frustrated at the lack of progress. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has stressed that sensitive discussions are going on behind the scenes.
One of the hostages has been named as IT consultant Peter Moore, from Lincoln, who was working for BearingPoint, an American management consultancy.
The other four men, who were employed by Canadian security firm GardaWorld to guard Mr Moore, have not been officially identified but it is believed two are Scottish and two Welsh.
Their families have made a number of emotional appeals to the kidnappers for the hostages’ release.
The most recent message was issued on March 7 through Mr Moore’s stepmother, Pauline Sweeney.
She said: “In no way are we or our loved ones politically involved. Neither do we have any influence at all over the British or American governments. We are simply families who want our loved ones home again.
“There is not a day that goes by when we don’t think of our loved ones and it becomes more and more difficult to carry out our normal lives without them, especially the children, who are away from their fathers.
“Please, I am asking you this from the bottom of my heart –please let our loved ones come home.”
Over the past 12 months the kidnappers, calling themselves the Islamic Shiite Resistance in Iraq, have released two videos of the captives. On December 4 a film was broadcast on Dubai-based TV station Al-Arabiya warning that one of the hostages would be killed unless British troops were withdrawn from Iraq.
One of the men, who said his name was Jason, was shown in the clip complaining that the kidnapped men felt they had been “forgotten”.
A second video, broadcast by Al-Arabiya on February 26, showed Mr Moore asking Prime Minister Gordon Brown to free nine Iraqis in exchange for the Britons’ release.
The threat to kill the hostage was apparently not carried out.
Canon Andrew White, the Anglican chaplain to Iraq who has been dubbed the “Vicar of Baghdad”, said recently he had heard the men were “all OK”.
