UK News 23-09-2004 Please Help Me, Mr Blair who: Kidnapped British civilian Kenneth Bigley what: Appeals to Tony Blair to save his life where: Iraq when: Yesterday snippet: "Kenneth Bigley, the British engineer taken hostage in Baghdad, was shown last night appealing to Tony Blair to help save his life after his two fellow victims were beheaded," reports The Telegraph. "`I think this is possibly my last chance to speak to you,` Mr Bigley said to the Prime Minister in video footage posted on an Islamic website." "I don`t want to die in Iraq, neither do the women in the prisons," says Mr Bigley in the video, referring to his kidnappers` demand that all Muslim women in Iraqi jails should be freed. "I want to live, I want to live." Two women are known to be imprisoned in Iraq - the scientists Rihab Taha and Huda Salih Amash - and there seemed a glimmer of hope two days ago when Iraq`s justice minister, Malik Dohan al-Hassan, promised to release Dr Taha. However, that plan seems to have been scuppered by the US authorities ruled out any release, saying it would not give in to the kidnappers. This morning on BBC radio, Kenneth Bigley`s brother, Paul, accused the Americans of standing in the way of Iraq`s sovereignty by intervening in its system of justice to detain the women despite the apparent absence of any evidence to implicate them in Saddam Hussein`s weapons programmes. Efforts to save his brother`s life have been "sabotaged," he says. [... more]

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