The 86-year-old mother of the Iraq hostage Kenneth Bigley appeared in public for the first time to beg for his release on Thursday as the desperate waiting game entered its second week.
Lil Bigley, supported by her sons Philip (49) and Stan (64) begged the Islamist group to free him. In tears she urged: ”Will you please help my son? He is only a working man who wants to support his family. Please show mercy to Ken. Send him home to me alive. His family need him and I need him.”
But the strain of the public appearance and the anguish of the past eight days had taken its toll on Mrs Bigley — two hours after she made her appeal an ambulance was called to the family’s Liverpool home. She was taken out on a stretcher and driven to hospital.
Dr Mashood Siddiqi, a consultant from Aintree hospital, had visited Mrs Bigley earlier in the evening. He said: ”We are monitoring her condition. She has been under a lot of stress today but she is a strong lady.”
It was revealed on Thursday night that the families of the two murdered American hostages had phoned the Bigleys to offer them support and sympathy.
Before being taken to hospital, Mrs Bigley said she had been touched by their call, adding she could not imagine what they were going through.
She added that she found the hours between 6pm and 9pm the worst each evening but the family had been taking strength from each other.
Her intervention came after the family rejected Foreign Office advice on how to handle the crisis and instead opted to make their own appeals.
Earlier, at 5pm, Blair made a second call to the family’s home. The prime minister, who spent the day at the country retreat Chequers, was put under renewed pressure on Wednesday night when Mr Bigley, 62, in a video released by the terrorist group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, called on him directly to do what he could to save him.
Downing Street refused to say whether Blair had seen the video of Bigley’s appeal. A government official described him as stoical. ”It’s a grim time, you wish you could do more to help,” the official said. The family was ”realistic about what can and cannot be done”.
Unlike the French government which made a public show of trying to secure the release of two French journal ists, Blair has been reluctant to give the terrorists any unnecessary publicity and has refrained from any comment. But his wife Cherie, at an Age Concern event, said ”our hearts go out” to the Bigley family.
The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, before leaving the United Nations to return to Britain, described the predicament as ”absolutely grotesque”.
The government view is that any concession to the hostage-takers would produce a spate of kidnappings. But back-channels are being pursued to at least try to clear up confusion over which prisoners Zarqawi’s group wants released.
The United States and British governments and the leader of the interim Iraqi authority, Ayad Allawi, were united again on Thursday after a wobble this week over the planned release of the Iraqi scientist Rihab Taha.
An Iraqi official said the US had agreed a week ago to her release and that it would go ahead in a few weeks but they did not want to do it now because it would be seen as surrender to the hostage-takers.
Bigley’s brother Paul, angered by the decision to delay her release, accused the US government of ”sabotaging” moves to free his brother. He called on the UK and US to keep out of what should be an internal Iraqi affair.
Earlier on Thursday, Bigley’s Thai wife had called for mercy in a statement read at the British embassy in Bangkok. Sombat Bigley (47) who married Bigley seven years ago, spoke falteringly in Thai of her husband as an ordinary family man who had travelled to Iraq to help the people.
”I desperately want to be reunited with my husband. I plead for your mercy,” she said.
Bigley, who was working on a multimillion-pound American contract in Iraq with the engineering firm Gulf Supplies and Construction Services, had intended to retire in Thailand with his wife once his work was completed.
His mother’s plea was the latest act of a family whose suffering was recognised by the people of Liverpool yesterday in church services. The chief constable of Merseyside, Norman Bettison, said: ”I wish there was some way Ken could know how his city is holding its breath and praying for him.”
But the Conservative leader, Michael Howard, on Thursday refused to make political capital and reiterated his broad support for Blair over Iraq. – Guardian Unlimited Â