IRAQ: The latest plea by British hostage Kenneth Bigley, shackled in chains inside a wire cage, is indistinct, many of his words smothered in the al-Jazeera broadcast by the Arabic translation.
But in it, he criticised Prime Minister Tony Blair. "He doesn't care about me. I'm just one, just one person. Please, please, help me. I'm begging you, I'm begging you to speak, to push... Mr Blair says he won't negotiate with terrorists."
Mr Bigley also said: "They don't want to kill me. They could have killed me a week ago, two weeks ago."
The website Al Qalah.com which earlier yesterday appeared to signal Mr Bigley's imminent release, said his captors, Tawhid wal Jihad, "frees the prisoner and saves his life and warns all those who collaborate with the aggressor, in whatever form, to leave the country, otherwise they will meet the same fate as his predecessors, that is beheading ... The London government has confirmed its indifference towards the life of one of its own children and its continual insistence of carrying out crimes in Iraq, following the criminal Bush who is disinterested in human life, including that of his own people, who he has sent to Iraq to die to serve Zionism and his own objectives.
"The prisoner urged and begged his government to be freed but the reply from that government was to disassociate itself of all its moral responsibility which it has always lacked ... Tawhid wal Jihad has decided to spare Bigley, his family and the British people giving him his life and sparing him the punishment that he deserved for helping criminals who have killed Iraqi people in numbers that cannot be counted."