Enlarge imageBy Haitham Haddadin
KUWAIT (Reuters) - Prominent British Muslims have arrived in Kuwait, en route to Baghdad to plead for the release of 62-year-old engineer Kenneth Bigley, seized by Islamist militants nine days ago.
"I believe and always maintain hope in the mercy of Allah," Daud Abdullah, a member of the delegation from the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), told Reuters Television at Kuwait International Airport on Saturday.
"And we are hopeful that Mr Bigley is alive and that we will be able to exert some influence with those who hold him hostage," he said.
The kidnappers are threatening to kill Bigley unless women prisoners held in Iraq are freed, but have set no deadline. They have already beheaded two Americans seized with him.
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An Islamist website, which has posted unsubstantiated claims about hostages in the past, said on Saturday Bigley had been killed. The Foreign Office said it believed the website lacked credibility and could not confirm such a claim.
A British embassy official told Reuters in Kuwait City the MCB delegation members would fly shortly to Iraq by military aircraft from Mubarak Air Base near the civilian airport. The air base is used by the U.S.-led multinational forces in the Gulf Arab state.
HOW TO SAVE A LIFE
Abdullah said the delegation hoped to meet religious leaders and scholars, including the leadership of the High Association of Muslim Scholars.
"This is part of Islamic duty for us," said Iqbal Sacranie, secretary-general of the MCB, the largest lobby group for Britain’s 1.8 million Muslims. "If we can save a life then let’s do that.
"We saw the news stories, particularly after the beheading of the Americans, and thought ’how do we save a life?’," Sacranie told Reuters in London. "We’ve issued appeals but what is required goes beyond that."
Foreign Minister Jack Straw spoke by telephone to Bigley’s Thai wife, who is in Thailand. Terry Waite, the former Church of England envoy who was held hostage in Lebanon for five years, visited the Bigley family home in Liverpool.
The Muslim Association of Britain, an affiliate of the MCB, said it appeared on Arabic television station Al Jazeera to make a direct appeal to the kidnappers for Bigley’s safe release.
The pleas came after the British government said it had distributed 50,000 leaflets in Baghdad, at the request of Bigley’s family who want to exhaust all means possible to save him from a group led by al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
An Iraqi company went round Baghdad on Thursday handing out the leaflet, which had numbers for the British Embassy and local police, officials at the Foreign Office in London said.
Prime Minister Tony Blair, to whom Bigley appealed in a videotape, has kept quiet for fear of inflaming the crisis.
