Passport gave us hope: Bigley’s brother

THE brother of Kenneth Bigley, the hostage who was beheaded in Iraq, said yesterday the family saw the successful bid for an Irish passport as an angle to secure the release of the engineer.

Paul Bigley, who was in Dublin last night to collect a Best of Irish award on behalf of his mother, Lily, said the passport was issued within hours of the new Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern taking up his position last October.

Mr Bigley, who was working on a contract at a US military base in Baghdad, was beheaded nearly three weeks after he was kidnapped by Iraqi insurgents. His brother described how the issuing of the passport had a profound effect as after the document was flashed up on al Jazeera TV, the 62-year-old engineer appeared in a broadcast wearing fresh clothes and without shackles. The family then thought everything was going well and that he would be released.

“Several months previously an Irish journalist was kidnapped and when they found out he was Irish, or half-Irish, they released him. So that was the angle we were looking for,” Paul Bigley said. Mr Bigley, who is bitterly critical of the British government and British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s role in the crisis, contacted diplomats in his adopted home in the Netherlands and in Ireland.

“At the time you were having a changing of the guards of the foreign ministers and he (Mr Ahern) made a beeline for the desk and within hours it was issued,” said Mr Bigley.

The kidnapped man, who travelled to Iraq on a British passport, was eligible for an Irish one because his mother Lily was born in Dublin. He was killed three days after the passport was issued.