The father of a British hostage held captive in Iraq struggled to keep his
emotions in check as he spoke of the “hell” he had suffered over the past
year.
In a direct appeal to the kidnappers, Dennis, 57, who spoke on condition that
the family surname be withheld, told The Times: “I’m pleading for his life,
I’m literally begging for him to be let go. I know the hostage-takers have
their own agenda but kidnapping innocent people is not the answer.”
Breaking a media blackout surrounding the kidnapping of his son Alan, Dennis
continued: “My son wasn’t doing a military job or anything like that, he was
just trying to help rebuild Iraq and has been caught up in this. Maybe they
[the kidnappers] will show a bit of sympathy and compassion and let him go.”
On May 29 it will be a year since Alan, from Glasgow, who is married with two
children, aged 2 and 13, was snatched by scores of men disguised as police
from an Iraqi finance ministry compound in Baghdad.
He had been working as a private security guard in Iraq since soon after the
invasion in 2003, working three months on and one month off and living in
the heavily fortified green zone.
He had remarked to his father that things seemed to be getting better for
ordinary Iraqis, and that the people he met were always warm and generous.
He was fatalistic about the risks. “He didn’t talk much about it, but when
he first started I said to him, ‘Is it not quite dangerous?’ and he said,
‘Life is dangerous’,” Dennis said.
Three of Alan’s colleagues, from the Canadian security firm Garda World, were
also seized during the abduction, along with the IT expert they were
guarding. All five are British; all are still being held.
Although the families have until now maintained a strict silence on advice
from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO), Dennis said yesterday that he
had decided to speak out because he felt that the Government had not done
enough to try to secure Alan’s release.
Contrasting the efforts of FCO officials with Canon Andrew White, the British
cleric in Baghdad who has worked behind the scenes to help free the men, he
said: “Basically the Foreign Office don’t seem to be coming up with anything
that I can see is any good. Canon Andrew White is the man who has done
everything. I just feel there’s not enough happening and I would like to see
more done about it because it’s my son out there.”
He accused the Foreign Office of not keeping him informed. “I realise that
they can’t tell us everything that is going on, but it seems like a long
time since we had any real information. I mean, they are British citizens,
after all.”
Dennis, a plain-speaking Glaswegian with piercing blue eyes and a squat,
muscular appearance, is not used to being at the mercy of his emotions. In
his small semi-detached house in a cul-de-sac in Dumbarton, he sits with his
hands clasped tightly, occasionally biting his lips.
Never previously religious, he now carries a prayer that a friend gave him and
a “worry angel” — a small glass stone with an angel figurine inside — in his
pocket. He prays constantly. He lights a candle to his son every day, and
has a photograph of him next to his bed. He is trying not to feel bitterness
towards his son’s abductors, but with limited success. “The canon sees a lot
of good in these people. I don’t know how I feel about them.”
He finds it hard to talk about the torment of the past year but admits, when
pushed, that he cries almost daily. “It starts, and when it does I can’t
stop,” he says with a crack in his voice. He is haunted by a recurring
nightmare, but he can’t get the words out when asked what happens in his
dream. “I get a call saying he doesn’t come home,” he says.
He adds: “I’ve been waking up with the cold sweats some nights and I’ve got to
come down here and sit and drink some tea. It’s the same dream. I just want
him home safe, and I can’t stop thinking about it.
“He’s in my mind all the time. It’s OK when I’m working but when I’m in the
house at night it takes over.”
The grief — and uncertainty — is all-consuming. Always a tidy man, Dennis
spends hours on end gardening or polishes his car again and again just to
give him something to do. “The neighbours must think I’m mad,” he jokes.
He broke down when family liaison officers from Strathclyde Police visited him
last autumn to show him video footage of his son flanked by two masked
gunmen reading from what appeared to be a statement held by another person
in front of him. The sight of his son — a stocky, well-built man who prides
himself on his fitness — pleading for his life was too much to bear. “It was
hard watching it because he looked very distressed,” Dennis said. “I must
admit he looked well enough, but it was hard. He had lost a lot of weight.”
He has been shown just one other image of his son in captivity — a photograph
taken by his kidnappers about a month after the abduction, in which he
stares at the camera with what his father describes as “haunted” eyes.
Normally clean-shaven and shaven-headed, he has several weeks’ growth on his
face and dark brown hair covers his head.
Dennis, who is estranged from Alan’s mother and has since remarried, last saw
his son about a year and a half ago, when Alan visited him in the car
accessory shop where he works. “At that time all he was talking about was
his son and he brought him over to the shop to see me,” he said.
Alan’s son, now 2, keeps asking for his father. His teenage daughter has been
told the truth and is struggling. His wife is in pieces.
“You dread to think what conditions they are being kept in, and hopefully he
is being treated all right,” Dennis said. “That’s all you hope for. I would
hate to think that he was getting abused. He’s strong, he’s very physically
fit. If anyone is going to cope, he will.”
Captives’ ordeals
Terry Waite, an envoy of the Archbishop of Canterbury, was seized in
Beirut in 1987 after successfully negotiating the release of other hostages.
He was freed in 1991, shortly after two other British hostages in Lebanon,
John McCarthy and Jackie Mann
Fernando Araujo, a Colombian politician, spent more than six years as a
hostage in various jungle camps of the Farc rebel group before escaping in
2007
53 Americans working at the US Embassy in Tehran were taken hostage in
1979 during the Iranian Revolution. Despite diplomatic and military attempts
to free them, they were held for over a year
Ron Arad, an Israeli pilot, is thought to be the world's longest-held
hostage. He was shot down over Lebanon in 1986, captured by militia groups
and handed over to Hezbollah. His family issued a $10m reward in 2005 but he
has not been found
Ingrid Betancourt, a half-French contender for Colombia’s presidency,
was kidnapped in 2002 in an area controlled by Farc rebels. Though President
Sarkozy made securing her release a priority, she remains a prisoner
Source: agencies; Times archive
