As blows from the metal pipe rained down on him and burning cigarettes were stubbed out on his head, Mohammed continued to deny that he was an interpreter for the British Army in Basra.

The unemployed 36-year-old was seized when an armed gang raided his sister’s house. “They beat me with metal pipes and wooden sticks, burnt me with cigarettes, hit me with a cable and screamed in my face saying bad words about me,” said Mohammed, a married father with a five-month-old daughter.

His kidnappers said that they wanted to kill anyone who had worked for the British military. “They told me that people with such jobs are spies,” said Mohammed, who gained Dutch citizenship after leaving Iraq in 1994 but who returned after the 2003 invasion to get married and start a family.

Fortunately for him he managed to satisfy the gang that he was not an interpreter and was released after four days when his family paid a $20,000 (£10,000) ransom.

Hundreds of Iraq interpreters rebuffed by UK

Nearly half of applications to settle in Britain have been rejected by the MoD already despite safety fears

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BACKGROUND

• Story of brothers who worked for the British

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The man his kidnappers were really after was Mohammed’s brother-in-law, Abu Abdullah, who has worked for the British Armed Forces since 2003. “He was kidnapped because of me,” said Abu Abdullah, who translated for John Reid, when he visited Basra in 2005 as the Defence Secretary.

The kidnapping heightened Abu Abdullah’s fear. He had already been forced to leave his wife and four daughters at the family home, from where Mohammed was taken, to the British military base at Basra Airport two months’ ago.

Despite receiving a glowing reference form his military superiors Abu Abdullah felt that he had nowhere to turn. Desperate, the 50-year-old wrote an e-mail to The Times. It was headed: “Subject: Critical situation (a matter of life and death)”.

The experiences of the two men underline the dangers for Iraqis of having even an indirect relationship with the British in Basra. Gordon Brown is reviewing the Government’s refusal to help interpreters to start a new life in Britain after their plight was highlighted by The Times. The Home Office is looking at ways of extending help without offering them asylum.

Abu Abdullah listed several threats in his e-mail. “On July 15, 2007, at 8pm, four men driving a Toyota car came nearby shop [sic] to my house and start talking in a loud voice with a clear intention for the shopkeeper to hear (sort of indirect threat to me).

“The shopkeeper informed my wife of the incident. [The men said]: ‘We know [Abu Abdullah] well . . . sooner or later we will find him, or we will kidnap one of his family members to help us find him’.” One man added: “It will be easier for us to just kidnap his wife or one of his daughters’.”

Abu Abdullah, a former school teacher who has travelled extensively around the Middle East and as far as Cuba before returning to Basra in 1998, agreed to work for the British Forces in April 2003 when a Military Police officer heard his command of the English language.

He said that his work was relatively trouble-free until 2005 when Shia militia groups started to kill interpreters. “Sometimes they put a piece of paper on the body that says: ‘This is the fate of the collaborators’,” he said.

Increasingly worried for his family, he approached the British Forces for help but they said that they were unable to do anything. “I feel like a prisoner, but what can I do? This is my fate. If I go anywhere outside the base it will be a very high risk for me.”

Abu Abdullah is trying to obtain a masters degree from Basra University, which could enable him to get a job overseas. Failing that, he is hoping for a change of heart in Britain over its policy for Iraqi interpreters. “I wish that the British Government takes the Iraqi interpreters and their families with them, I am keeping my ears to the ground in case there is any news,” said Abu Abdullah, who – unlike many of his colleagues – has no regrets about his job despite all the problems.

“I am not sorry to be an interpreter and work for the British,” he said. Mohammed, who has returned to the Netherlands, is also having a tough time. Unemployed and with his wife and daughter stuck in Basra, he said that the Dutch authorities refused to believe that he had been kidnapped.

Mohammed said that British officials had told him that they would send the evidence of his ordeal to the Dutch Government so he would be well looked after, but as yet he has heard nothing. “I feel bad because nobody will help me, even when I show them the [torture] marks on my body.”

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