An unusual, low-key campaign

Published on Sunday 21 June 2009 23:14

JASON Creswell and Jason Swindlehurst are not the first civilians to have been taken hostage and killed in Iraq.

In 2004, Ken Bigley and Margaret Hassan were kidnapped and killed.

The British peace activist Norman Kember was kidnapped in November 2005 and later freed.

However, what marks out the most recent tragedy is the lack of information or public profiles of the victims.

After the kidnap, a media blackout was imposed, with the families of the captured men being asked not to give interviews to enable sensitive negotiations to be carried out in Iraq.

Other than their first names and vague details of where they came from, little was revealed.

This approach is in stark contrast to the high-profile campaign launched to highlight the plight of other hostages.

A strategic campaign was launched in a bid to secure Mr Bigley's release.

His wife and his 86-year-old mother in Liverpool made emotional appeals on television, and 50,000 campaigning leaflets were distributed in Mansour, the district from which he was taken.

In Liverpool, prayers were said by more than 400 Muslims and 100 Catholics.

The campaign for the release of Mrs Hassan, who was taken hostage while on her way to work in Baghdad for charity Care International, was also a high-profile one. Her Iraqi husband Tahseen Ali Hassan made two appeals and Care International appealed on Arabic television for her release.

Mr Kember, 74, hit the news channels after he was kidnapped.

His wife, Patricia, made two televised pleas for his life and used Iraqi radio and newspaper adverts for further appeals.

Meanwhile, in Gaza, BBC correspondent Alan Johnston was released after four months in captivity in 2007. During that time David Dimbleby, Sir David Frost, Jon Snow and Christiane Amanpour of news channel CNN were among hundreds of people backing a media campaign to highlight his plight.