February 26, 2008
British Hostage Shown in Video on al-Arabia (Update: Video Added)
An Arabic TV channel has aired a video claiming to show one of five Britons captured in Iraq eight months ago.The footage showed a man making an appeal to Prime Minister Gordon Brown to help secure the hostages' freedom.
"My name is Peter Moore, I have been held here for nearly eight months now," the man in the video footage said.
The man asked Mr Brown to free nine Iraqis in exchange for the Britons' release. The Foreign Office has condemned the release of the video.
The video shows the man speaking in English with an Arabic translation played over the top.
Click Image for BBC Video.
The five British hostages are believed to be held by a Rouge Shia group, possibly and splinter from Mahdi Army. It is believed that Iran may have some influence with the group. So far as we can tell the original video was only released to al-Arabiya.
Update 02/27/08: OK we have obtained the original uncut video. The video I had up for a short time yesterday was a video of another of the five hostages released in November 2007. My apologies for the mix up.
Youtube copy of the video here
