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I pray every day for your safety
AVRIL Sweeney's mobile phone, once a nuisance, is now her constant companion – attached to her hand day and night. Since May 29, 2007, when she received a phone call informing her that son Peter was one of five men kidnapped and held hostage in Iraq, her life has been put on hold.
When, last week, she finally summoned
up the courage to take a short holiday in Tenerife, she got the call she had feared so many times.
On the other end of the line was her family liaison officer, calling to tell her two of the men kidnapped with her son, had been handed over dead to British authorities in Baghdad.
The next day she was told that neither of the two victims was her 35-year-old son.
Ms Sweeney said: "When I found out the next day, after an agonising wait, that it wasn't Peter, of course I felt a tremendous sense of
relief. But it just never ends.
"My heart goes out to the families of Jason Creswell and Jason Swindlehurst, who were the two victims."
Ms Sweeney, who lives in Thornton after spending the last 12 years in Blackpool, has kept a two-year silence after being warned by the British Foreign Office that the kidnappers had demanded that the hostage situation was not publicised.
But now the 54-year-old civil servant is so desperate to get a message to her son.
She said: "I've kept quiet now for two years. But after this turn of events I realised this could be my last chance to get a message to him.
"I don't know if he can ever get access to the internet or newspapers. But I want to try everything I can to speak out to him. I didn't get to see him very often before he left for Iraq, as he moved in with his stepfather in Lincoln.
"We should have seen each other more, and now I would give anything to see him."
Ms Sweeney had to stop when tears choked her as she read a carefully-crafted message to Peter.
"Peter – you have never been forgotten, and I know that even at this stage people are risking their lives to save you.
"I can't wait to see you, wherever or whenever, I just want to see you. I am
praying every day for your safe return."
She recalls how everything changed the first day the news came that Peter, an IT consultant, had been kidnapped during a 40-man ambush on the Finance Ministry in Baghdad where he was working.
He was taken, together with Mr Creswell and Mr Swindlehurst and fellow bodyguards named only as Alec and Alan.
"When I was first told, I was sitting having a meal with a friend in a pub in Over Wyre. Since then, nothing's been the same. Nothing's made me feel worse than that day," Ms Sweeney said.
"As I got home, I was in complete shock, but there's just no way I could ever have imagined that I would be sitting here today talking about this, more than two years later.
"My life's been on hold ever since. I hardly left the house at first, and I couldn't go to work for seven months.
"Before, I always left my mobile phone behind, as I viewed it as a nuisance. Now I take it absolutely everywhere, thinking that at any moment it could ring and the family liaison officer could bring news of Peter."
She added: "That holiday in Tenerife was the first time I'd been away. It was a bolt out of the blue when I received the phone call,
I just couldn't comprehend it.
"It was horrendous, it was half past nine in the morning and I wasn't flying home until the next day. She told me that forensic scientists were investigating and they didn't know who it was.
"I spent a sleepless night waiting in the apartment room. I barely moved all night from the moment I took the call.
"Then at 10am on Sunday, the phone rang and she told me it was definitely not Peter.
"When I was told it could have been, I went through a fraction of what the two Jasons' parents have. But while Peter's family and I are still in limbo, they got the worst possible news and I just don't know how they are coping with it, especially after all this time waiting.
"It's been very hard not being able to say things you want to say and talk the process through.
"Of course I've told a few close friends
but I can't do anything more."
Peter, who took his father's surname Moore, grew up in Lincoln. He stayed on the east coast when his mother moved, setting up home in Blackpool 12 years ago.
Videos showing him in captivity, unshaven and dishevelled, have been released on the internet over the last two years, providing his mother with fresh hope her son would return, as well as anguish at the sight of her distressed son.
She said: "When the first video was shown in 2007, he looked so dishevelled, with black eyes, and he was rocking. That was terrible to see, but at least it gave me hope.
"In March this year, there was another one, and he appeared much healthier. At the moment I'm just hanging on to that image."
Critics have claimed the British Government has been too secretive about the situation, and are not doing enough to free the hostages.
But Peter's mother is resigned to the fact there is very little the Foreign Office can do in the face of terrorists.
She said: "There are still more questions than answers over the way this has been handled, but there's only one Foreign Office.
"I receive weekly updates on what is happening, even if nothing has changed within a week.
"It's not like going to a doctor for help, when you can choose who you want to help you get better. I have to rely on them, and I will.
"They have started to release Iraqi prisoners, and I can understand why they have been so secretive, as it was on the kidnappers' request.
"They are in a very difficult situation, the power is completely in the hands of the kidnappers. They have people's lives in their hands.
"All I can do now is do what I have been for the last two years – sit and wait, feeling drained, praying for Peter's safe return."
helen.steel@blackpoolgazette.co.uk
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Wednesday 30 May 2012
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