U.S. Hostage's Wife Urges His Release
Sept. 20, 2004 -- The wife of American hostage Jack Hensley said on Good Morning America she is praying that his captors in Iraq will show him mercy.
Hours later, a video was posted on an Islamist Web site showing the beheading of Eugene Armstrong, an American who was being held along with Hensley and Briton Kenneth Bigley. The three civilian contractors were seized from their house in Baghdad on Sept. 16.
The men worked for worked for Gulf Services Co., a construction firm based in the United Arab Emirates that was helping rebuild Iraq.
"My husband and the other two gentlemen absolutely loved seeing these people flourish," Pati Hensley said on Good Morning America before news of Armstrong's death. "They could take their own lives in their own hands, they could go forward with it, and they were doing that."
On Saturday, in a video posted on the Internet, their captors, a militant group linked to wanted terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, threatened to slit the hostages' throats if Iraqi women held in Abu Ghraib and Umm Qasr jails were not freed within 48 hours. The U.S. military has said no women are being held in the two prisons.
The families of the three men appealed for their release and said they were praying for the safety of their loved ones. Pati Hensley said she was advised not to speak to reporters, but she wanted her husband's kidnappers to know more about him and to realize that he doesn't wish them any harm.
"Let them come home," she said. "My God is praying for them. Allah is sending them a message, too, saying that to hurt these men is not going to serve any purpose. Just send them home. Send them home to their families, please."
From Optimism to Alarm
It has been a harrowing few days for Hensley's family. On Saturday, Pati Hensley and her teenage daughter watched helplessly as they saw the video of a blindfolded Jack Hensley and his fellow hostages in front of a masked captor with a gun.
Her husband Jack, Pati Hensley said, had been optimistic and assured about his work and safety in Iraq. But she recalled that he became increasingly worried just before his abduction.
"They had guards who were there morning and night and just in the past — little over a week — something had started changing," Mrs. Hensley said. "The guards were not showing up for work. Or if they did, they had an excuse and they needed to leave. Something was wrong."
On Sunday, another militant group posted a video on a Web site apparently showing beheadings of three hostages they said were Iraqi Kurd militiamen. In addition, a third group claimed to have kidnapped 18 members of the Iraqi National Guard, according to the Arabic station Al-Jazeera, which said the soldiers were threatened with death unless a detained aide of rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is freed within 48 hours. Those Iraqi National Guard members, Al-Jazeera reported today, have since been released.
Mrs. Hensley told Good Morning America she cannot believe that her husband was taken hostage. She said she's had difficulty explaining the crisis to her daughter, especially since her father is in Iraq to help the country.
"We raised our daughter to believe that everybody in the world is good," she said. "And you know, her first question to me was, 'Why would anybody hurt my daddy?' And I can't explain."