LIKE any good mum, Heather Brennan would do just about anything for her boy Nigel. With the anniversary of his kidnapping in Somalia approaching, she took her campaign to have him freed right to the top yesterday.
A frustrated Ms Brennan doorstopped Kevin Rudd in her home town of Bundaberg to appeal for action from the government, amid fears her son's health is failing.
The Prime Minister, after agreeing to see her, assured her the case was a priority.
"Don't think your son is being ignored," Mr Rudd told her.
The 37-year-old newspaper photographer was seized outside the lawless Somali capital of Mogadishu in August last year along with Canadian journalist Amanda Lindhout, 27.
A family member succeeded in speaking to him by phone this week and was alarmed that he complained of being stricken by a debilitating gastric condition.
Foreign Affairs officials are believed to have urged the family to refrain from making public comments for fear of disrupting negotiations with the kidnappers.
Ms Brennan confronted Mr Rudd with a family friend, Rebecca Hutchins, who complained that he had not previously taken the time to speak directly to the family.
Ms Hutchins said Australian strategies to secure Brennan's release had failed, and "they need to look at other options".
Their 20-minute meeting with Mr Rudd included his chief of staff, Alister Jordan, and local Nationals MP Paul Neville.
Mr Jordan met separately with Ms Brennan for 50 minutes prior to the meeting with Mr Rudd and again afterwards.
Mr Rudd said he had devoted more personal attention to Brennan's plight than any other consular case involving an Australian in trouble overseas.
The government had done all that was "reasonable and feasible", Mr Rudd insisted.
Ms Brennan said she and Mr Rudd agreed to disagree on a few points. But she was tight-lipped when asked by The Australian last night to elaborate on her concerns.
"At this particular point in time we are not saying anything more to the press," she said.
Prior to his kidnapping in Somalia, Brennan had been working as a photographer on the local newspaper in Bundaberg between international freelance assignments.
He had travelled to the war-torn east African state to team up with Lindhout, who made her name as a television reporter in the Middle East. They were abducted by gunmen while visiting a refugee camp outside the capital.
The identity and motivation of the kidnappers remains unclear. Last September, grainy video was released to the al-Jazeera television network showing the pair surrounded by masked gunmen, identified on the tape as the Mujaheddin of Somalia, who demanded a ransom of $US5 million ($6.1 million).
There has been speculation, however, they are actually members of a criminal gang who seized the opportunity of an easy kidnapping.
In addition to being unwell, Brennan was mentally in "quite a dark place", Ms Hutchins said.
Source: The Australian
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