Edwin Dyer - what price loyalty?

[bobthebandit]

Today's newspapers revealed that Edwin Dyer had dual Austrian/UK nationality and lived most of his life in Austria.However out of loyalty to Britain and his English father,chose to have a UK passport.
If he had opted for an Austrian passport he would probably be alive today. This is because the Austrian Government have succesfully negotiated the release of all their past and present hostages.
It appears our Government did very little to save his life.

[craft1948]

Negotiated or paid for?

[paraffin]

What our Government did was to refuse the kidnappers' demands to release a terrorist suspect.

[bobthebandit]

It is probably likely that the Austrian Govenrment may have paid ransom money, but what price a life?
The poor guy was only on holiday too.

[paraffin]

Yes, but as far as I'm aware the Austrian Government probably hasn't any Islamic terrorist suspects in their custody, which we have.
Therefore, yes it's very unfortunate from Mr Dyer's point of view that he didn't have an Austrian passport. There again, hindsight's a marvellous thing.

[anotheoldgit]

I covered this in an early post.

The terrorists had called for the British Government to release the fundamentalist cleric Abu Qatada also the payment of a multi-million pound ransom for the release of Edwin Dyer.

Surely that was a small price to pay, to get rid of that piece of trash Abu Qatada, and to save the life of Mr Dyer?

[bobthebandit]

I agree with you on the last post. We should have released the scumbag Qatada, at no real security threat to the country. We would have also save thousands in tax payers money as well.
Mr Dyer was also a non combatant but a tourist and had no involvement with terrorism.

[brenda]

Makes you wonder the value of a human life --doesn't it?

[bobthebandit]

Lucy, it is a fair point that the floodgates could open, however Israel and Palestine have been making succesful prisoner exhanges for years, with no loss of face on either side.