Last November, Will Pike and his girlfriend Kelly Doyle went on a two-week beach holiday in Goa. They had one night in Mumbai before flying back to London and fancied a stay in a posh hotel so they decided to splash out on a room at the Taj. They picked the wrong night. Not long after they checked in, terrorists attacked the hotel, going from room to room looking for British and American guests to execute. They spent five hours hiding in the bathroom hoping the siege would end but with a fire breaking out outside their room and hand grenades going off next door, they understood that the only escape was through the window and down a makeshift rope of towels and bedding. The knots didn't hold and Will fell, smashing his arms and pelvis, and sustaining a spinal injury. The diagnosis: paraplegia. He will spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair.
On the morning of November 27, I received an email from Will's father, Nigel. The subject line was 'Oh god'. For five months, in slow motion, I have shared the horrifying fallout of that night. Specifically what happens when an act of terrorism leaves the news agenda and the reported numbers of dead are shorn of the lesser figure of those merely injured.
Five months later, Will is still in hospital, forced to drink the bitter medicine of government indifference and neglect. Had he sustained his injuries in a car crash or workplace accident, he would be eligible for compensation of up to £3m for the care he will need for the rest of his life. He is 29. Had he been an Indian citizen who arrived from Mumbai on an overnight flight on July 7 2007 and had the misfortune to hop on the Piccadilly line he would have been eligible for compensation from the British government for the victims of terrorism. But because he is British, and sustained his injuries in an act of terrorism abroad, the government has ruled him ineligible for help. The maximum he can expect is a one off ex-gratia payment of £15,000 from the Red Cross.
Will's predicament, which I reported in the Observer yesterday, is a gruesome anomaly in the law, but of course he's not alone. Victims of the Bali bombings share the same fate. The plight of British victims of terror abroad has cross-party support. Yesterday, Tobias Ellwood, a Conservative MP whose younger brother died in the Bali bombings in 2002, told the Observer: 'What upsets me most is that the budget for counter-terrorism has actually gone up, from £1.2bn to £2bn. And yet the government still isn't willing to use a little bit of that money to help those people who have actually suffered.'
But it was Labour MP and former Foreign Office minister Ian McCartney, who put his finger on the problem: 'Terrorism is an attack not on individuals but on a state, as Mumbai made clear. A state's duty is to its citizens.' Will Pike is confined to a wheelchair because on the night of November 26, armed men were seeking British targets to murder in retaliation for British government policies. Whether you agree with those policies or not, it is surely right for the British government to take responsibility for those who pay the price for them. Instead the family has been forced to launch an appeal: to lobby the government to change its mind, and to raise money for Will's daily expenses when he finally leaves hospital and tries to put his life back together again.
In mid-December, Will's father and I had lunch in a burger place on Tottenham Court Road, near University College Hospital. His mobile phone rang. It was the government, finally. They wanted to know if their leaflet had been received. It is the sole communication anyone in the family has had from an administration supposedly committed to the war against terror. Perhaps they were too busy buying scatter cushions and filling out their claims for mortgage relief. (Linda Grant)
[See also the post by Ned Temko, 'We cannot abandon British terror victims'.]