100 days of hoping for father's return

John Smith MP is taking this picture to Georgia

By Natalie Grice BBC News Online

It is 100 days since south Wales businessman Peter Shaw was snatched from his car in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi and disappeared, apparantly without trace.

His daughter, 31-year-old Lisa Evans, has to face the prospect that her father may never meet his third grandchild, her three-week-old son Ioan.

She has given a picture of herself and her three children to Vale of Glamorgan MP John Smith to take with him as he flies out to Georgia to press for Mr Shaw's release.

Peter Shaw has been missing for 100 days

Speaking to from her home in Creigiau, near Cardiff, Mrs Evans said she could not believe her 57-year-old father had been missing for this length of time.

Her last contact with him was three days before he was kidnapped in a phone call to tell her when he would be back.

"It was just a 'see you soon' chat," she said.

"I'd said I was looking forward to seeing Diana and Danny, his family out there, who were coming back with him.

"He was coming back home to stay. His contract had finished and he'd decided not to renew it.

"It was a terrible shock and to be honest it still is. I still can't believe that it has happened.

"In many ways it still feels that he's just working abroad and then you remember that he's not and he was supposed to be home.

"Special occasions come, like the baby's birth, and now we're thinking of Christmas, and it's strange not to have him around."

Fears

Mrs Evans has two fears regarding her father. The first is, naturally, that he will never return.

But she added: "The second fear is that when he does come home - and I do think he will be home soon, if not eventually - I worry about how he will be, how he will have coped with it.

Lisa at home with Manon, 2, and three-week-old Ioan

"That's a worry of mine, how he will have changed - it's not very nice to think about that."

She is not in direct contact with the Foreign Office herself, but is kept up-to-date with developments through her mother and younger brother.

The idea to take photographs of the family out to Georgia came from John Smith MP, who thought it would stress to the authorities just how much Mr Shaw is missed by his family.

His trip is an attempt to put pressure on the authorities to expedite his release.

"Taking photos of me and the children is part of that plan," she explained.

"I think John Smith is hoping to have a meeting with the president [Eduard Shevardnadze] in which case he intends to show them, 'this is my constituent's family, they're nice people, they're normal people'.

"I just thought, come and take a photo if that will help, and he seemed to think it might."

Presents

Mrs Evans has already decided that even if her father is not back in time for his birthday on December 15 or Christmas, the family will still have presents waiting for him in his home for the time when he does return.

"I'm hoping it's not going to jinx anything, but when he does come home, he'll see them there and know that we were all thinking about him," she explains.

"I suppose in the back of my mind, I can't believe it's already been 100 days, so I cannot believe he won't be home for Christmas.

"I'm trying to believe he will be back well before that."

Mr Shaw was taken from his car in June a day before he was due to leave for his home in Cowbridge, in the Vale of Glamorgan.

He had been working as a financial adviser for Abgrobiznesbank and had been living in Georgia for six years.

Previously, he was a manager with the Midland Bank before taking early retirement and going out to work in ex-Soviet republics.

He was working for the European Union's Tacis programme, which gives loans to the agricultural sector.

As well as Mrs Evans, he has two sons, Rhodri and Philip, from a first marriage to Mair Shaw, and a son with his Georgian partner Diana Khorina.