LAPORTE, Ind. -- The wife of Indiana businessman Jeffrey Ake broke the public silence she had kept since he was kidnapped a year ago in Iraq, saying Tuesday she believed he was still alive even though there has been no word about him since days after his abduction.\nLiliana Ake revealed that she spoke by telephone with her husband's kidnappers in the weeks after he was abducted near a water treatment plant where he was working outside Baghdad. The kidnappers demanded money during the calls, she said.\n"They said they were holding him and they would destroy him if I don't cooperate with them," she said during an interview with CNN.\nShe said the calls came to the family's home number and that she verified they were the kidnappers when they responded to some questions with answers which only her husband would have known. But she said the last such call came on May 1 -- 18 days after Jeffrey Ake was last seen in an April 13, 2005, video that showed him being held at gunpoint by at least three assailants.\n"In order to resolve this matter and secure Jeff's release, you must call me again," Liliana Ake said in a statement she directed to his kidnappers. "Jeff should be able to give you the number. Please take the next step to release my husband and return his children's lives to normal."\nNo one has claimed responsibility for Ake's April 11, 2005, abduction. In the video broadcast two days later, Ake asked the U.S. government to withdraw from Iraq and save his life.\nAke's family and friends had been mostly silent since the abduction, even asking officials in his northern Indiana hometown to call off a public prayer vigil a few days after he was kidnapped.\nLiliana Ake said she decided to speak out after a year, in part, because of the March 30 release of hostage Jill Carroll. The journalist's family, The Christian Science Monitor and press freedom groups all issued pleas for her release during her 82 days as a captive.\n"I was just afraid for Jeff's life," Liliana Ake said of the reasons for her silence. "I did not know whether my request or plea would help him or harm him."
She said she and the couple's four children -- ages 3, 6, 9 and 16 -- have suffered during the past year.\n"I haven't slept all year," she said. "I wake up in the middle of the night at 1 and I cannot sleep."\nIn the CNN interview, she also thanked her church, the LaPorte Rotary Club and all those across the country who have sent encouraging letters.\n"Please keep on praying for us," she said.\nAke said in a statement released by the LaPorte mayor's office that she met Tuesday with family, friends and her husband's co-workers at Equipment Express, the company Ake owns in nearby Rolling Prairie.\nShe said she wanted to "acknowledge all of those who are helping us to successfully build Jeff's dream in his absence, as well as those who are helping our family through this terrible ordeal. We are also here to reaffirm our faith that Jeff will return home soon"
