The British government said on Friday it was investigating a report on a Middle East television station that hostage Kenneth Bigley had been killed by his captors in Iraq.
”We are trying urgently to corroborate reports that Mr Bigley has been killed, but have not yet done so,” a Foreign Office spokesman said. British diplomats also were investigating the news report carried by Abu Dhabi Television, officials said.
The TV station reported that informed sources in Iraq had confirmed the 62-year-old Liverpool-born engineer had been killed.
Bigley was kidnapped in Baghdad on September 16 by the militant by the Tawhid and Jihad group, led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Within days, American fellow captives Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong were dead.
But the captors appeared to use Bigley as a pawn, releasing videos of him pleading for his life and criticising Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Asked about Friday’s Abu Dhabi Television report, Bigley’s brother, Paul, said: ”I have heard these reports and I am looking into them right now.”
There had been no direct word from the hostage since September 29, when a video of a tearful Kenneth Bigley appeared on al-Jazeera TV. Kneeling behind bars, he claimed his captors did not want to kill him and he accused Blair of being a liar and doing nothing to secure his release.
Blair’s government has repeatedly said that it was willing to talk to the kidnappers about the hostage’s release, but that it would never pay a ransom or meet any political demands.
On Monday, Paul Bigley had said he believed Kenneth Bigley was now in the hands of a more moderate group in Iraq. His comments came amid media reports in Kuwait claiming that the fundamentalist Tawhid and Jihad group was considering selling him to another militant group.
The new captors were said to be the same organizsation that released two Italian women hostages last week, reportedly for a large cash ransom, raising hopes that Bigley could be freed in the same way.
Bigley’s capture has increased the strong criticism that Blair has long faced in Britain for going to war in a country that didn’t have the weapons of mass destruction that the premier had warned about.
The hostage crisis also has prompted an international campaign to secure Bigley’s release, winning the support of a diverse group that included Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams in Northern Ireland. The Muslim Council of Britain, an umbrella group of moderate Muslims, traveled to Baghdad to try to negotiate Bigley’s release.
Earlier this week Bigley was granted an Irish passport in a desperate attempt to convince his captors that he was Irish rather than British.
Bigley was captured just weeks before he planned to retire from his work as an engineer in Iraq, where he was helping with reconstruction efforts. – Sapa-AP