Ken Bigley said he only wanted to live ”a simple life” moments before he was murdered by the Islamist militants who held him captive for three weeks, it emerged on Sunday.
Although he clearly realised he did not have long to live, Bigley appeared calm as he addressed the prime minister in a video posted on a website yesterday: ”Here I am again, Mr Blair… very, very close to the end of my life.
”You don’t appear to have done anything to help me,” the 62-year-old engineer continued. ”I’m not a difficult person. I am a simple man who just wants to live a simple life with his family.” At the end of Bigley’s plea, he is beheaded by his masked captors.
There were no clues in the video about whether Bigley did manage to briefly escape his captors shortly before his death. At the weekend, claims surfaced that Bigley had spent up to 12 hours at liberty.
However, on the video showing Bigley’s murder, one of the captors accused the British government of lying when it said it had no means of communication with the group. ”They lied. There was a very clear contact,” he said.
The worst fears of the Bigley family were confirmed on Friday when the video showing Bigley’s murder surfaced in Baghdad. It was not posted on a website used by Islamist extremists until Sunday.
As in previous tapes, Bigley is seen dressed in an orange jumpsuit, similar to those worn by prisoners in Guantánamo Bay.
He sits on the floor in front of six armed men wearing balaclavas. Five carry rifles and one, a tall broad-shouldered man standing in the centre, has a large knife tucked into his belt.
Behind the group is a bare brick wall and the black and white flag of the Tawhid and Jihad group, the militants led by the Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Bigley says in the video that the patience of his captors ”is wearing thin, and they are very very serious people”.
He says: ”Please, please give them what they require — freedom of their women from the Abu Ghraib prison. I beg you… British people, more than ever I need your help, more than ever I need your voices to go out in the street and to demand a better life for the females and the women who are imprisoned in the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad… All I can tell you now is that I have very short time left.”
One of the hooded men then says that leaders of ”infidel western governments” pretend to care about their people but are ”liars and hypocrites”.
He says the kidnappers extended the deadline for Bigley’s death to allow time for coalition authorities to meet their demand.
Britain has repeatedly said it has no women prisoners under its control.
He adds: ”Britain is not serious in releasing our sisters. There is nothing further for this wicked Briton than the sword.”
He then draws a knife from his belt, and three of the others grab Bigley. He is shoved to the floor and his head severed and held up.
The confusion over Bigley’s possible escape has continued. It appears he was being held in Latifiya, a mostly Sunni enclave south of Baghdad and a crucial supply route for insurgents holed up in the stronghold of Falluja.
Several sources from the Sunni insurgency have suggested Bigley escaped. One man claiming to know the kidnappers told the Associated Press that he was found by his kidnappers carrying a gun.
The Iraqi foreign minister, Hoshiyar Zebari, said it was ”likely” Mr Bigley had escaped, but he could not give details.
The British Foreign Office refused to discuss a newspaper report that two of his captors were paid by British intelligence to help him escape and were driving him towards a US-controlled area when they were stopped by members of another Tawhid and Jihad cell and returned.
Nor would it discuss the kidnappers’ claims that the government knew how to contact them. On Friday the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, admitted that the government had exchanged messages with the captors, but refused to give details.
Tony Blair spent about 15 minutes speaking to members of Bigley’s family in Liverpool on the phone on Saturday. Downing Street said there were no plans for Blair to make a statement about the murder. But together with the conclusion of the Iraq Survey Group that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, it will lead to mounting pressure for a debate.
In Iraq, Sabah Kadhim, a spokesperson for the interior minister, said: ”The terrorists succeeded in exploiting the media for their benefit.”
”We feared from the beginning that they would kill him. They want the world to focus on them and their savage acts.”
The Iraqi police continue to search for Bigley’s body. In similar cases in the past, bodies have been dumped at the roadside soon after killings. – Guardian Unlimited Â