LIVERPOOL, 10 October 2004 — Two minutes’ silence was held yesterday in the native city of Kenneth Bigley as the British engineer’s family struggled to come to terms with his brutal murder by extremists in Iraq.
Flags flew at half mast around this northern English port city of 475,000 people where the lord mayor, Frank Roderick, led the silence in the shadow of the town hall along with other community leaders.
A small girl wearing a purple overcoat wiped tears from her eyes, the youngest of some 200 grieving people gathered in the usually bustling urban centre, now muted by a loss many were finding hard to bear.
Either side of the two minutes’ silence, the city’s bells sounded 62 times — one for every year of Bigley’s life.
His family confirmed his death Friday, 22 days after he was abducted in Baghdad. He was the first British hostage to be slain in Iraq.
“All over the city there were people observing the silence,” Roderick said.
“Liverpool is a city where people belong to a great family. In times like these we pull together and today we pulled together to show the Bigley family that we are with them.”
Liverpool’s Pakistani community leader Shas Nawaj said the kidnappers — thought to be Tawhid wal Jihad (Unity and Holy War), whose leader Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi has been linked to Al-Qaeda — “are not human.”
“The Muslim community is outraged,” he said.
Behind him a book of condolence in the town hall provided written proof of Liverpool’s anguish.
“Dear Ken, I pray that your loss was not in vain and I pray for a speedy resolution to the conflict the world finds itself in,” wrote a woman who signed herself Kathy Cheung.
“May you rest in peace and may your family and friends find comfort in the love and support this city has and will continue to give them,” she said.
Bigley’s relatives have gathered at the humble Victorian terrace home of his 86-year-old mother Irish-born Lil Bigley, asking the media to respect their privacy and keep at a distance.
“After three weeks of agony, Ken is at peace,” said the Liverpool Daily Post newspaper.
The sense of grief extended to other parts of Britain, including Birmingham where Muslim leaders opened a book of condolence at the local mosque and decried “barbaric and sinful actions” done in the name of their faith.
The Football Association announced a minute’s silence before the start of yesterday’s international match between England and Wales at Manchester’s Old Trafford stadium “as a mark of respect for Ken Bigley”.
Prime Minister Tony Blair — criticized by Bigley’s brother Paul Bigley for not doing more to save him — expressed “utter revulsion”, while Queen Elizabeth II sent a personal message to Lil Bigley.
Several hundred people attended a mass Friday at Liverpool’s Roman Catholic Cathedral, and late into the night wellwishers queued to add their messages to the book of condolences there and at other churches in the city.
In the cathedral a single candle burned beside the photograph of a smiling Bigley in his white polo shirt — a picture that has become something of a national icon over the past three weeks.
Bigley, who had many years of experience working in the Arab world, was planning to retire after his Iraq stint to start a new life with his Thai wife Sombat Bigley, 35, who was grieving in Bangkok with her own family.
“My life after this will never be the same,” she told Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper. “I loved that man with all my heart. “He was my heart and now they have wrenched him from me. Why did they make him suffer so?”
Sombat, 35, married for seven years, was in “great emotional distress” but had contacted her sister to tell her she was coping after the horrific beheading of the engineer.
“Sombat called me last night and told me not to worry about her,” her sister Sunee Pansook said.
“She is fine and she can handle it. She said that whatever will happen will happen although as family members it’s totally unacceptable for us.
“She said all she wanted to do was to stay alone,” said Sunee after her sister’s repeated public appeals for the safe return of her husband came to nothing.
Sombat told her sister that she wanted her husband to be cremated in Surin when his remains were found in Iraq.
Meanwhile, the president of the European Parliament Josep Borrell yesterday expressed his shock at the beheading of a British hostage in Iraq and said such “brutal terrorism” must be battled against relentlessly.
“I am profoundly shocked and disturbed at the hideous death of Kenneth Bigley. “This kind of brutal terrorism must be condemned unreservedly and fought against with every means at our disposal,” he declared in a statement.
