DUBAI/LONDON, 11 October 2004 — A video tape posted on the Internet yesterday showed British hostage Kenneth Bigley making a final appeal to the British government to meet his captors’ demands before he was beheaded by a militant group in Iraq.
“Here I am again Mr (Tony) Blair and your government, very, very close to the end of my life. You don’t appear to have done anything to help me. I’m not a difficult person. I am a simple man who just wants to live a simple life with his family,” the 62-year-old engineer said before masked men beheaded him.
“These people, their patience is wearing very, very thin and they are very serious people. Please, please give them what they require, the freedom of the women in Abu Ghraib prison. If you do this the problem is solved,” said Bigley, who was sitting on the floor with militants standing behind him.
Insurgent sources in Iraq had said the Briton escaped briefly from his captors shortly before they killed him in a town southwest of Baghdad on Thursday.
Bigley, disguised in an Arab robe and headdress, was helped to flee by two of the kidnappers who accepted a large sum of money from a Syrian and an Iraqi who had penetrated the group on behalf of MI6, the Sunday Times said, citing a spokesman for the hostage-takers. The 62-year-old civilian engineer was reportedly bundled into a car last Wednesday and driven toward an area under the control of US forces near Latifiya, southwest of Baghdad. But after only five minutes the car was stopped by other members of the Tawhid wal Jihad insurgent group which held Bigley hostage. He was returned to his captors and beheaded on Thursday, the paper said.
Bigley was kidnapped on Sept. 16 along with two Americans who were beheaded soon after the abductions by the Tawhid and Jihad group led by Al-Qaeda ally Al-Zarqawi, which demanded the release of women prisoners from US jails in Iraq. “To the British people, more than ever I need your help, more than ever I need your voices, to go out into the streets and demand a better life for the females and women who are in prison in Abu Ghraib,” said Bigley who was wearing an orange jump suit like those worn by detainees in US prisons. “I can’t say a great deal more. I’ve said so many things to you at so many different times. All I can tell you now is that I have very short time left,” he said.
The four-minute tape, posted on websites showed militants holding up the Briton’s severed head and then placing it on top of the corpse. The title shown at the beginning of the video issued by the group read: “The slaughter of the British hostage who was not helped by Blair or his people despite being given enough time.”
Meanwhile, more than one in three Britons say Blair should resign over the Iraq war but a clear majority do not blame him for the beheading of Bigley, an opinion poll showed yesterday. In the first comprehensive sounding taken since the death of Bigley, the YouGov poll in The Mail yesterday showed 36 percent of voters wanted Blair to step down.
But 65 percent said he was not to blame for Bigley’s beheading by militants in Iraq, while 59 percent believed Blair’s Labour government had done everything it could to secure the engineer’s release.
