Briton Kenneth Bigley's Final Plea Before Decapitated

Read here full article by Karen McVeigh

( News Compass has made an editorial decision not to post any link to the video of beheading of captives)

11th October 2004

by Karen McVeigh

THE Iraqi militants who murdered Kenneth Bigley delivered a final affront to his memory yesterday, when they released a videotape of him appealing to the Prime Minister for help moments before he was decapitated.

Up to the very end, his kidnappers offered the 62-year-old civil engineer no compassion, forcing him to make a final statement to the camera before his brutal execution.

During the macabre five-minute tape, posted on an Islamic website last night, he is seen pleading that he wanted to "live a simple life" and asking Tony Blair to meet the kidnappers demand to free women prisoners being held in Iraq.

One of his captors vowed to "continue to slaughter the infidels" until women prisoners are freed.
Mr Bigley, who was working on an American base in Iraq, was taken from his Baghdad home on 16 September along with Americans Eugene Armstrong, 52, and Jack Hensley, 48.

Both Americans were beheaded within days but Mr Bigley was held for three weeks, forced to become a mouthpiece for his kidnappers in a political game which brought world-wide revulsion and condemnation.

The tape of Mr Bigley’s killing comes after Iraq foreign minister Hoshiyar Zebari said it was "likely" that the Liverpudlian had briefly escaped.

According to Iraqi sources, he was free for up to 12 hours after being helped to evade his guards by one of the group holding him hostage.

However, he was recaptured after taking a wrong turn and killed by the fanatical Tawhid and Jihad organisation, the extremist group which has claimed responsibility for numerous suicide attacks and beheadings of Westerners, one rebel said.

The horror of Mr Bigley’s last moments will cause fresh anguish to his family already struggling to come to terms with the atrocity.

Prayers were said for them yesterday at church services in their home city of Liverpool and across the country, and floral tributes piled up outside his mother Lil’s home in Walton and at St Mary’s church only yards away.

Hundreds gathered at Liverpool’s Metropolitan Cathedral where the Right Rev Jonathan Jones offered sympathy to the family and urged people to "rise above the violent and barbaric killing".
The tape, sent to Abu Dhabi television last week, appeared on the internet two days after Mr Bigley’s family said it had proof that he was dead.

His body has not been found.

It showed Mr Bigley, dressed in an orange prison-style jumpsuit, seated in front of seven armed, hooded men. Behind them was a banner of the Tawhid and Jihad group.

Mr Bigley made a brief statement, saying: "I am not a difficult person. I am a simple man who wants to live a simple life." He then told Blair that "more than ever I need your help."

"Here I am again, Mr Blair," Mr Bigley added. "Very, very close to the end of my life, you do not appear to have done anything at all to help me." Mr Bigley said his captors patience was "wearing thin, and they are very very serious people."

In a calm voice, he continued: "I beg you ... British people, more then 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."

One of the hooded men then accused the British government of lying when it said it did not know how to contact them. He finished by saying "because Britain is not serious in releasing our sisters, there is nothing further for this malicious Briton than the sword."

Without warning, the speaker drew a knife from his belt, and three of the others grabbed Mr Bigley.

The men pushed him to the floor and cut off his head, which the killer then lifted up.

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