World News 11-10-2004 Ken Bigley`s Last Message who: Kidnapped British civilian Kenneth Bigley what: Seen pleading for his life one last time in video of beheading where: Iraq when: Yesterday snippet: "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," says The Scotsman. "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." "Here I am again Mr Blair and your Government, very, very close to the end of my life. You don`t appear to have done anything to help me," Mr Bigley told the camera, quoted in this morning`s Mirror. "I am not a difficult person. I am a simple man who just wants to live a simple life with his family. 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." Moments later, the video shows a hooded man saw off Mr Bigley`s head and hold it aloft while other men cheer and wave their guns. "A day of mourning has taken place in his home city of Liverpool and a two minutes silence was held at noon," says the BBC. "Mr Bigley is thought to have escaped for around half an hour, with the help of one of his captors. He was recaptured in farmland near the town of Latifiya, south-west of Baghdad." "The British Foreign Office refused to discuss a newspaper report that two of his captors were paid by British intelligence to help him escape," says The Guardian, "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." [... more]

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