IRAQ: The militants who held Kenneth Bigley yesterday rebutted suggestions that the Briton briefly escaped before his murder last week writes Jack Fairweather in Baghdad.
A man claiming to represent the Tawhid and Jihad group led by terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said Mr Bigley had been killed in retaliation for American raids in the area, and the British government's failure to respond to the kidnappers' demands.
The man said the capture of Sheikh Saleh al-Janabi, a leading tribal figure in Latifiya where Mr Bigley was held, forced militants to kill the 62-year-old Briton.
"It is not true that Mr Kenneth escaped. We executed him because the Americans arrested Sheikh Saleh Janabi," the man told the Daily Telegraph in a farmhouse in Latifiya, 20 miles south of Baghdad. Last week 2,000 US and Iraqi troops swept through the Sunni-dominated area around Latifiya, forcing insurgents on to the backfoot.
Mr Bigley was beheaded on Thursday afternoon and video footage of his murder given to an Arabic television station. Footage appeared on an Islamic website yesterday showing the hostage's final moments.
Mr Bigley made a brief statement before his murder, saying: "I am not a difficult person. I am a simple man who wants to live a simple life." He then told Mr Blair that "more than ever I need your help".
"Here I am again, Mr Blair," Mr Bigley said. "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 "is wearing thin, and they are very, very serious people." Mr Bigley was seized on September 16th in his Baghdad home along with two Americans, who were beheaded within days.
Yesterday Iraqi police said Mr Bigley's remains had been found at 8.00 p.m. yesterday beside a river flowing through the centre of the town.
His body was then handed over to US forces, police officials said.
Latifiya was all but deserted yesterday as locals fled ahead of feared reprisals by Iraqi and US forces. The area is one of a number of terrorist strongholds that US and Iraqi forces have vowed to pacify ahead of elections scheduled for January.
Meanwhile, more than one in three Britons say the Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, should resign over the Iraq war but a clear majority do not blame him for the beheading of Mr Bigley, an opinion poll showed yesterday.
In the first comprehensive sounding taken since the death of Mr Bigley, the YouGov poll in the Mail on Sunday showed 36 per cent of voters wanted Mr Blair to step down.
But 65 per cent said he was not to blame for Mr Bigley's murder by militants in Iraq, while 59 per cent believed Mr Blair's Labour government had done everything it could to secure the engineer's release.
"They are not blaming the government for Bigley at all. Blair's problem is trust and what has happened in Iraq generally," said Mr Peter Kellner of YouGov.
Mr Bigley's home city of Liverpool staged a day of mourning for him on Saturday and Mr Blair rang the family to offer his condolences.