Kidnappers behead British hostage

LONDON -- Iraqi kidnappers have beheaded a British man who was seized last month, his family said yesterday, ending what one relative called ''three long weeks of agony."

A video sent to Abu Dhabi TV by a terrorist group affiliated with Al Qaeda showed Kenneth Bigley being murdered, according to witnesses who had seen it, including officials from the British government and members of his family.

The plight of Bigley, a 62-year-old engineer, had gripped Britain since he was taken from his home in central Baghdad along with two Americans, who met the same fate. Two previous videos, the latest of which aired last week, showed a shackled and tearful Bigley pleading for the British government to help spare his life.

''We can confirm that the family has now received absolute proof that Ken Bigley was executed by his captors," his brother Philip Bigley said at the family home in Liverpool. The family experienced ''three long weeks of waiting and three long weeks of agony."

''The horror of these final days will haunt us forever," he said, adding that he believed the government had done all it could to secure Bigley's release but that he feared his brother's fate may have been sealed ''from day one."

The disturbing images aired last week, which showed a tearful Bigley in a cage, clearly broken by his captors, came to embody a sense of vulnerability felt among Britons about the presence of British troops in the US-led war, which many here regard as a disastrous undertaking.

The grainy image of his suffering loomed over Prime Minister Tony Blair last week at the Labor Party conference. He was forced to defend his decision to support the war in Iraq even as the case upon which he took the country into the conflict was crumbling as information mounted that Saddam Hussein's regime had no weapons of mass destruction.

Bigley's fate also became an impassioned cause for moderate Muslims throughout Britain who had vociferously condemned the hostage-taking and expressed support and sympathy for the family. Earlier this month, the Muslim Council of Great Britain dispatched two representatives in a failed attempt to try to secure Bigley's release.

In a brief televised statement, Blair said: ''I feel desperately sorry for Ken Bigley, for his family who have behaved with extraordinary dignity and courage. I feel utter revulsion at the people who did this."

He said the actions of the kidnappers should not prevail over those ''wanting to make Iraq a better place."

Bigley was seized Sept. 16 by the Tawhid and Jihad group from a home where he lived with colleagues who were working on reconstruction projects. The two Americans kidnapped with him, Eugene Armstrong, 52, and Jack Hensley, 48, were beheaded within days.

Tawhid and Jihad is purportedly headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born militant trained in Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. The US says he is behind a campaign of assassination, suicide bombings, and hostage-takings in Iraq.

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who had just returned from Iraq, said the government had met with an intermediary and exchanged messages with the captors. He declined to provide any further detail other than to say the captors refused to abandon their demands for the release of female prisoners being held in Iraq.

While Bigley's family in Liverpool has supported the government during the crisis, his brother Paul, who lives in Amsterdam, has been sharply critical of Blair and the war in Iraq. He had urged Blair to help secure the release of the female prisoners as ''part of the due process of law."

Last night, he issued an antiwar statement through the Stop the War Coalition that stated ''Blair has blood on his hands."

Daud Abdullah, a Muslim cleric and director of the Muslim Council of Great Britain who had traveled to Iraq to appeal for Bigley's release, said, ''We are shocked and horrified and saddened and our heart-felt grief goes out to the family."

Asked whether he felt the beheading of Bigley would harm relations between Muslims and those of other faiths in Britain, Abudullah said, ''We were very active and condemned it at every turn and worked to achieve his release, and I think the British public understand that."

As news of the death broke, Bigley's relatives and close friends gathered at the family home. His Thai-born wife, Sombat, had made several appeals for mercy and tearfully described how he had been weeks away from his retirement when he would have joined her in Thailand.

Bigley's Irish-born mother, Lil, 86, had been hospitalized twice during the ordeal. The family had used her Irish ancestry to secure an Irish passport for Bigley, hoping to distance him from the British history of colonization in Iraq.

A US official said yesterday that there was credible information that Bigley had tried to escape with the aid of one of his captors.

The attempt failed and Bigley was killed a short time later, the Washington official said on condition of anonymity. There was no word on the fate of his captor. A Western official in Baghdad refused to talk about the escape attempt report.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.