Family appeals for body of slain UK Iraq hostage

LONDON - The family of a Briton, taken hostage and beheaded by insurgents in Iraq, have revealed they received two videos from the militants during his captivity and appealed for the return of his body for a formal burial.

The two private videos of 62-year-old Ken Bigley were relayed to his family through an intermediary in Baghdad during the three weeks he was held hostage last year by kidnappers led by Iraq's al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

"We received some private videos that were channelled through the embassy in Baghdad and through the Foreign Office and to ourselves," his brother Phil said in comments to BBC's Panorama programme released on Wednesday.

The first video showed Bigley looking relaxed and clean shaven, vastly different to the "terror videos" released by the militants to TV networks which showed him wearing an orange jumpsuit, chained and squatting in a cage.

However, the second video showed the construction engineer looking terrified and pleading for his life.

"It switched everything round and it brought us full circle again," Phil Bigley said. "This was more of a definite horror and a reality that there's no way out of this, there's absolutely no way out."

"And the Foreign Office asked if we'd want to respond to that and I can recall that we sat and decided what more can we say? How many times can you beg?"

On the programme, the first time they have spoken about their ordeal, they said they just wanted Bigley's body back.

"The sad part is, we haven't had a burial," his mother Lil said. "We can't find his body. And that would really put an end to the sad story."

- REUTERS