Bigley: UK can't confirm

2004-10-08 17:03

London - Reports of the death of Kenneth Bigley, a British national who was taken hostage in Iraq last month, "are not confirmed", a senior British government minister stressed on Friday.

"The reports are not confirmed," trade and industry secretary Patricia Hewitt, a member of Prime Minister Tony Blair's cabinet, told Sky News television.

"I have spoken to the foreign office, obviously," she added.

"Jack Straw (the foreign secretary) and his colleagues there are doing everything they can to try to find out whether the reports are true or not."

The foreign office said earlier that it was urgently investigating reports, first aired on Abu Dhabi television, that Bigley was dead.

A foreign office spokesperson said: "We are trying urgently to corroborate reports that Mr Bigley has been killed, but have not yet done so.

"We are in close touch with Mr Bigley's family at this difficult time.

"We cannot get into the business of negotiating with terrorists, with hostage takers, with these evil people who have inflicted such appalling suffering already on Ken Bigley and his family."

British diplomats were investigating the news report on Abu Dhabi Television, officials said.

Informed sources in Iraq confirmed reports

The TV station reported that informed sources in Iraq had confirmed the 62-year-old Liverpool-born engineer had been killed by the militant group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, which had kidnapped Bigley with his two American colleagues in Baghdad and later killed the two Americans.

It was not the first time that reports had appeared of Bigley's death. But a previous claim on an internet website that he had been killed was quickly dismissed as unreliable.

Bigley was kidnapped in Baghdad on September 16, by the militant Tawhid and Jihad group, led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Within days, fellow American captives Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong were dead.

But the captors appeared to use Bigley as a pawn, releasing videos of him pleading for his life and criticizing Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Bigley's Irish-born mother Lil, 86, who has been treated at a hospital emergency room several times during the crisis, was at the family home in Liverpool on Friday afternoon, with her other sons, Stan, 65, and Philip, 49. It was not known where Kenneth Bigley's son, Craig, 33, was.

A policewoman was stationed outside the house, with TV cameras and reporters waiting for more news in the street.

- AP