Globetrotting engineer dreamed of settling down in Thailand

AFTER a career spent working across the globe and a life punctuated with heartache, Kenneth Bigley hoped Iraq would be his last posting before he settled into happy retirement at a new home in Bangkok.

The twice-married 62-year-old, who has one son and lost a second in a tragic road accident, had planned to finish a contract at a US military base within months, return to his Thai wife and prepare for the birth of his first grandchild. He talked of his plans for retirement on the night-time strolls he took around the streets of Mansour, the wealthy Baghdad suburb where he lived in a guarded two-storey house with fellow workers.

Those colleagues, Americans Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong, were beheaded by captors from the Tawhid and Jihad group.