Internet becomes key weapon in terrorists’ arsenal
But the plight of the British construction worker and his two murdered American colleagues has also raised concerns about the tremendous ability of terrorists to set agendas in an internet era that makes their messages - even in the form of shocking beheading videos - all but impossible to stop.
By Thursday, Mr Bigley and his anguished family were well-known figures in Britain, protagonists in a grim drama orchestrated with chilling expertise by Islamic militants a world away.
Was the militants’ goal genuinely to win the release of women prisoners held in US run prisons - something they demanded but must have known was unlikely to occur? Or was it to spread despair in the West about the foundering occupation of Iraq? Perhaps, even more ambitiously, they aimed to further a clash of civilisations between East and West?
Either way, the horror and helpless rage they plainly hoped to inspire was widespread.
British TV stations repeatedly broadcast the desperate appeal by the white-haired Mr Bigley - punctuated by a plaintive “I don’t want to die” - in which he beseeched British Prime Minister Tony Blair to give in to the hostage-takers’ demands.
Mr Bigley’s family addressed the hostage-takers, with son Craig Bigley respectfully asking the captors, in a firm voice, to show mercy by releasing his father. His wife in Thailand also made a video plea.
The emergence of the Bigleys came days after the public learned of the beheadings of his two American colleagues, Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley - with footage of the first murder posted on the internet, on Islamic websites and on so-called “shock sites” intended to titillate or horrify willing visitors.
The internet has also been used over the last several years to deliver claims of responsibility for terrorist actions, to issue demands or threats, and in other ways.
While mainstream media have decided not to air the videos, images from the videos appear on the front pages of newspapers and as lead items on TV news shows, vividly describing what happened to the victims. Thus even people who didn’t seek the images out on the internet are exposed to them indirectly.
“The internet allows the terrorists to circumvent media editors and to influence events by directly creating a melodrama that can influence the emotions of the general public,” said Magnus Ranstorp, director for the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St Andrews in Scotland.
The taking of hostages to pressure government is not new, of course.
In the 1980s, Islamic militants in Lebanon used Western hostages such as Briton Terry Waite and American Terry Anderson as bargaining chips for political aims. But they were kept alive.
Three years ago, militants in Pakistan killed American journalist Daniel Pearl by slitting his throat - while filming the act.
Several months ago, the killers of American Nick Berg released footage showing his head being cut off. The same occurred this week with Mr Armstrong.
The beheadings provide “macabre theatre to whip up emotions and anti-war movements back home, to show the incompetence of governments to protect their own”, Mr Ranstorp said. “A series of kidnappings and killings like this can create a lot of pressure.”
Since May, insurgents have beheaded at least eight foreigners in Iraq.
The British government joined that of the United States and Iraq in ruling out direct negotiations with the hostage-takers.
But in July, the Philippines took its 51 peacekeeping troops out of the country to save one of its citizens from a threatened beheading.
The Daily Telegraph said Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - the man believed to have masterminded the kidnapping - had no real interest in seeing female prisoners released.
“The despairing appeals of Mr Bigley’s family, the media pressure on Tony Blair ‘to do something’, the helpless rage of the British public: all are grist to the terrorists’ mill,” it said.
