British hostage pleads for life

A British hostage appeared on a video posted on an Islamic website weeping and pleading for his life as Iraq’s leader and US officials stifled reports a high-profile female Iraqi weapons scientist could be released from jail soon - as demanded by his captors.

The man who identified himself as Kenneth Bigley appealed to British Prime Minister Tony Blair to intervene. “I think this is possibly my last chance,” he said. “I don’t want to die.”

The video came after a militant group believed to be led by Jordanian-born terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi decapitated Americans Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley, who were abducted along with Bigley from their Baghdad home last week.

Videotape purportedly showing Hensley’s beheading surfaced on a website yesterday.

The blindfolded man who was killed wore an orange jumpsuit and sat in front of five masked militants dressed in black. The sunburst banner of Tawhid and Jihad hung from the wall.

One of the men read out a statement, before a militant pulled a knife and attacked the man from behind and sliced his head off. The head was then placed on top of the body.

Meanwhile, another internet statement purportedly by a group that claimed to have kidnapped two Italian aid workers in Iraq said yesterday it had killed the women. The site used by the Islamic Jihad Organisation has not been regularly used by Iraqi militants to relay their statements.

The Italian Foreign Ministry’s Crisis Unit in Rome said it was trying to check the authenticity of the claim.

Meanwhile, suicide attackers struck key diplomatic and commercial centres of the Iraqi capital yesterday, while US tanks and troops stormed into the Sadr City slum, a stronghold of Shiite militants, to hunt for weapons – only to come under a barrage of mortar and automatic weapons fire.

The violence across Baghdad left at least 17 dead and 100 injured and underscored the inability of US and Iraqi forces to bring security to even the most vital areas of the capital.

The confusion over the fate of female detainees began when a Justice Ministry official announced Rihab Rashid Taha, a scientist who became known as “Dr Germ” for helping Iraq make weapons out of anthrax, would be freed because she was no longer a threat to national security.

The US and Iraqi officials found themselves at odds over who had custody over the two women prisoners, with Iraqi national security adviser Qassim Daoud saying they were in the hands of Iraqi security forces and that “Iraqi judges decided to release them because they didn’t have any evidence”.

But a US embassy spokesman disagreed, saying the pair “are in our legal and physical custody”.

Interim Iraqi prime minister Ayad Allawi told the Associated Press that his government has begun reviewing the status of its detainees, including the two female scientists, “Dr Germ” and “Mrs Anthrax” for their involvement in Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons programmes.

But he said the review process had nothing to do with the current hostage situation and had started weeks ago in Iraq.