Released hostage 'delighted' to be home with family

British hostage Peter Moore today said he was “delighted” to have been freed from captivity in Iraq and was looking forward to “getting to know” his family again.

Mr Moore was released on Wednesday, 946 days after he was kidnapped in Iraq, and returned to the UK on Friday.

In a statement released today, through the British Foreign Office, he said: “I am obviously delighted to have returned to the UK and to have been reunited with my family.

“I am looking forward to spending the coming days and weeks catching up on all the things I’ve missed over the past two and a half years.

“I would therefore be grateful if we could be given the space and time we need to start to get to know one another again.”

The 36-year-old computer expert, from Lincoln in England, was seized along with his four British bodyguards by militants posing as police at the Iraqi finance ministry in May 2007.

The bodies of three of Mr Moore’s bodyguards – Alec MacLachlan, 30, from Llanelli, South Wales, Jason Swindlehurst, 38, from Skelmersdale, Lancashire, and Jason Creswell, 39, originally from Glasgow – were passed to UK authorities last year.

A fourth bodyguard, Alan McMenemy, 34, from Glasgow, is also believed to have been killed.

It has been widely reported that Mr Moore and his four bodyguards were taken over the border into Iran following their kidnap in May, 2007, where they were held by the country’s Revolutionary Guard.

Gordon Brown, speaking on BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show today. insisted there was no “direct evidence” that Mr Moore was held inside Iran.

The British Prime Minister said he had spoken to Mr Moore following his release but the pair had not discussed where the 36-year-old computer expert had been held.

He said: “I have talked to Peter Moore, we didn’t talk about that. We don’t have direct evidence from the Foreign Office of that.

“If that evidence becomes available then obviously we will share it with people.

“What happened to Peter Moore and the troubles that he had over more than two years and more are something that are a great problem for us because of the others who did not survive and the other one who we still don’t have information about.”