Kenneth Bigley - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Kenneth John Bigley born Liverpool

Liverpool

Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, was a civil engineer

Civil engineer

A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering; the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructures while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing infrastructures that have been neglected.Originally, a...

who was kidnapped

Kidnapping

In criminal law, kidnapping is the taking away or transportation of a person against that person's will, usually to hold the person in false imprisonment, a confinement without legal authority...

in the al-Mansour district

Mansour district

Al Mansour district is one of nine administrative districts in Baghdad, Iraq. It is named after Abu Ja'far al-Mansur, the second Abbasid Caliph and founder of Baghdad....

of Baghdad, Iraq on 16 September 2004, along with his colleagues Jack Hensley

Jack Hensley

Jack Hensley was an American engineer from Marietta, Cobb County, Georgia, near Atlanta.While working in Iraq he was kidnapped and beheaded by Iraqi insurgents. His colleague, Eugene Armstrong, was beheaded the previous day...

and Eugene Armstrong, both U.S.

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

citizens. The three men were working for Gulf Supplies and Commercial Services, a Kuwaiti company working on reconstruction projects in Iraq. They knew their house was being watched and that they were in grave danger because their Iraqi house guard told them he was quitting because he had been threatened by militias that knew he was protecting Americans and British workers, but Bigley and the two Americans decided it was worth it to live with the danger. All were subsequently beheaded

Decapitation

Decapitation is the separation of the head from the body. Beheading typically refers to the act of intentional decapitation, e.g., as a means of murder or execution; it may be accomplished, for example, with an axe, sword, knife, wire, or by other more sophisticated means such as a guillotine...

.

On 18 September, the Tawhid and Jihad ("Oneness of God and Jihad

Jihad

Jihad , an Islamic term, is a religious duty of Muslims. In Arabic, the word jihād translates as a noun meaning "struggle". Jihad appears 41 times in the Quran and frequently in the idiomatic expression "striving in the way of God ". A person engaged in jihad is called a mujahid; the plural is...

") Islamic extremist group, led by Jordan

Jordan

Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...

ian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi ; October 30, 1966 – June 7, 2006), born Ahmad Fadeel al-Nazal al-Khalayleh was a Jordanian militant Islamist who ran a paramilitary training camp in Afghanistan...

, released a video of the three men kneeling in front of a Tawhid and Jihad banner. The kidnappers said they would kill the men within 48 hours if their demands for the release of Iraqi women prisoners held by coalition forces

Coalition of the willing

The term coalition of the willing is a post-1990 political phrase used to collectively describe participants in military or military-humanitarian interventions for which the United Nations Security Council cannot agree to mount a full UN peacekeeping operation...

were not met.

Armstrong was beheaded on 20 September when the deadline expired, Hensley 24 hours later, and Bigley over two weeks later, despite the intervention of the Muslim Council of Britain

Muslim Council of Britain

The Muslim Council of Britain is a self-appointed umbrella body for national, regional, local and specialist organisations and institutions from different ethnic and sectarian backgrounds within British Islamic society. It was established in 1997 to help Muslims, to increase education about the...

and the indirect intervention of the British government. Videos of the killings were posted on websites and blogs. Using voice-recognition technology, the Central Intelligence Agency

Central Intelligence Agency

The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...

(CIA) has claimed that al-Zarqawi personally carried out the beheading of Armstrong.

Before Bigley's death, it was claimed that the British Secret Intelligence Service

Secret Intelligence Service

The Secret Intelligence Service is responsible for supplying the British Government with foreign intelligence. Alongside the internal Security Service , the Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence Intelligence , it operates under the formal direction of the Joint Intelligence...

(commonly known as MI6) had launched a rescue operation that had allowed Bigley to escape for a brief period, but he was recaptured at a roadblock, taken back to the Tawhid and Jihad safehouse, and beheaded shortly afterwards.

Capture and negotiations for release

After Armstrong and Hensley were killed, the British government and media responded by turning Bigley's fate into Britain's major political issue during this period, leading to subsequent claims that the government had become a hostage to the situation, as President

President of the United States

The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....

Jimmy Carter

James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...

had arguably done during the 444-day Iran hostage crisis

Iran hostage crisis

The Iran hostage crisis was a diplomatic crisis between Iran and the United States where 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days from November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981, after a group of Islamist students and militants took over the American Embassy in Tehran in support of the Iranian...

in 1979-81.

British Foreign Secretary

Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs

The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, commonly referred to as the Foreign Secretary, is a senior member of Her Majesty's Government heading the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and regarded as one of the Great Offices of State...

Jack Straw

Jack Straw , British politician.Jack Straw may also refer to:* Jack Straw , English* "Jack Straw" , 1971 song by the Grateful Dead* Jack Straw by W...

and Prime Minister

Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the Head of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the Sovereign, to Parliament, to their political party and...

Tony Blair

Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...

personally contacted the Bigley family several times to assure them that everything possible was being done, short of direct negotiation with the kidnappers. It was also reported that a Special Air Service

Special Air Service

Special Air Service or SAS is a corps of the British Army constituted on 31 May 1950. They are part of the United Kingdom Special Forces and have served as a model for the special forces of many other countries all over the world...

(SAS) team had been placed on standby in Iraq in the event that a rescue mission might become possible.

The British government issued a statement saying it held no Iraqi women prisoners, and that the only two women known to be in U.S. custody were two so-called high-profile Iraqi scientists, British-educated Dr. Rihab Taha

Rihab Taha

Rihab Rashid Taha al-Azawi is an Iraqi microbiologist, dubbed Dr. Germ by United Nations weapons inspectors, who worked in Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program. A 1999 report commissioned by the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency named her as one of the...

and U.S.-educated Dr. Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash

Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash

Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash is an American-educated Iraqi scientist, dubbed Mrs. Anthrax and Chemical Sally. Ammash was number 53 on the Pentagon's list of the 55 most wanted, the five of hearts in the deck of Most wanted Iraqi playing cards, and the only woman to be featured.U.S. officials allege...

. Both women participated in Iraq's biological-weapons program, according to the United Nations

United Nations

The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...

weapons inspectorate.
News reports had earlier suggested that other Iraqi women were indeed being held in U.S. custody, but it is not known to what extent these reports were out-of-date by the time of Bigley's kidnap.

The Iraqi provisional government stated that Dr. Taha and Dr. Ammash could be released immediately, stressing that this was about to happen anyway, as no charges had been brought against the women.

Second and third videos

A second video was released on 22 September by Bigley's captors, this time showing Bigley pleading for his life and begging British Prime Minister Tony Blair to save him. Clearly exhausted and highly emotional, Bigley spoke directly to Blair: "I need you to help me now, [Mr.] Blair, because you are the only person on God's earth who can help me." The video was posted on several websites, blogs and shown on al Jazeera

Al Jazeera

Al Jazeera is an independent broadcaster owned by the state of Qatar through the Qatar Media Corporation and headquartered in Doha, Qatar...

television.

Around this time it emerged that Bigley's mother, Lil, 86 years old at the time of his abduction, had been born in Dublin and was therefore an Irish citizen; this meant Bigley himself was also an Irish citizen from birth. It was hoped this status would aid his release, as Ireland did not participate in the 2003 invasion of Iraq

2003 invasion of Iraq

The 2003 invasion of Iraq , was the start of the conflict known as the Iraq War, or Operation Iraqi Freedom, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq and toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein in 21 days of major combat operations...

, and the Irish Government issued Bigley an Irish passport in absentia
In absentia
In absentia is Latin for "in the absence". In legal use, it usually means a trial at which the defendant is not physically present. The phrase is not ordinarily a mere observation, but suggests recognition of violation to a defendant's right to be present in court proceedings in a criminal trial.In...

, which was shown on al-Jazeera television. Irish Labour Party spokesman on foreign affairs Michael D. Higgins made an appeal on al-Jazeera. Sinn Féin

Sinn Féin

Sinn Féin is a left wing, Irish republican political party in Ireland. The name is Irish for "ourselves" or "we ourselves", although it is frequently mistranslated as "ourselves alone". Originating in the Sinn Féin organisation founded in 1905 by Arthur Griffith, it took its current form in 1970...

leader Gerry Adams

Gerry Adams

Gerry Adams is an Irish republican politician and Teachta Dála for the constituency of Louth. From 1983 to 1992 and from 1997 to 2011, he was an abstentionist Westminster Member of Parliament for Belfast West. He is the president of Sinn Féin, the second largest political party in Northern...

made two appeals, one on 30 September and a second on 7 October.

On 24 September 50,000 leaflets prepared by the British Foreign Office

Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, commonly called the Foreign Office or the FCO is a British government department responsible for promoting the interests of the United Kingdom overseas, created in 1968 by merging the Foreign Office and the Commonwealth Office.The head of the FCO is the...

, asking for information about Bigley's whereabouts, were distributed in al-Mansour, the wealthy district of Baghdad Bigley had been living in. In his home city of Liverpool, Christian and Muslim religious and civic leaders held joint prayer sessions for his safe return.

The Muslim Council of Britain

Muslim Council of Britain

condemned the kidnapping, saying it was contrary to the teachings of the Qur'an

Qur'an

The Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...

and sent a senior two-man delegation to Iraq to negotiate on Bigley's behalf. Bigley's family, particularly his brother Paul, was successful, with the help of the Irish government, in eliciting support for Bigley's release from Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat

Yasser Arafat

Mohammed Yasser Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini , popularly known as Yasser Arafat or by his kunya Abu Ammar , was a Palestinian leader and a Laureate of the Nobel Prize. He was Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization , President of the Palestinian National Authority...

, King Abdullah of Jordan

Abdullah II of Jordan

Abdullah II ibn al-Hussein is the reigning King of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. He ascended the throne on 7 February 1999 after the death of his father King Hussein. King Abdullah, whose mother is Princess Muna al-Hussein, is a member of the Hashemite family...

, and Colonel Gadaffi of Libya

Muammar al-Gaddafi

Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar Gaddafi or "September 1942" 20 October 2011), commonly known as Muammar Gaddafi or Colonel Gaddafi, was the official ruler of the Libyan Arab Republic from 1969 to 1977 and then the "Brother Leader" of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya from 1977 to 2011.He seized power in a...

, who made public statements.

A third video was released on 29 September showing Bigley chained inside a small chicken-wire cage, wearing an orange boiler suit apparently intended to be reminiscent of those worn by inmates at the U.S. facility in Guantanamo Bay

Guantanamo Bay detainment camp

The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a detainment and interrogation facility of the United States located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. The facility was established in 2002 by the Bush Administration to hold detainees from the war in Afghanistan and later Iraq...

. In the video, Bigley again begged for his life, saying, "Tony Blair is lying. He doesn't care about me. I'm just one person."

On 1 October, another 100,000 leaflets asking for information about Bigley were distributed by the British Foreign Office in Baghdad.

Death

Despite the efforts to save him, Bigley was beheaded

Decapitation

on 7 October 2004. His death was first reported on Abu Dhabi

Abu Dhabi

Abu Dhabi , literally Father of Gazelle, is the capital and the second largest city of the United Arab Emirates in terms of population and the largest of the seven member emirates of the United Arab Emirates. Abu Dhabi lies on a T-shaped island jutting into the Persian Gulf from the central western...

television the following day. A multi-faith memorial service

Funeral

A funeral is a ceremony for celebrating, sanctifying, or remembering the life of a person who has died. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember the dead, from interment itself, to various monuments, prayers, and rituals undertaken in their honor...

, attended by Tony Blair and his wife Cherie

Cherie Blair

Cherie Blair , known professionally as Cherie Booth QC, is a British barrister working in the legal system of England and Wales. She is married to the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Tony Blair; the couple have three sons and one daughter...

, was held for him in Liverpool on 13 November. His body has not been recovered, although an alleged al-Qaeda militant awaiting trial for the 2003 Istanbul bombings

2003 Istanbul bombings

The 2003 Istanbul bombings were four truck bomb attacks carried out on November 15, 2003 and November 20, 2003, in Istanbul, Turkey, leaving 57 people dead, and 700 wounded. Several men have been convicted for their involvement.- First bombings :...

has claimed he is "buried in a ditch at the entrance to Fallujah

Fallujah

Fallujah is a city in the Iraqi province of Al Anbar, located roughly west of Baghdad on the Euphrates. Fallujah dates from Babylonian times and was host to important Jewish academies for many centuries....

".

The kidnappers made a film apparently showing Bigley's killing, and the tape was subsequently posted on Islamist websites and on one "shock" site

Shock site

A shock site is a website that is intended to be offensive, disgusting and/or disturbing to its viewers, containing materials of high shock value which is also considered distasteful and crude, and is generally of a pornographic, scatological, extremely violent, insulting, painful, profane, or...

. According to reporters who watched the film, Bigley was wearing an orange jumpsuit, and read out a statement, before one of the kidnappers stepped forward and cut off his head with a knife.

News reports published after Bigley's death suggested he had briefly managed to escape from the kidnappers with the help of two MI6 agents of Syria

Syria

Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....

n and Iraqi origin, who paid two of his captors to help him. The captors attempted to drive Bigley, who was carrying a gun and was disguised, out of town, the reports said, but he was spotted and recaptured at an insurgent checkpoint. The two captors were said to have been beheaded.

After his death, the British media

Mass media

Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...

were criticized for the amount of news

News

News is the communication of selected information on current events which is presented by print, broadcast, Internet, or word of mouth to a third party or mass audience.- Etymology :...

coverage his situation had been given. The same high-coverage news strategy

Strategy

Strategy, a word of military origin, refers to a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal. In military usage strategy is distinct from tactics, which are concerned with the conduct of an engagement, while strategy is concerned with how different engagements are linked...

was notably absent in the case of Margaret Hassan

Margaret Hassan

Margaret Hassan was an Irish aid worker who had worked in Iraq for many years until she was abducted and murdered by unidentified kidnappers in Iraq in 2004, at the age of 59...

, the Irish-born aid worker, who held Irish, British and Iraqi citizenship, who was kidnapped on 19 October 2004 and killed two weeks later.

Columnist and author Mark Steyn

Mark Steyn

Mark Steyn is a Canadian-born writer, conservative-leaning political commentator, and cultural critic. He has written five books, including America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It, a New York Times bestseller...

had his column pulled from the British Daily Telegraph on 11 October 2004 when in it he stated that Bigley's last words "Tony Blair has not done enough for me" would not be high up on his list of final utterances.

In October 2004, during an 18-night stint at London's Hammersmith Apollo

Hammersmith Apollo

Hammersmith Apollo is a major entertainment venue located in Hammersmith, London. Designed by Robert Cromie in Art Deco style, it opened in 1932 as the Gaumont Palace cinema, being re-named the Hammersmith Odeon in 1962...

, the Scottish comedian and actor Billy Connolly

Billy Connolly

William "Billy" Connolly, Jr., CBE is a Scottish comedian, musician, presenter and actor. He is sometimes known, especially in his native Scotland, by the nickname The Big Yin...

was criticised for making jokes about the hostage Bigley. Shortly after Connolly joked about the future killing of the hostage and touched on the subject of Bigley’s young Thai wife, Bigley was beheaded in Iraq. Connolly claims he was misquoted. He has declined to clarify what he actually said, claiming that the context was as important as the precise words used. However, it was reported that Connolly actually said "When you hear about Bigley in the news, don't you wish they would just get on with, it?" Connolly's routine has since been defended as an attack on the prurient media coverage of the incident, rather than a tasteless comment at the expense of the Bigleys.

Torture-chamber discovery

The chicken-wire cage Bigley was filmed in was found in November 2004 by U.S. troops in a house in the Iraqi town of Fallujah during the Second Battle of Fallujah. The U.S. military stated that, in 20 houses, it found paraphernalia

Paraphernalia

In modern usage, the word paraphernalia most commonly refers to apparatus, equipment, or furnishing used in or necessary for a particular activity as in, "Beth is such an avid sports fan that her walls are covered with baseball paraphernalia"....

associated with hostage-holding and torture

Torture

Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...

, including shackles, blood-stained walls, and a torture chamber.

External links

Ken Bigley's wife mourns the loss of her husband - BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
Profile:Kenneth Bigley, BBC News, 10 October 2004
"Theatre of terror", by Jason Burke, The Observer, 21 November 2004
"Bigley beheaded after MI6 rescue backfired", by Hala Jaber and Ali Rifat, The Sunday Times, 10 October 2004
"The other prisoners" by Luke Harding, The Guardian, 20 May 2004
"Ken Bigley's hostage cage 'found'", no byline, The Daily Telegraph, 22 November 2004
"The final battle" by Peter Beaumont, The Observer, 14 November 2004
"Bigley body claims investigated" BBC News, 22 April 2006
"Spectator apology for 'disproportionate grief' for Mr Bigley" BBC News, 16 October 2004
"Ken Bigley killed: Your reaction." BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

. Thursday 14 October 2004.

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Capture and negotiations for release

Second and third videos

Death

Torture-chamber discovery

See also

External links