Baghdad hostage Peter Moore: kidnappers shot Britons as they tried to escape

By Colin Freeman 730AM GMT fourteen March 2010

Mr Moore, an IT consultant, was abducted along with his bodyguards from the method of financial construction in Baghdad in May 2007 Photo PA

In an talk with The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Moore expel disbelief on the widely-held speculation that the Shia belligerent organisation that abducted the men had on purpose murdered them in sequence to step up vigour for a restrained exchange.

Instead, he pronounced he had been told that dual of the guards - Jason Creswell and Jason Swindlehurst - were gunned down as they attempted to rush a belligerent protected residence where they were being held. A third, Alec MacLachlan, was killed after he attempted to grab a gun that his captors left lying on a table, whilst the fourth, Alan McMenemy, died when his captors thought that security forces were scheming to raid their hide-out. They are thought to have shot Mr McMenemy in be scared as they were about to flee, usually to find thereafter that the raid was a fake alarm. Mr McMenemy is the usually one of the 4 guards whose physique has not been recovered, nonetheless the Foreign Office believes he as well is dead.

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The comments by Mr Moore are the initial time that any one close to the kidnapping has addressed publicly the long-standing poser of because the militants obliged for the kidnapping, the League of the Righteous, chose to kill the bodyguards. It had prolonged been insincere that as the League was perfectionist the recover of a little of the members arrested by bloc forces in Iraq, it would be in the interests to keep all five men alive as negotiate chips. One speculation had been that as the 4 bodyguards were all ex-soldiers, the militants competence have executed them as "mercenaries".

However, Mr Moore, who outlayed majority time hold alone, has right away told British officials that he schooled of his companions" predestine in a conspicuous face-to-face assembly with Laith al-Khazali, one of the dual comparison League leaders his captors had demanded the recover of. Mr Khazali was liberated in Jun last year, as piece of negotiations that led to the handing over the bodies of Mr MacLachlan, Mr Creswell and Mr Swindlehurst in following months. However, notwithstanding being roughly positively monitored closely by bloc forces, he was means to afterwards revisit Mr Moore twice in his cell in a belligerent protected house, once in Aug and again in October.

"I initial met Laith in Baghdad in Aug and he introduced himself to me - he spoke utterly great English," pronounced Mr Moore. "It was at that time that he told me that about the others being dead. I asked him how they had died and he gave me a kind of overview, observant that it was as a outcome of them perplexing to shun or raids being carried out.

"Laith"s series dual man, who was essentially the man who abducted me, after told me that Alec MacLachlan had attempted to yield out of the room where he was being hold to get a gun from the room nextdoor. That was because they had killed him."

Mr Moore, 36, combined that he subsequently schooled that Jason Creswell and Jason Swindlehurst had been machine-gunned in the travel as they attempted to flee. In the second assembly in October, Mr Khazali additionally told him that the League was formulation to do a serve understanding in sell for the recover from control of his hermit Qais al-Khazali, a associate militant. Both brothers had been arrested by bloc forces in 2007 on guess of orchestrating the kidnapping and attempted murder of five US soldiers from the holy city of Kerbala in southern Iraq.

"Laith al-Khazali pronounced that there was usually one physique left - that of Alan McMenemy - and that the plan was to recover me and palm over Alan"s physique in lapse for Qais"s freedom," pronounced Mr Moore.

Sure enough, Qais al-Khazali was expelled by the US troops only days after Mr Moore"s own recover in Dec last year, nonetheless bloc officials insist he was due to be liberated any way as piece of an Iraqi government-led domestic settlement process. Mr McMenemy"s physique has not nonetheless been handed over it is accepted his wife, Roseleen, hopes he competence nonetheless infer to be alive.

It stays probable that Laith al-Khazali could have been lying to Mr Moore about how the alternative hostages met their deaths in sequence to equivocate giving the sense that they had killed the men in cold blood.

However, The Sundayhas been told that alternative justification - not finished open for security reasons - indicates that they were revelation the truth. It would additionally insist because the organisation kept the men"s deaths tip for a prolonged duration of time - had they executed them as an ultimatum, they would majority expected have publicised each killing.

"In the deficiency of any alternative information, I had no reason to disbelief what he (Laith al-Khazali) was saying," pronounced Mr Moore. He combined that as the kidnappers creatively thought that he as well was of a troops credentials - they suspected him of being an comprehension troops officer - he additionally would have been unessential if the organisation had motionless to kill them as "mercenaries".

"I do not think they only took them out and shot them. They believed I was a little kind of troops comprehension as well, so they would have finished that to me too."

Despite his horrific ordeal, Mr Moore combined that he had found Laith al Khazali a friendly figure. "I got on with him pretty well, we spoke for a integrate of hours and he told me about his family and his young kids and his time in US custody, when he seems to have been treated with colour utterly well. He was repelled to see that I was being hold in bondage and systematic them to be taken off me. It competence receptive to advice strange, but he was the sort of man I could even have been friends with in alternative circumstances."

Mr Moore, an IT consultant, was abducted along with his bodyguards from the method of financial construction in Baghdad in May 2007. His comment of how he believes his colleagues died is accepted to have been upheld to Scotland Yard, that will benefaction justification to an inquisition in due course. Both Qais and Laith al-Khazali are right away thought to be in Iran.