'His body may be lying in a US fridge'

Ken Bigley's brother Paul, who will be honoured in Dublin tonight, talks to Isabel Conway about the family's ongoing ordeal as they try to recover the beheaded hostage's body

It is now six months since Kenneth Bigley (62), a jovial civil engineer on his last contract in Iraq before retiring to start a fruit farm with his Thai wife in one of Thailand's northern provinces, was beheaded by terrorists after an ordeal which horrified the world.

Later today his younger brother Paul will remember Ken - "a typical Irish Liverpudlian, he loved life, a pint and a joke" - in Dublin, where he is among the recipients of the Best of Irish awards, to mark the family's strength and dignity and his own unrelenting campaign to secure his brother's release.

As Paul prepares to thank the Irish people for their extraordinary support - "sackfuls of the most beautifully worded letters and Mass cards arrived at our Irish-born mother's home and people from Ireland deluged Arabic web sites with pleas for Ken's release" - he says they are "disappointed and disillusioned" by the failure of the British authorities to help them in their continuing efforts to recover Ken's body.

"I have reason to believe that Ken's body may miraculously appear in the near future," says Paul Bigley. "That might be quite beneficial for British Prime Minister Tony Blair as it would deflect a bit of attention in the run-up to the elections. And let us not forget it would provide a nice photo opportunity for him to call around to our family home in a staunch Labour voting area of Liverpool.

"For months we have been ignored and it was made clear that the business of recovering my brother's remains was very low on the list of priorities. Then out of the blue last week we heard that two Scotland Yard detectives have been dispatched with some haste, it appears, to the US equipped with new DNA material for a possible identification match."

Paul Bigley (55), who runs his own engineering firm in The Netherlands, believes that the kidnappers' demands could have been met without the British government losing face, despite the fact that the ringleader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, is one of the world's most ruthless terrorists.

Paul argues that the interim Iraqi government could have released the two high-profile women prisoners, Rihab Taha and Huda Ammash, allegedly involved in Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons programmes. Having been held for 18 months without trial and already due to be bailed by the courts, there was a reasonable chance they could have been released from detention had the US government not intervened, supported by the British authorities.

To Blair and his Foreign Secretary Jack Straw it was a clearly a matter of principle. Ransoms should not be paid to kidnappers nor should prisoners be released at their bidding. Blair had already freed dozens of convicted IRA killers, Paul Bigley reasoned at the height of his campaign to have his brother's life saved, while in Iraq no one had laid any charges against the two women.

"I did all I could to help but in the end it wasn't enough," he reflects. "There was nobody I wasn't willing to chase; we got them all aboard, from the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to Col Muammar Gadafy, the Libyan leader; anyone I could think of with influence in the Middle East and who had opposed the occupation of Iraq was fair game. People asked me afterwards how I managed to contact the great, the good and the not-so-good and I told them that a telephone book and a couple of media contacts could work wonders."

Paul says that the family will always be grateful to the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern who also made a heartfelt plea for Ken Bigley's release and for the speedy issuing of an Irish passport. "We really hoped that this would have been Ken's passport to freedom and I know for sure that after the issue of the passport things were moving along, and it looked as if my brother just might have got out alive."

After the memorial service held in Liverpool on November 13th to celebrate Ken's life, his mother Lil (86) shook hands with Blair and offered him a sandwich, saying he must be hungry after coming straight to the Cathedral from an overnight flight from Washington. Minutes later she whispered to this reporter: "My heart is broken but I have to keep strong for the sake of my family; Ken is gone now and nothing the Prime Minister can do or say will bring him back to me; he was the finest son a mother could have." Lil Bigley, nee Kelly, from Ticknock, Co Dublin, and her three surviving sisters, are typical of a generation of resilient Irish women who emigrated to Britain determined to give their families a better life.

As the Bigley family struggled to comprehend Ken's plight last September, they were split over the British Foreign Office handling of the situation. The eldest brother Stan (69) and Philip (49) decided to remain silent as requested and allow "the experts" to take over. But Paul, who admits that he has always been the "wild card" of the family, became frustrated at the lack of progress and decided to address broader issues - such as the urgency of reviewing British policy in Iraq.

In reality, while using his own good Middle East contacts he had built up during 30 years working for oil companies, he also decided to give the terrorists what they wanted - a big stick to beat Blair, and to be seen to drive a wedge between the British-US alliance in Iraq. It was obvious that he would have said and done anything that might have helped to free his brother.

When the time came to remember Ken Bigley at Liverpool's Cathedral, the Bigley family was re-united. In the moments before Tony Blair and his wife Cherie, who is from Liverpool, arrived at the private reception in Our Lady's chapel followed by Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, Philip Bigley warned those of us present that political remarks or debate with Blair would not be welcomed.

Paul recalls: "I was still trembling with emotion after paying a public tribute to Ken; the public had gone their way and more than 100 family and dignitaries were invited into our Lady's Chapel for refreshments. On the spur of the moment I went up to the Prime Minister and told him that I had no personal grudge against him. It was his handling of the Iraq issue that I was against, I said. Tony Blair replied: 'I understand, it's quite all right Paul'. Later, I approached Jack Straw and I also thanked him for attending and said I wanted to apologise if I had offended him in any way personally."

Jack Straw appeared relieved, he recalls. "He smiled, 'not at all, no offence taken'." Then, just as Paul was about to take his leave, he says the Foreign Secretary pulled him to one side and whispered: "Oh by the way Paul, you have a rapport with the media. Do you think the next time you are on air you could mention this fact, you know, apologise, because Mr Blair is rather concerned about his re-election chances."

"I was flabbergasted," says Paul. "The way I see it was, I had offered him the hand of friendship and he bit it, and in a cathedral of all places."

Commenting, a spokesman for the Foreign Office told The Irish Times: "The Foreign Secretary thanked him for what he said but appreciated pressures that he and his family were under, and added that if at any stage Mr Bigley felt able to reflect these sentiments in public he [Foreign Secretary] would welcome it." Jack Straw, he added, "had nothing but respect for the extraordinary dignity and courage of the Bigley family through this indescribable ordeal".

Paul believes the six-month mystery of the whereabouts of his brother's body is close to being solved. But his younger brother Philip is now said to be "very displeased" at the lack of co-operation.

"We appealed for another leaflet drop in Iraq to find Ken's body; Philip was very annoyed and disappointed when the British authorities said: we are afraid we can't do that; we have other priorities now," says Paul. "We also askedfor his personal possessions, which were in his home in Baghdad, to be returned. That request has also fallen on deaf ears so far.

"It's my personal belief that Ken's body may be lying in a fridge in the US and we could be hearing an announcement shortly that they have succeeded in identifying him," claims Paul. "Recovering Ken's body at this time would be opportune for Blair and company.

"People have short memories. I know Ken has been put on the back burner, we accepted the inevitability of that. But there are a lot of people in Liverpool who are angry at having been lied to by this government. If I am wrong and Ken was blown to pieces, then I will apologise. But they are not going to try to use the body of my brother to distract from the real issue. Mr Blair should not be re-elected. This whole thing started with weapons of mass destruction which never existed. He has never apologised to all the Mums and Dads of soldiers who have been killed and he never apologised to the Bigley family."

According to Paul, whose information has come from British police sources, an Iraqi, described as a intermediary by embassy officials in Baghdad, claimed to know the whereabouts of Ken's body prior to the storming of Falluja but was too frightened to pinpoint the place. "We know for an absolute fact that there are photographs in London of the crime scene - where Ken was killed, blood samples, remaining food in the house, this torture chamber place; my brother Phil has seen the photographs but they are shrouded in secrecy for some reason."

He also wants an independent pathologist to be appointed who could view the videos of the execution to establish whether the hostage had indeed been killed by decapitation or, as Paul Bigley is inclined to believe, was either unconscious or had been shot dead in the escape bid already before the beheading.

Too many unanswered questions remain, the family believes. "Where is our Ken, haven't we suffered enough, if he is in a fridge somewhere, how long has been there and why couldn't a positive identification been carried out long before now?" They informed the Foreign Office months ago that identifying Ken should not be difficult.

"Ken's left leg contained almost as much titanium as flesh due to a very serious car accident he was in back in the 1980s. All they had to do was contact the hospital in Weston Super Mere, where his records are, and compare them with the X-rays of whichever body they think is his. I even offered to go and pick up the records myself. If he is buried in some backyard outside Falluja the presence of titanium can easily be detected. It can even by picked up by satellite," says Paul.

The Foreign Office spokesman says: "UK authorities are making every effort to recover the body of Ken Bigley. We continue to work closely with the Iraqi and American authorities over the case and remain in touch with the Bigley family."

Not having a body to bury has taken a huge emotional toll on Ken's widow, his aged mother and the rest of the family. His widow, Sombat, who lives in Thailand, has been forced to ask for financial help from the family. Without a body, no death certificate can yet be issued and in theory it could take years before a life insurance settlement is paid out and for closure on Ken Bigley's financial affairs.