Kenneth Bigley

Kenneth Bigley

Kenneth John Bigley (22 April 1942 – 7 October 2004) was an English civil engineer who was kidnapped in the al-Mansour district of Baghdad, Iraq, on 16 September 2004, along with his colleagues Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong, both U.S. citizens. The three men were working for Gulf Supplies and Commercial Services, a Kuwaiti company working on reconstruction projects in Iraq. The men knew their home was being watched and realized they were in grave danger when their Iraqi house guard informed them he was quitting due to being threatened by militias for protecting American and British workers. However, Bigley and the two Americans decided it was worth the risk and continued to live in the house. All were subsequently beheaded.

On 18 September, the Tawhid and Jihad ("Oneness of God and Jihad") Islamic extremist group, led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, 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 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 attempted intervention of the Muslim Council of Britain 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 (CIA) has claimed that al-Zarqawi personally carried out the beheading of Armstrong.