Hostage's girlfriend believes he is still alive

The girlfriend of an aid worker feared executed in Iraq was today clinging to the hope that he might still be alive.

Madeleine Gerard said Salvatore Santoro, a 52-year-old Italian who had lived in London since he was 10, sent her a text message on Sunday saying: "I love you." And today, as pictures said to be of his body were shown on Arabic television, she refused to accept he was dead.

Speaking from their Notting Hill home she told the Evening Standard: "I just can't believe it. I have seen the pictures and from the way he is lying, I can't believe he's dead. He is such a wonderful man, gentle and generous."

Mr Santoro was reportedly executed after crashing through a roadblock at the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi on Monday.

After allegedly shooting him the killers propped him up against a sandbank - with a cloth covering his eyes - and took pictures.

Three Iraqi journalists who were invited to view the body were told by the militants that Mr Santoro, also known as Sam, had killed one of their men when he drove through the roadblock.

Ms Gerard, who had been with Mr Santoro for 16 years, received a phone call from his family in Naples to say he had been killed. "I got the call at 1am," she said. "I didn't sleep all night. All day I've been speaking to people and watching television."

Footage of his Italian passport and documents from the Italian embassy in Beirut seeking an Iraqi visa were broadcast on Arab television station Al Jazeera.

But as Italian investigators probed his reasons for being in Iraq, it emerged that he had applied for the visa claiming to work for an unregistered English charity.

It also emerged that Mr Santoro, who reportedly served time in a British prison for robbing a train in the Seventies, was not on the official list of residents in Iraq kept by the Italian embassy in Baghdad.

Ms Gerard said: "When I first met him he used to deal in luxury cars - Porsches and Ferraris. When I heard that he had driven through a roadblock that didn't surprise me. He always drove fast.

"I knew that he had had problems with the law. I remember a letter arriving from the probation service but I didn't ask him about it."