Three agonising weeks as he suffered

For three agonising weeks, the world waited to see if Kenneth Bigley would live or die.

When he was first kidnapped, along with two Americans from their house in Baghdad, his fate seemed sealed.

His captors were the Tawhid and Jihad group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a bloodthirsty outfit more interested in murder than ransoms or negotiation.

Four days after they seized them, the men's captors beheaded one of the Americans, Eugene Armstrong, and broadcast his murder on the internet. The next day they killed Jack Hensley the same way.

Mr Bigley would be next, they said, unless Iraqi women prisoners were released from the US-administered prisons in Iraq.

But for whatever reason they did not kill him immediately - and for a fortnight the 62-year-old civil engineer's life hung in the balance.

Twice he pleaded for his life. Begging Tony Blair to help save him, he said: "I need you to be compassionate as you always said you were. Help me, help me live so I can see my wife and my son, my mother and my brothers. I don't want to die. I don't deserve it." Halfway through the 11-minute statement he stopped, sobbing and wiping his forehead, before he said: "I need you to help me, Mr Blair. You are the only person now on God's earth I can speak to."

The agonies of his family were played out in a very public arena. They made numerous pleas for his life: even his 86-year-old mother Lil made a public appeal in front of the television cameras, saying: "Please show mercy to Ken and send him home to me alive. His family need him. I need him."

The strain proved too much, Mrs Bigley was taken to hospital after collapsing at her home.

As the drama dragged on, the public learned every detail about Mr Bigley's life, from his upbringing in Liverpool to the tragedy which scarred his life.

Born near Goodison Park, home of his beloved Everton, Mr Bigley had three brothers - Stanley, Paul and Philip.

He married his childhood sweetheart Margaret and in 1967 showed the first signs of passion for travel, moving to Australia on a ? 10 assisted passage offered to skilled British immigrants.

Mr Bigley first worked as an engineer in Victoria where the couple's first son, Craig, now 33 and due to become a father in February, was born.

The family moved on to New Zealand, but pangs of homesickness and the offer of a job as managing director of an engineering firm drew them back to Merseyside.

Later, the couple bought two supermarkets in Hoylake on the Wirral but were left in shock when a suspected thief threatened Margaret with a hammer.

With his wife unsettled, the family moved to Somerset and bought a pub, The Crown Inn, in East Huntspill, near Taunton.

But in 1986, their 17-yearold son Paul was knocked

down by a lorry as he cycled to bank his pocket money.

Mr Bigley was forced to make the devastating decision to turn off his son's life support machine and, as he and his wife struggled with the grief, their marriage broke down.

Kenneth again left Britain and opened a pub in Spain, working there for two years. He later sought advice from his brother Paul, who had worked in Lebanon in the Eighties, about an engineering career in the Middle East.

Armed with contacts from Paul, he tried Kuwait, Dubai, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. He remained in close contact with his family and made annual trips back to Liverpool to visit his mother and to watch Everton games with son Craig.

Seven years ago he married Sombat, who hoped that her husband would join her in their newly-built home in Thailand.

Mr Bigley had arrived in Iraq at the end of conflict, working at an American military base at Taji, 15 miles north of the Iraqi capital, for Gulf Supplies and Construction Services, his employers since 1997.

When he was kidnapped, retirement was only months away. As the security situation deteriorated his family tried to persuade him not to work in Baghdad, but Mr Bigley had other plans, intending to work for a short while longer in Iraq and then retiring to live in Thailand with Sombat. As he said to his Iraqi neighbours when they asked him about the dangers: "I'm not afraid. You only die once."

According to his brother Philip, it was his love of the Middle East which outweighed any fears: "He is understanding and appreciative of the Islamic culture. His love of the area is what has kept him there and is the reason he was prepared to help in Baghdad where so many others would be worried for their own safety."