Troops find 'Bigley chamber of horrors'

US Marines believe they have found the torture chamber where Ken Bigley was held and executed in the former Iraqi rebel stronghold of Fallujah.

On a wall behind there appeared to be a fingerprint in dried blood and Marines found handcuffs, shackles and plastic zip cuffs.

The room had been hastily abandoned, with stale food scattered on the dirty floor. Knives and bayonets encrusted in what seemed to be blood were taken away for DNA tests in an effort to prove that Mr Bigley was held there. Hoods and black uniforms similar to those worn in the video by exeforcutioners were also removed.

The house was one of two Marines were led to by an informant, who claimed he had heard the voices of three captives in neighbouring rooms, including one he thought was a Briton.

It is in the south- east of Fallujah, where the worst of the fighting has taken place during the U.S. offensive.

Mr Bigley, a twice-married father of two from Liverpool, was kidnapped with two American colleagues from his home in a Baghdad suburb by members of Abu Musab al Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad Group.

His friends, Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley, were beheaded soon afterwards. Mr Bigley's ordeal dragged on

three weeks during which anguished video appeals of him shackled and pleading for his life were released by the kidnappers.

The British engineer was executed early last month. His body has never been found.

Zarqawi is reported to have killed Mr Bigley with a knife, as he had done in earlier hostage murders-A video of the killing was sent to a Gulf TV station. Mr Bigley made a short plea for his life before being executed.

Details in one of the houses are said to match key points on the videos released of Mr Bigley.

'Based on the evidence, U.S. intelligence experts believe it is the house but are not 100 per cent sure,' said a CNN journalist who visited the houses.

In one house, a black banner with the words 'One God and Jihad' and a yellow sun was hanging on the wall - identical to those shown on the hostage videos.

Officials believe dozens of Iraqis were beaten, tortured and killed in the houses by terrorists.

Details of the discovery of the houses emerged yesterday as British diplomats in Baghdad investigated the arrest of a Briton in the city following a shoot-out in which a bodyguard of Iraq's interior minister was killed.

Shooting broke out after Faleh al-Naqib's bodyguards became suspicious when they saw a car parked on their boss's route containing the Briton and another man.