Topic: Kenneth Bigley

Kenneth John Bigley (22 April 1942 - 7 October 2004). Liverpool, England, who was kidnapped in the al-Mansour district of Baghdad, Iraq on 16 September 2004, along with Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong, both U.S. citizens. The three men were civil engineers working for Gulf Supplies and Commercial Services, a company working on reconstruction projects in Iraq. All were subsequently beheaded.

On 18 September, the Tawhid and Jihad ("Oneness of God and Jihad") Islamist 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 intervention of the Muslim Council of Britain and the indirect intervention of the British government. Videos of the killings were posted on Islamist websites. Using voice-recognition technology, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has claimed that al-Zarqawi personally carried out the beheading of Armstrong.