Deadline for Briton Facing Iraq Execution

Last-ditch attempts to save the life of a British man being held hostage by Iraqi militants were under way last night as a deadline set by his kidnappers loomed.

The families of Kenneth Bigley and two Americans who are also being held begged the kidnappers not to carry through a threat to execute the men when the deadline was reached in the early hours of this morning. The Foreign Office took the rare step of putting up an official to make a direct appeal for help on Arabic television.

In Iraq, officials revealed that the authorities were pursuing a number of leads in connection with the men, who were shown blindfolded and bound in a video released over the weekend. British and US special forces were also believed to be standing by.

Fears for the three were heightened last night when two more videos were released by militants. One purported to show up to 15 members of the Iraqi National Guard who were being held by extremists. The captors claimed they would kill the men unless a detained Shia leader was freed.

The second recorded the beheading of three members of the Kurdish Democratic Party who were apparently seized by an Islamist militant group near Baghdad.

Mr Bigley, an engineer from Liverpool, was kidnapped from the house he was sharing with American colleagues Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong in Baghdad on Thursday. All worked for the Qatar-based company Gulf Supplies and Commercial Services.

In a video transmitted by the Arabic television station al-Jazeera on Saturday, the men were shown blindfolded, their hands bound.

Al-Jazeera said the men were being held by the Tawhid and Jihad group. It reported that the extremists had threatened to kill the men within 48 hours unless women prisoners were freed from Abu Ghraib and Umm Qasr prisons.

Tony Blair and Ayad Allawi, Iraqi's interim prime minister, who met during his first visit to Britain yesterday, declared they were doing everything they could to secure the release of the men.

Mr Blair said: "Our governments are working closely on it. I don't think there's anything more I can or should say at this stage."

Mr Allawi added: "We are trying our best working on the issue of hostages, and hopefully we will achieve some good results." However, the Iraqi foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, insisted that giving in to the terrorists would set a "very bad precedent". Speaking on the BBC's Breakfast with Frost, he added: "Really our policy is not to negotiate with the terrorists."

Through the Foreign Office, the family of Mr Bigley, a twice-married father of one, expressed their "devastation" at his kidnapping. His mother, Elizabeth Bigley, 86, told a Sunday newspaper: "We are beside ourself with worry. I just don't want them to hurt him. He has not done anything to harm anyone."

Foreign Office official Dean McLoughlin, an Arabic speaker, appeared on the Dubai-based news channel, al-Arabiya, to appeal to Iraqi citizens for information about Mr Bigley. He said: "His family, including his elderly widowed mother, has been suffering from deep shock since learning of the abduction." He said any information would be dealt with "in the utmost secrecy".

In contrast to French officials, who launched a high-profile diplomatic offensive across the Middle East after two French reporters were kidnapped a month ago, British diplomats have worked quietly behind the scenes. An official in Iraq said: "We are in the office from early in the morning until after midnight collecting information."

In Saturday's video, Mr Bigley sat slumped on the floor of a white room, looking tired and defeated, next to the two Americans. A gunman wearing a black hood pointed his Kalashnikov at the head of one of the men before reading out their demands.

The Tawhid and Jihad group is allegedly linked to the radical Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whom the US accuses of plotting numerous terrorist attacks in Iraq.

The group's ultimatum that all female prisoners be freed is baffling. The last female detainee in Abu Ghraib, Huda Alazawi, who is interviewed in today's Guardian, was released in July. The US is holding only two female prisoners - Rihab Taha and Huda Amarsh, both of them senior scientists who worked on Saddam's alleged biological weapons programmes - with other "high value" detainees at Baghdad international airport.

More than 100 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq in recent months, and some 30 executed. Over the weekend a militant group allegedly holding two French journalists said the men had been freed but had chosen to stay with their kidnappers to report on the activities of Iraq's resistance.

There has been no word on the fate of two other western hostages, Italian aid workers Simona Torretta and Simona Pari, since they were kidnapped from their house in Baghdad two weeks ago.

A previously unknown group calling itself the Salafist Brigades of Abu Bakr al-Siddiq yesterday claimed it was holding 10 hostages working for an American-Turkish company. It said it would kill them in three days if their firm did not leave Iraq.