Peter Moore went for a job — and ended up as a hostage for 946 days

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article6972065.ece

The lead kidnapper, dressed as an Iraqi police major, shouted “Where are the foreigners?” as he led a team of gunmen, also in uniform, into the Finance Ministry building in Baghdad.

Peter Moore, a computer expert, was giving a lecture to a class of Iraqi civil servants. A second western consultant was also present along with four British security guards, tasked with providing close protection.

Outnumbered and outgunned, Mr Moore and the guards — Alan McMenemy, 34, Alec MacLachlan, 30, Jason Swindlehurst, 38, and Jason Creswell, 39 — were led away. The other consultant managed to escape, hidden by his students.

Carried out just before midday on May 29, 2007, it was the most audacious abduction of westerners since the fall of Saddam Hussein. The kidnapping was also highly political, taking place inside an Iraqi Government compound by an Iranian-backed group of Shia militants, the League of the Righteous.

Within hours an emergency response meeting was held in Whitehall, and hostage rescue experts were sent to the British Embassy in Baghdad.

The SAS conducted nightly raids on suspected hideouts in the Shia slum of Sadr City, East Baghdad, where the hostages were initially held, while an incident room inside the Embassy fielded calls from potential sources.

After a week, Dominic Asquith, then Britain’s Ambassador to Iraq, made the first formal appeal for the hostages’ release, indicating that the Government was prepared to talk to the kidnappers. Such public appeals have been few and far between, but behind the scenes intense efforts were under way to establish contact with the right people — a difficult task, made harder by numerous false leads. “This was not a conventional kidnapping,” said a source who was involved in the investigation during the first few months. “We were dealing with people who were obviously killers.” At one point five fingers were sent to the Embassy with a note attached saying that they were from the five hostages.

DNA tests proved the claim to be untrue. But in the immediate aftermath no one admitted responsibility for the kidnapping, no ransom demand was made and no word was heard from the hostages until December 2007 when the kidnappers released video footage of one of the hostages. They warned that a captive would be killed if British troops did not leave Iraq in ten days.

In later statements, the group, which in Iraq calls itself Asaib al-Haq, also demanded the release of ten prisoners held in US detention in Iraq — a condition that became the key to solving the kidnap, but also meant that the United States rather than Britain held the decisive cards.

Months stretched into years, making the kidnapping Britain’s longest-running hostage crisis in two decades. It was an agonising time for the families of the five men, who made appeals on the anniversaries of their kidnapping and also during the Christmases that their loved ones missed.

By the start of this year the trail had appeared to run cold. The wellbeing and whereabouts of the hostages remained a mystery. Some sources suggested that the men were being held in Iran, others said that some or maybe all had been killed. In July 2008 the kidnappers released a video claiming that one of the hostages had committed suicide, while the Foreign Office maintained publicly that it thought all five hostages were still alive.

In June, however, came the news the hostages’ families had been dreading. The bodies of Mr Swindlehurst and Mr Creswell were handed to the British Embassy in Baghdad. An inquest concluded that they died of multiple gunshot wounds.

While a tragedy for the families, the return of the bodies coincided with the release of Laith al-Khazali from a US detention centre near Baghdad airport. He was one of the detainees with links to the kidnappers. It was the first clear indication that some sort of dialogue was taking place.

More movement took place over the coming months, with the British Government saying in July it believed that the other two guards, Mr McMenemy and Mr MacLachlan, were also dead. Two months later Mr MacLachlan’s body was handed over to the British authorities.

Hopes have always remained, however, that Mr Moore would be released alive. Unlike the four guards — former military men who worked for the Canadian security company Garda World — Mr Moore, 36, was a civilian computer consultant, making him more politically valuable. Also working in his favour was the significant change in Iraq’s political and security climate, an evolution that occurred too late to save the lives of his four colleagues.

Shia militias and militants linked to Sunni Islamist al-Qaeda wielded tremendous power in 2007, but the Government, while still vulnerable, is much stronger today. Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, has met representatives of Asaib al-Haq as part of a wider effort to encourage once militant groups to lay down their arms and join the political process, particularly as the country prepares for a general election in the new year.

Part of this process is a US pledge to hand all those in US detention in Iraq over to the Iraqi authorities for release or prosecution by the end of 2011.

In the ultimate breakthrough that ended Mr Moore’s two-and-a-half year ordeal, Qais al-Khazali, the brother of Laith, was also handed over to the Iraqi authorities. A question mark had always hung over his release because he is accused of being involved in an attack that killed five US soldiers in early 2007, making him a valuable detainee.

Gordon Brown was also under tremendous pressure to bring at least one hostage home alive. He and David Miliband were criticised for failing to do enough after the earlier deaths.

As for the kidnappers, many questions remain about the masterminds behind the plot. Sources suspect that senior Iraqi officials may have had a hand, particularly as the attack was able to take place inside the Finance Ministry building. It remains to be seen whether anyone will ever be prosecuted for the crime.

In addition, the wait continues for the family of Mr McMenemy, whose death has yet to be confirmed and whose body has yet to be returned.

For Mr Moore, at least, there is a happy ending. He is undergoing medical tests in Baghdad, but is expected to be reunited with his family this week.