British diplomats in Baghdad are still trying to retrieve the body of the 62-year-old engineer who was kidnapped and beheaded in Iraq. A video posted on an Islamist website on Sunday showed him pleading for his life shortly before he was killed. Dressed in an orange jump suit he said: "I am a simple man who just wants to live a simple life with his family."

Last plea: Mr Bigley also addressed Prime Minister Tony Blair saying: "Here I am again, Mr Blair and your government, very, very close to the end of my life." He makes another appeal for his captors' demands to be met: "Please, please give them what they require, the freedom of the women in Abu Ghraib prison. If you do this the problem is solved."The Tawhid and Jihad group, led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, took Mr Bigley hostage along with two US colleagues in Baghdad on 16 September. It beheaded the Americans the following week. Mr Bigley is thought to have been murdered on Thursday. There have been several reports that he had managed to briefly escape for about half an hour, with the help of one of his captors, before being recaptured. The claims were described as "credible" by Iraqi government sources. Iraqi foreign minister Hoshiyar Zebari told BBC One's Breakfast with Frost on Sunday it was "likely" Mr Bigley had escaped but he had no confirmation. "Insurgents sources" told Reuters news agency he was caught in farmland near the town of Latifiya, south-west of Baghdad. The Foreign Office has refused to comment on the claims. Mr Bigley was remembered at special church services in his home city of Liverpool on Sunday. More than 300 worshippers attended Sunday mass at the city's catholic cathedral.A special service was also held in Somerset, where Mr Bigley had previously lived. His son Paul, who died in a road accident in 1986, is buried in the local churchyard near the family's former home in East Huntspill. The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Liverpool, Patrick Kelly said the city's residents, from all faiths, were united in solidarity with the Bigley family. "There has been a joint statement by the leaders of all the faiths. We walk together," he told BBC Radio 4's Sunday programme. Speaking on Frost, Dr Daud Abdullah of the Muslim Council of Britain said he was "horrified" at the kidnappers use of Islam as a justification for the murder of Mr Bigley. He said Ken Bigley could "at best" be described as a prisoner of war. "The killing of a prisoner of war is not allowed in Islam," he said. Mr Blair has contacted Mr Bigley's family in Liverpool to offer his condolences. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw revealed on Friday that the British government had been in contact with the hostage-takers through an intermediary in the days leading up to his death. Mr Bigley's son Craig, 87-year-old mother Lil and brothers Philip, Stan and Paul had campaigned hard for his release. On Friday they said they had received "absolute proof" that he had been "executed" by his captors. His wife Sombat Bigley said: "No words can express the agony I feel for the loss of my husband Ken."

The former UN chief arms inspector was writing in the Independent on Sunday following the release of the Iraq Survey Group's report on Wednesday. The report found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) but Mr Blair said it made clear Saddam Hussein had "every intention" of developing them. Mr Blix writes the findings were more moderate than Mr Blair's interpretation "Far from confirming Tony Blair's reported reading that Saddam 'had every intention of reviving his WMD programmes', the report suggests Saddam gave his officials the impression that he was interested in resuming programmes 'if sanctions were lifted'," he says. "This is the new straw to which the governments concerned have begun to cling." Mr Blix goes on to say that even if sanctions were lifted, the UN Security Council would have been unlikely to relax it ban on Iraq possessing WMD. "Any 'breakout' by Saddam would have caused loud alarm bells to ring," he writes. Mr Blix also points out that the Iraq Survey Group believed, as he does, that Saddam Hussein allowed the world to believe he still had WMD "to look bigger and more dangerous than he was". "The inspectors appointed by the Bush administration to search Iraq for weapons of mass destruction have had to acknowledge that the reality on the ground was totally different from the virtual reality that had been spun," he writes.