Too perfect Iraq kidnap of Britons 'was to hide corruption'

Published on Friday 31 July 2009 22:18

IRAQI government officials may have colluded in the kidnapping of five Britons, including two Scots, two years ago in an attempt to prevent high-level corruption being exposed, it was reported yesterday.

Only one of the UK contractors abducted at the finance ministry in Baghdad on 29 May, 2007 is still believed to be alive – Peter Moore, 36, from Lincoln. Negotiations for his release are said to be ongoing.

A sixth westerner, an American IT consultant, in the ministry that day escaped capture by hiding in a toilet, according to the newspaper report.

The five Britons – computer expert Mr Moore and his four bodyguards, Alan McMenemy, Alec MacLachlan, Jason Swindlehurst and Jason Creswell – were seized by about 40 armed men wearing police uniforms.

An unnamed senior Iraqi intelligence source said the highly-organised kidnapping was "one only a government can do".

Mr Moore had been installing a computer system to track billions of pounds in foreign aid and oil revenue through the finance ministry.

The intelligence source said: "Many people don't want a high level of corruption to be revealed."

Paul Wood, a former British Army officer who investigated the abduction for the four bodyguards' employers, GardaWorld, said that the kidnapping was "too perfect".

"It strikes me as unlikely that there couldn't have been some kind of collaboration for the convoy of that size," he said.

The families of Mr McMenemy, from Glasgow, and Mr MacLachlan, from Llanelli, south Wales, were told by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office last week that their loved ones were "very likely" to have died.

The bodies of Mr Swindlehurst, 38, from Skelmersdale, Lancashire, and Mr Creswell, 39, originally from Glasgow, were handed over last month.