Two more British hostages ‘dead’

Two more of the five British men taken hostage in Baghdad in May 2007 are now thought "very likely" to be dead, according to a report by the BBC's security correspondent Frank Gardner, who is close to the families involved.

He says the Foreign Office told the families of the two men - Alan McMenemy from Scotland and Alec MacLachlan from South Wales - last week that they had most likely died in captivity.

The news follows the discovery in June of the bodies of two more of the group, Jason Creswell and Jason Swindlehurst. They had been shot dead a long time ago. The condition of the man they were send to Iraq to guard, the IT consultant Peter Moore from Lincoln, is still not known.

Gardner revealed that the fate of McMenemy and MacLachlan became clear last month when the kidnappers - a relatively obscure militia group calling themselves Asaib al-Haq or the Band of the Righteous - let it be known to the British government that they had two more bodies. Because the kidnappers had made many claims and counter-claims, it could not be verified immediately. But Gardner reports: "The Foreign Office is now pretty certain that it's true."

Moore was working for the American management consultants Bearing Point when he and his four guards were kidnapped at the Iraqi Ministry of Finance by about 40 militiamen disguised as police. The last proof of life sent by Moore's kidnappers was a video (pictured) handed over in March, but it is not known when the film was made.

The news that all four guards can now be presumed dead is expected to reignite the long-simmering row over whether the Foreign Office did enough to secure the men's release. For a long period, there was a media blackout at the kidnappers' insistence.

Gordon Brown, put on the spot more than once over the lack of success in negotiating the men's release, said his government had left "no stone unturned". The issue was "at the top of the agenda" every time he spoke to the Iraqi PM, Nouri al-Maliki, he said.

But, whatever negotiations have taken place, it now appears that four of the men may have been dead all the time. Frank Gardner said: "All the time [the kidnappers] were carrying on these discussions, cynically, they already knew they had dead bodies on their hands - two, possibly four."

Moore's father, Graeme Moore, has accused the British government of not doing enough. "They haven't done anything. They should have been straight in directing negotiations right from the beginning," he said. ·