Hostage Peter Moore has to defend torture claims

Peter Moore, the British IT consultant held hostage by Iraqi Shia extremists for nearly three years, has been forced to defend his account of life in captivity after his kidnappers claimed that he was never mistreated.

Moore gave an interview to the Times last week in which he described being tortured and abused by members of the Asaib Ahl al-Haq group.

The 36-year-old from Lincoln, who was finally released by his captors on December 30 last year, said he had been beaten regularly, hung by his arms from a door and subjected to water dousings and mock executions.

But a spokesman for Asaib Ahl al-Haq - or the League of the Righteous - has claimed that Moore is lying. "We deny the lies he said and assure all that we had treated him well."

To support their claim, the group has issued a 46-second video (above) which shows Moore playing with a child, eating an orange and lying on a mattress counting prayer beads. He is also seen watching television and exercising on a treadmill.

Moore, re-interviewed by the Times yesterday, says the video clips all come from the final weeks of his captivity, the period from October 29 to December 30, during which his conditions were much improved.

As for the claims that he was never tortured or abused, he said: "I know what went on in that time... The results speak for themselves. They abducted a lot of people and I am the only one who made it out alive."

He was referring to he four bodyguards who were captured with him in May 2007. Three of them, Jason Swindlehurst, Jason Creswell and Alec MacLachlan, were killed and their bodies returned to Britain. The whereabouts of the fourth, Alan McMenemy, is still unknown but he is assumed to have been killed too. ·