THE computer expert kidnapped by Iranian-backed militiamen in Iraq with his four bodyguards is shown in this photograph, placed on an internet blog by friends anxious for news.

Peter Moore, 31, from Lincoln, was teaching Iraqis computer skills as part of a project funded by the US government aid agency USAID when he was kidnapped in May.

He had previously worked in Guyana with Voluntary Service Overseas and helped run an emergency database for relief operations when Guyana was flooded in 2005.

The five Britons were kidnapped in May when several dozen Shi’ite militiamen, dressed as police officers, swooped on the finance ministry building in east Baghdad where Moore was teaching, sealing it off and shouting: “Where are the foreigners?”

Moore and his British bodyguards were bundled into police vehicles and driven northwards into Sadr City, the Shi’ite stronghold of Moqtada al-Sadr.

The five hostages are believed to be held at two or more locations to thwart any rescue attempt by the SAS.

For five months there has apparently been no attempt by the kidnappers to publicise their demand that the British persuade US forces to release Qais al-Khazaali, a leading Shi’ite militiaman whom the Iranians have chosen to head a splinter group of al-Sadr’s Mahdi army.

General David Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq, has said that the kidnappers are Iranian-backed but the Foreign Office has always declined to discuss the hostages or to suggest any Iranian involvement.

Last week the kidnappers released a video showing one of the hostages, named only as Jason, and warning that a hostage would be killed if British troops did not leave Iraq in 10 days. This is seen as an attempt to take credit for the imminent handover of southern Iraq and the withdrawal of 500 troops.

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