A NEW theory to explain why five Britons were kidnapped in an audacious terrorist operation at the ministry of finance in Baghdad at the end of May emerged yesterday.

As the hostages spent their 117th day in captivity, Matthew Degn, a former American policy adviser to the Iraqi government, said he thought they had been seized in revenge for the fatal shooting of an interior ministry driver by guards of the US private security company Blackwater a few days earlier.

It was Blackwater’s shooting of at least 11 civilians in a Baghdad square last Sunday that prompted an open row between the Iraqi government and Washington days before Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, meets President George W Bush this week.

Degn, who advised the interior ministry, believes the mistaken killing of its driver triggered the kidnapping of the Britons. Their nationality was irrelevant, he thinks: what mattered to the kidnappers was that they were part of the American-led coalition and were easy targets.

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There is still no word on the fate of the Britons – four armed guards working for the security company GardaWorld and a computer expert they were protecting while he streamlined the finance ministry’s system. The Foreign Office has imposed a virtual news blackout.

Degn was in the interior ministry at the time of the driver’s killing on May 27. He said the Iraqis had tried to arrest the Blackwater guards who had shot him as he drove towards a check-point. But the guards refused to comply and drove off.

“That left a really sore feeling and it caused a lot of tension specifically within the ministry,” Degn said. “And four days later the militia kidnapped the British contractors at the ministry of finance.”

The four men of the close protection team had just arrived at the finance ministry with the computer expert when a group of armed men wearing police commando uniforms burst in, their leader shouting: “Where are the foreigners?”

The security team gave up their weapons and were abducted. “They were kidnapped by interior ministry police or [a group] wearing their uniforms,” said Degn.

See footage of a Blackwater sniper

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