One of five Britons kidnapped in Baghdad eight months ago was seen for the first time on an Arabic television station last night.

Peter Moore, a computer specialist, appealed to Gordon Brown to secure his release by freeing nine Iraqis. “I have been held here for nearly eight months now,” he said. “Release their people so that we can go home. It’s as simple as that.”

In remarks dubbed into Arabic by the television station, Mr Moore said: “I miss my family a lot. The only thing I want is to get out.”

Mr Moore, who was wearing a tracksuit and appeared to be well, was seized from the Iraqi Finance Ministry last May with four security guards working for Garda-World, a Canadian company. The group holding him identified itself as the Shia Islamic Resistance in Iraq.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office condemned the video, which it said was “greatly distressing to the families of those involved”. It added: “We urge those holding them to release them immediately. No matter what the cause, holding hostages is never justified and is never a way of making progress on any issue.”

The FCO had in the past asked the media not to identify the hostages for fear of endangering them.

The five Britons were seized by about 40 gunmen wearing police uniforms. They were driven away in a convoy of 19 four-wheel-drive vehicles towards the Shia enclave of Sadr City. Their kidnapping was claimed to be in retaliation for the killing by British troops of the Shia militia’s commander in Basra, in southern Iraq, a week earlier.

In December, another of the kidnapped Britons who said his name was Jason appeared in a video broadcast by al-Arabiya television, providing the first indication that the hostages were still alive. He said in the video clip: “I feel we have been forgotten.”

The kidnappers in that video threatened to kill one of the Britons within ten days unless British forces left Iraq. The footage was accompanied by a written statement from the kidnappers claiming that the five had “acknowledged and confessed and detailed the agenda with which they came to steal our wealth under false pretence of being advisers to the Finance Ministry”.

The families of the five hostages have made public appeals for their release. In a joint statement issued after the first video they said: “In the six months since you were taken, we have not once forgotten you.” The Prime Minister has pledged to do everything in his power to gain their freedom.

The American military in Baghdad are confident that they know which group is holding the Britons. Last June, General David Petraeus, the top commander of US forces in Iraq, told The Timesin an interview that the hostages had been kidnapped by a group funded, trained and armed by Iran.

He added that there had been repeated attempts to free them and identified the kidnappers as a secret cell of the Mahdi Army, the Shia militia loyal to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

On the video broadcast in December, the group called itself the Shi’ite Islamic Resistance in Iraq. All attempts to find them or negotiate with third parties to get the hostages released have failed.

Canon Andrew White, the vicar of Baghdad who had employed some of the kidnapped men as bodyguards in the past, has been involved in trying to negotiate their release. Last November he expressed confidence that they would be freed within weeks.

Al-Arabiya, which was launched five years ago, has become the alternative Arab station to Qatar-based al-Jazeera, which has broadcast videos of Osama bin Laden and other senior al-Qaeda figures. Al-Arabiya has the financial backing of investment groups in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Gulf states.

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