Ex-hostage 'delighted' to be home

Mr Moore was released on Wednesday, 946 days after he was kidnapped in Iraq, and returned to Britain on Friday.

In a statement released through the Foreign Office he said: "I am obviously delighted to have returned to the UK and to have been reunited with my family.

"I am looking forward to spending the coming days and weeks catching up on all the things I've missed over the past two and a half years.

"I would therefore be grateful if we could be given the space and time we need to start to get to know one another again."

The 36-year-old computer expert, from Lincoln, was seized along with his four British bodyguards by militants posing as police at the Iraqi finance ministry in May 2007.

The bodies of three of Mr Moore's bodyguards – Alec MacLachlan, 30, from Llanelli, South Wales, Jason Swindlehurst, 38, from Skelmersdale, Lancashire, and Jason Creswell, 39, originally from Glasgow – were passed to British authorities last year. A fourth bodyguard, Alan McMenemy, 34, from Glasgow, is also believed to have been killed.

It has been reported that Mr Moore, from Lincoln, and his four bodyguards were taken over the border into Iran following their kidnap in May, 2007, where they were held by the country's Revolutionary Guard.

Gordon Brown yesterday insisted there was no "direct evidence" that Mr Moore was held inside Iran. The Prime Minister said he had spoken to Mr Moore following his release but the pair had not discussed where the 36-year-old computer expert had been held.

He said: "I have talked to Peter Moore, we didn't talk about that. We don't have direct evidence from the Foreign Office of that. If that evidence becomes available then obviously we will share it.

"What happened to Peter Moore and the troubles that he had over more than two years and more are something that are a great problem for us because of the others who did not survive and the other one who we still don't have information about." General David Petraeus, the head of US Central Command and former commander of American forces in Iraq, said: "I am on the record as having said that our intelligence assessment is that he certainly spent part of the time, at the very least, in Iran, part of the time he was a hostage."

The British Government said it was doing everything possible to secure the release of Mr McMenemy's body.

Mr Moore spent a quiet New Year's Eve at the British Embassy in Baghdad before being flown to RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire on Friday. He spent his first night in the back in Britain with his family, including step-

parents Fran and Pauline Sweeney.

They said they were "thrilled" to have him back safely and had "a lot of catching up to do".

Former hostage Terry Waite, who spent nearly five years in captivity after he was abducted in Beirut in 1987, said there was no reason why Mr Moore could not return to normal life.

"If he tells his story and gets it out of his system, he can get some sort of balance back after living in such an extraordinary way for two and a half years."