Former hostage relives mock shooting ordeal

The computer expert, who was abducted with his four bodyguards in Iraq in May 2007, was released in December after two and a half years in captivity.

The bodies of three of his bodyguards – Alec MacLachlan, 30, from South Wales, Jason Swindlehurst, 38, from Lancashire, and Jason Creswell, 39, originally from Glasgow – were passed to UK authorities last year.

A fourth bodyguard, Alan McMenemy, 34, from Glasgow, is also believed to have been killed.

Mr Moore, 36, from Lincoln, told Channel 4 News about the moment he was blindfolded and a gun fired behind his head. He said: “They handcuff me behind my back, blindfold me, walk me out into another room, and they kneel me down.

“They cock a pistol. They put it to my head.

“They pull the trigger and at the same time they fire a gun off behind my back.

“Obviously, I thought the gun had gone off. I remember very clearly, I sat there with my hands behind my back. I was blindfolded looking down... I remember thinking... ‘OK, I’m dead’.”

Mr Moore spent the final two years of his captivity on his own. In an interview with today’s Times , he said some captors subjected him to torture, such as hanging him from a door by his handcuffs, while others let him watch television.

He found his own ways to cope with the ordeal. “I would pretend that I wasn’t there,” he said. “I pretended I was in a bike shop negotiating which motorbike to buy.

“There were also dots in the paint on the wall. I would pretend it was an underground system and the dots were stations. I had to link them up using the least amount of track and the least number of trains.”

Hamas frees British journalist: Page 10.