The Pakistani released by Islamic serial killers in Iraq says he saw his captors decapitate three people in front of him: Iraq hostage ‘saved because he was Muslim’.

A Pakistani hostage released by his captors in Iraq claimed yesterday that he saw them behead three people before sparing his life because he appeared to be a devout Muslim.

Amjad Hafeez, who worked for an American company that supplied food to the United States military, was released last week after the intervention of leading Muslim clerics.

“The people who were beheaded - their hands and legs were tied and one fat guy came and beheaded all three of them, one by one, after saying ‘God is Great’.”

Mr Hafeez was next in line to be executed, he said. “They told me, ‘The cameraman is coming. Then I cut your neck’. I waited to die.”

He believes that his captors accepted that he was not an American spy, as they had alleged, when he began a Muslim cleansing ritual before saying his final prayers.