[originaltext] BAGHDAD, Iraq Sept. 23, 2004--A British hostage appeared on a

BAGHDAD, Iraq Sept. 23, 2004--A British hostage appeared on a video posted on an Islamic Web site Wednesday weeping and pleading for his life as Iraq’s leader and U. S. officials crushed reports that a high-pro- file female Iraqi weapons scientist could be released from jail soon as demanded by the kidnappers.
   The captive, Kenneth Bigley, appealed to British Prime Minister Tony Blair to intervene. "I think this is possibly my last chance, ’ he said. "I don’t want to die."
   Bigley was being held by a militant group led by Jordanian-born terror mastermind Abu Musabal-Zarqawi. The group has already beheaded Americans Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley, whom it abducted along with Bigley from the Westerners’ Baghdad home last week.
   On Wednesday, the group also posted a video of Hensley’s killing on the Internet, as it had two days earlier of Armstrong’s beheading. Hensley’s decapitated body was found Wednesday in Baghdad.
   More than 130 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq, and at least 26 of them have been killed. Many more Iraqis have also been seized in the chaos since Saddam was ousted last year, in many cases for ransom.