Did Brits miss chance to trace hostages?

LONDON -- Britain's MI6 intelligence service has been accused by the employers of a British IT consultant and his four-man security detail of failing to follow up on a "vital clue" that could have led to their rescue after they were captured from a meeting at the Iraqi Ministry of Finance in Baghdad over a year ago ...

The five men -- who have become known as the "forgotten hostages" -- were grabbed by armed gunmen wearing police uniforms in May 2007 and driven towards the Shia enclave of Sadr City in the Baghdad suburb.

Little has been heard of them since. ...

But it has now emerged that in the weeks following their kidnap, Moore's cell phone still was being used -- the "vital clue" which could have revealed the captives' location, paving the way for an SAS rescue. The SAS has a unit on standby in Baghdad for such missions.

However, during a high level meeting at the Foreign Office doubt was cast as to whether any attempt had been made by MI6 to "pinpoint the mobile phone's location" using the ultra-sophisticated triangulation equipment which MI6 had installed in Iraq after the spate of kidnappings of Western hostages.

The details about the phone -- and the allegation about the failure to locate it -- were made by the employer of Moore's four security men, Garda World.

The company's delegation told David Richmond, the director general for defense and intelligence and the Foreign Office counter-intelligence chief, of their concerns.

The firm said it had examined the cell phone's itemized bill. It highlighted a large number of calls it had discovered, for which it was still paying large bills, charged to Peter Moore's account months after he had been kidnapped.

Some calls appeared to have been made as text messages to numbers Garda World claimed were known to be Shia strongholds in Iraq, while other calls were made to Iran.