A video message containing a threat; photos of anxious relatives, another video with the captive in an orange jump suit, then the release of a chilling statement. The cycle of barbarity continues as militant groups behead their helpless captives and thereby surrender all links to humanity.

Kim Sun-il was a young South Korean man who was captured by militants in Iraq. In a videotaped broadcast on Sunday he pleaded for his life and begged his captives not to kill him. The group had kidnapped him to put pressure on the South Korean government not to send 3,000 troops to Iraq. They made Kim beg for his life and in so doing played a cruel, heartless trick on his family in South Korea.

Let us be clear and unequivocal about this. There was no justification for this cold-blooded murder: those who committed it must be brought to justice. The brutal death of Kim, an Arabic speaker, who had worked in Iraq for a year as a translator for a South Korean firm supplying goods to the US army, serves no purpose except to reveal just how depraved and twisted the group who killed him are.

Minutes before Kim's death he is seen with his hands tied with his kidnappers reading a statement saying, "This is what your hands have committed - your army has not come here for the sake of Iraqis but for cursed America".

This is nonsense. No one is to blame for Kim's death except those who carried out this despicable act. The cowardly way that his captors tried to shift the blame for their own deeds shows the paucity of their morality and conviction. They are cowardly murderers who will one day be brought to justice.

That day cannot come soon enough for the people of Iraq or people of humanity everywhere.