It is exactly one year since the Britons, all working as civilian contractors, were kidnapped by armed militants at the Iraqi Ministry of Finance in Baghdad.

Since then, their families have faced an agonising wait to see if they will be freed unharmed.

In an interview with BBC Radio 5 Live, the men's relatives described their nightmare.

A man identified only as Colin, father of a hostage named Alec, said he had to "believe that the outcome's going to be positive". He said as a family, they were staying strong and hoping their son returned sooner rather than later.

One of the hostages has been named as IT consultant Peter Moore, from Lincoln, who was working for BearingPoint, an American management consultancy.

The others, who were employed by Canadian security firm GardaWorld to guard Mr Moore, have not been officially identified, but it is believed two are Welsh and two Scottish.

The kidnappers, calling themselves the Islamic Shiite Resistance in Iraq, have released two videos of the captives in the last 12 months.

On December 4, a film was broadcast on Dubai-based TV station al-Arabiya warning that one hostage would be killed unless British troops were withdrawn from Iraq. One of the men, named as Jason, was shown in the clip complaining that the kidnapped men felt they had been "forgotten".

Negotiations for the captives' release are continuing, but in the run-up to the anniversary, their anxious relatives have grown increasingly frustrated at the lack of progress. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has stressed that sensitive discussions are going on behind the scenes.