The FBI confirmed in a statement released Thursday that two dead bodies of American contractors kidnapped more than a year ago were found. A third body lying along them wasn’t identified yet, the bureau said.

The FBI said the corpses were identified as belonging to Paul Reuben of Minneapolis and Joshua Munns of Redding, Calif.

The contractors were kidnapped in late 2006 and early 2007 in Iraq. The kidnappers cut off fingers from five of them and send them to the American military authorities in Iraq recently, but since then the faith of the contractors was uncertain. The severed fingers belonged to Reuben, Cote, Munns, Withrow and Nussbaumer, the bureau said.

Actually, this gave relatives hope that the kidnapped contractors are still alive, but that lasted until earlier this week when the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced it found the corpses of two kidnapped contractors and identified them as Ronald J. Withrow of Roaring Springs, Tex., and John Roy Young of Kansas City, Mo.

“The investigation is ongoing, and the F.B.I., working with our partners in the Hostage Working Group in Iraq, will continue to aggressively investigate every available lead in order to identify, apprehend and bring to justice those responsible for these horrific criminal acts,” said F.B.I agent Richard Kolko according to The New York Times.

Reuben, Young and Munns, Jonathon Cote and Austrian Bert Nussbaumer, all employees of Crescent Security Group, were kidnapped on Nov. 16, 2006, by men wearing Iraqi police uniforms.

Withrow, employer of an IT company, was kidnapped separately on Jan. 5, 2007.

The dead bodies were found near the southern city of Basra. The men's remains have been returned to the U.S., the bureau said in the statement.

Munns' mother, Jackie Stewart of Ridgefield, Washington, said that when she learned the FBI found the four bodies, she felt that her son had died.

"When I first knew about it, it was relief, No. 1, that I finally know the answer and, No. 2, that he's not suffering. He's not scared. He's not in pain. He's not being mutilated. He's not being tortured," she said.