Iraq Videotape Shows the Decapitation of an American
By DEXTER FILKINS
Published: May 12, 2004
BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 11 An Islamist Web site posted a videotape on Tuesday showing the decapitation of an American in Iraq, in what the killers called revenge for the American mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.
The Web site said the man who had carried out the beheading was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant linked to Al Qaeda who the Americans believe was behind some of the deadliest terrorist attacks here.
"Sheik Abu Musab Zarqawi slaughters an American infidel with his hands and promises Bush more," read the title of the video. The Web site is operated by a group named Muntada al-Ansar, and often carries statements by Islamic militants.
The video shows a thin, bearded man, who identified himself as Nicholas Berg of West Chester, Pa., seated before a row of five masked men. Mr. Berg appeared to be wearing an orange jump suit similar to those issued to Iraqis in American-run prisons here.
After the militants read a statement, the tape showed the men pushing Mr. Berg to the floor. As he screamed, one of the men put a knife to Mr. Berg's neck and the men yelled "God is Great!"
The head was held up to the camera.
The State Department confirmed that Mr. Berg's body was found Saturday near an overpass in Baghdad. An American intelligence official said the body was found without a head.
Mr. Berg's family in Pennsylvania said a State Department official had notified them on Monday of their son's death. They said Mr. Berg, 26, had gone to Iraq twice since December as an independent businessman looking for work fixing communication antennas.
"I knew he was decapitated before," Michael Berg, the father, told The Associated Press on Tuesday after the videotape was shown. "That manner is preferable to a long and torturous death. But I didn't want it to become public."
The killing of Mr. Berg, and the particularly gruesome way it was done, recalled the slaying in 2002 of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped and beheaded by Muslim militants, an act also shown on videotape.
It is not clear how long Mr. Berg had been in captivity, nor is it clear whether he had found any work in Iraq. The Bergs said that they last heard from their son on April 9, and that he had told them that he was heading home over land through either Turkey, Jordan or Kuwait.
That was the same day that nine Americans, including two soldiers, were kidnapped by insurgents during attacks on their convoys west of Baghdad, on the main highway to the Jordanian border.
The bodies of four have been recovered. One man kidnapped that day, Thomas Hamill, escaped to freedom, while three civilian contractors, all believed to be working for Kellogg Brown & Root, are still missing.
It is not clear whether Mr. Berg was on one of those convoys.
In Washington, an intelligence official said the Central Intelligence Agency was reviewing the video for clues as to who might have killed Mr. Berg, who he said had been looking for work on his own.
"It was the wrong place for someone without a support structure to be," the official said.
Before Mr. Berg was killed, one of the masked men on the videotape said in Arabic: "For the mothers and wives of American soldiers, we tell you that we asked the U.S. administration to exchange this hostage with some of the detainees in Abu Ghraib, and they refused."
"So we tell you that the dignity of the Muslim men and women in Abu Ghraib and others is not redeemed except by blood and souls," the man said. "You will receive nothing from us but coffin after coffin slaughtered in this way."
The masked man reading the statement mentioned Al Qaeda by name, suggesting that the abuses at Abu Ghraib justified the terrorist group's broader war on the West.
There was no way to determine whether Mr. Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant, was indeed one of the men in the video, since all of the men were either hooded or masked.
<--- not cool, but blind smiley
