Payback For Prison Murders: Iraqis Behead Contractor On Video
 

"Allahu Akbar!"


A video being shown on an Islamic militant Web site shows the beheading of an American civilian from Pennsylvania, according to journalists from news agency reporters and television networks who have seen it. In the tape, which is of poor quality, masked men who claim to have ties to Al Qaeda say the execution is vengeance for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers.

American officials and the man's family, in West Chester, Pa., identified the slain man as Nicholas Berg, 26, who had gone to Iraq looking for contracting work.

In the videotape, part of which was shown on Fox News and MSNBC, the man is shown sitting on the floor with five masked men behind him, and one of the masked men reads a statement.

In the portion of the tape that follows, which has not been broadcast in the United States, the masked men push the seated man to the floor, saw off his head as he screams and then hold it aloft, according to Reuters.

The video is titled "Abu Musab al-Zarqawi shown slaughtering an American." It was unclear whether Mr. Zarqawi — a Jordanian militant with ties to Al Qaeda — was personally in the video or was taking responsibility for ordering the execution. American military officials have said they believe Mr. Zarqawi is behind many of the attacks in Iraq against coalition forces and Iraqi civilians.

The man himself speaks on the videotape before he is beheaded by his captors.

"My name is Nick Berg, my father's name is Michael . . . I have a brother and sister, David and Sarah," says the man, who was shown bound wearing an orange jump suit similar to a prisoner's uniform.

Mr. Berg's parents, Suzanne and Michael Berg, told The Associated Press that State Department officials had called them on Monday to tell them that Mr. Berg's decapitated body had been found on Saturday on a Baghdad highway overpass.

Today, a friend of the Berg family stood outside the family's home and read a statement to journalists who had gathered outside, The A.P. said.

"The Berg family is devastated by this loss," the family friend, John Hauser, a neighbor, said. "They want to extend their sympathy to other families who have also suffered. They are asking the Army to expedite the release of Nick's body so they can make arrangements and put this behind them."

Mr. Berg's family had told several news agencies that he had been missing since April 9, the same day that seven American contractors working for a subsidiary of Halliburton and two military men disappeared after their supply convoy was attacked on the outskirts of Baghdad.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with his family," the chief White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, who was with President Bush in Arkansas. "It shows the true nature of the enemies of freedom. They have no regard for the lives of innocent men, women and children. We will pursue those who are responsible and bring them to justice."

Four of the Halliburton workers and one of the military men have since been confirmed dead. One Halliburton worker, Thomas Hamill, escaped from his captors last week and has since returned to his home in Mississippi.

Mr. Berg's mother told The A.P. that her son had been in Iraq from December to February seeking work rebuilding the country's infrastructure. After a short stay back home, she said, he returned to Iraq in March. He later told them that he had been jailed by Iraqi officials after being stopped at a checkpoint in the northern city of Mosul before he could return home, as planned, on March 30.

"He was arrested and held without due process," his father, Michael, told the Daily Local News of West Chester. "By the time he got out the whole area was inflamed with violence."

The couple told The A.P. that the last communication they had from their son was on April 9, when he said he would come home by way of Jordan, Turkey or Kuwait.

The Web site on which the video was posted, Muntada al-Ansar Islamist, is known as a clearinghouse for statements and tapes by Al Qaeda and Islamic extremist groups.

In a statement read before the beheading, the captors said the civilian's death would be revenge for the reported abuses suffered by Iraqi captives at the hands of American soldiers in the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.

"For the mothers and wives of American soldiers, we tell you that we offered the U.S. administration to exchange this hostage with some of the detainees in Abu Ghraib and they refused," one of the men read from a statement.

"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. You will not receive anything from us but coffins after coffins ... slaughtered in this way."

The men are then seen pulling the man to his side and putting a large knife to his neck. A scream sounds as the men sever his head, shouting, "Allahu Akbar!" — God is great.

Then they hold them man's head in front of the camera.

Maria Newman

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/11/in...1CND-BEHE.html

This is such a mess! This whole thing is just one big frick'n mess! I can't imagine how the parents of this 26 year old man is holding up. I would fall to pieces if something like this happened to my loved one. I'm just so happy, REALLY HAPPY my brother is home from Iraq since I couldn't bear to think of him over there in these conditions. American's have a target on their heads, and the recent reports of the detainee’s that were being tortured did NOT help! I honestly wish the press DIDN'T release any info/pictures/video's of the tortured detainee's since it doesn't take an Einstein to realize all American's over there would be a target for the same (if not worse, as the article noted) treatment.


RRRR!
Emmy

Right....these great up-standing men never would do any wrong if it wasn't for the evil evil Americans at the prison......sure thing boss.....


If anything this video shows the type of poeple the American soldiers have to deal with on a day to day basis.....Are the Liberals crying Human Rights Violations? What the Americans did was wrong, but it fails in comparison with what these Iraqis did....

yeah...

parents, brother blame army, bush administration - for detaining him 13 days when he was trying to come home and for "leaking" circumstances of his death.

- js.

exactly.. and to think that some liberals are actually blaming coalition forces for this. what these muslem thugs did to that american is exactly what they want to do to all the "infidels". they don't differentiate between liberals, centrists, or conservatives. if they can get their hands on you, you'll end up exactly like the poor guy in the video.

hey smook,

Are you pro Israel or pro Jewish?

I can understanding a person fighting for his country. But fighting for some shit religion is bad.

Why kill people because they spell jesus different?

for what, murdering a few defenseless prisoners? 90% of whom were wrongly arrested, taken out of their homes in the middle of the night and thrown into saddam’s 1-way roach motel. nah, we're all cool with that. who could possibly have a problem that? how many civillians have we killed? ten thousand? twenty five thousand? who knows? hell, who cares...some iraqis? pfffft. they obviously don’t get it. when the bush machine kills you it’s ok. it’s just that simple. next.

- js.

obviously, it's an atrocity - but committed by whom? the purported executioner is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi , who is in fact Jordanian. if this is true, than the people with him in the video are certain to be long-time trusted AL-Queda members (who else would he trust being with?), and as such, are probably not Iraqis.

and are they of the same ilk as the the various religious groups and militias, wannabes, foreigners, and your basic pissed-off Iraqi that are fighting elsewhere in Iraq? the Bushies like to wrap all these factions into one neat little package and sell it to the public with catchy phrases like "deadenders" and "enemies of freedom", but imo, it's a lot more complicated than that.

make no mistake - the people in the video are certainly our enemy and a threat to us all...but are they representative of the average Iraqi or even of the Iraqis prisoners in the abuse pix?

the "war on terror" has lost much credibility world-wide because the administration refuses to recognize the distinctions between these groups - distinctions that seem so obvious to the rest of the world. of course, now they're locked in, because to admit otherwise would be to admit that we've moved beyond killing terrorists and now we're just killing anybody who makes us uncomfortable.

my sympathies to the families of Nick Berg and Daniel Perl - i hope the hooded figures in these videos die a violent and painful death.

here is the video.

http://temp.eyecannon.com/iraq2vediom.wmv

get it quick.

what do you have to say to that?

I appreciate that some people might want to download the video from that link Squid, but I have no desire to watch it. Its description in the above article was violent enough and the family's statement brought me to tears. Thanks anyway.

I can't disagree with any of the replies to this thread, we're all shocked and angered by this murder. It's natural to want to point fingers when we can't lay our fingers on the real perpetators, but that solves nothing. We can try to do two things from this point on, first hunt down the hooded cowards in the video and remove their heads, and second make sure that nothing like this ever happens again. You can blame politicians and soldiers and news reporters all you want, but it's only their fault if they allow murderers to get away with it. No one wants this to happen ever again, liberal or conservative, so I'm not going to blame anyone other than the men who actually killed him and leave it at that.

all i can say is..
 

WHAT! no sub-titles..?




what a bunch of cheap butchers...
i was expecting one chop from a big sword
pretty horrible seeing someone slaughtered like that...that guys poor family must still be in shock..:shk:

yeh thats right ,use any atrocity to incite the gentile dogs and to speil your zionist propaganda..

Jeezus wept.

There I was, thinking that we had reached a plateau of violence and retribution. Amazing how accustomed you become to the day-to-day horrors beamed into your living-room. Then this... a new depth. Sad thing is... it isn't new. This sort of thing went on and goes on all the time - went on in Somalia, Rwanda, Iran, Indonesia, Chile... you name it. It happens every day and we never blink, we never even hear of it. How many poor bastards have suffered a similar fate?

Are we talking about the IDF now?????


Where do you get your info? You have names for the people in the jail? Are they all Iraqis? They really were wrongly arrested? Says who? They were at their homes sleeping when they were asseted? And Arrested by who? American Soldiers or Iraqi Police?

Re: all i can say is..
 

you know that Nick Berg was Jewish right?

Yes, how many dies day after day butchered for some religion or political cause?

This was retribution pure and simple, done in the most grusome way. Just can't imagine how his family and friends, who witnessed this assasination on television, felt :( This ''Incident'' Is bound to degenerate into more bloody vandettas between the coalition forces and the rebels.

Hate to say it this way but, this started as the "War on Terror & WMD's" and is quickly moving to the status of "war of horrors".

Geesh Mazer if you're crying already you should watch the video just to toughen yourself up and learn to face reality.



I don't know who you're trying to blame here but if noone can nab Osama after 3,000 murders and 3 years when we know so much about him there seems little chance of getting a few anonymous people in this case and you shouldn't try to blame anyone for "letting them get away with it".

Let's just turn that whole country into a parking lot. Kill every last one of them and be done with it!:CG:

i move to second that motion

the 90% figure is courtesy of the wall street journal. names? you want names sinner? you'll have names if the us gulags ever release them. are you outraged? call a congressman and demand to know.

- js.

Link?


No I don't want names and no I am not outraged......