A United States hostage in Iraq was pictured being beheaded by Islamic militants in a video released on Tuesday that said that the grisly act was revenge for the abuse of Iraqi detainees by US troops.
Five men wearing headscarves and black masks were pictured standing behind a bound man in a Guantánamo Bay-style orange jumpsuit, who identified himself briefly before one of his captors put a large knife to his neck. A scream was heard, followed by shouts of ”Allahu Akbar!” — ”God is greatest” — as the head was held out to the camera.
The pictures, released through an Islamic website, shocked America and reinforced the Bush administration’s insistence that US abuse of Iraqi prisoners paled in comparison with the barbarity of the nation’s enemies.
”This shows the true nature of the enemies of freedom,” the White House spokesperson, Scott McClellan, told reporters. ”They have no regard for the lives of innocent men, women and children.” The Foreign Office called the episode ”utterly repugnant and indefensible”.
The video of the decapita tion bore the title ”Abu Musab al-Zarqawi shown slaughtering an American”. It was unclear whether Zarqawi — a lieutenant of Osama bin Laden thought to be based in Iraq — was shown in the video, or was claiming responsibility for ordering the execution.
The slaughter marked the end of a convoluted odyssey for Nick Berg, a committed supporter of President Bush’s Iraq campaign who had twice travelled to Iraq to seek work as a communications contractor only to be arrested, released and then captured by militants. His decapitated body was found near a flyover in Baghdad on Saturday but the US military did not disclose the discovery until Tuesday morning.
His family expressed devastation at their loss and hit out at the US authorities for the way they handled their son’s disappearance.
”I knew he was decapitated before,” his father, Michael Berg, said. ”That manner is preferable to a long and torturous death. But I didn’t want it to become public.”
The family had been told of his death by military officials on Monday. ”I think a lot of people are fed up with the lack of civil rights this thing [the war] has caused,” Berg added. ”I don’t think this administration is committed to democracy.”
The men in the video said the killing was revenge for abuse and humiliation by US guards at Abu Ghraib prison, west of Baghdad.
”For the mothers and wives of American soldiers, we tell you that we offered the US 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 coffin after coffin … slaughtered in this way.”
How 26-year-old Nick Berg fell into the hands of Islamist militants is unclear, but while in Iraq he also came to the attention of the FBI and the Iraqi police. The state department said he was a private citizen who was not employed under any known contract.
He owned a business called Prometheus Methods Tower Service, inspecting antennae on communications towers, and went to Iraq last December, apparently independently, to look for work. He stayed until February. ”It was more of an exploratory mission,” Michael Berg told the Philadelphia Inquirer last week. His parents say he was lured partly by a sense of adventure, and partly because he was a ”staunch supporter of the government position in Iraq and he wanted to go over there and help”, according to the paper.
He returned to Iraq on March 14, believing that he had found work there, then told his family he would be back in the US by March 30, in time for a friend’s wedding. But he failed to turn up for his flight.
The next day, FBI agents arrived at Berg’s family home asking why he was in Iraq. They informed Mr and Mrs Berg that their son was in jail.
On April 5, the Bergs began court proceedings in Philadelphia claiming that their son was being held illegally in Iraq, and he was freed a day later. After his release, Nick Berg contacted his parents on April 6, 7, 8 and 9. He said he had been arrested by Iraqi officials at a checkpoint in Mosul. They never heard from him again.
Suzanne Berg said that the family had been trying for weeks to learn where their son was, but US federal officials had not been helpful. ”I went through this with them for weeks,” she said. ”I basically ended up doing most of the investigating myself.”
The website on which the video was posted is known as a clearing house for al-Qaeda and Islamist extremist groups’ statements and tapes.
In the video, the speaker threatened President Bush and General Pervez Musharraf, the president of Pakistan. ”As for you, Bush dog of the Christians, expect severe days. You and your soldiers will regret the day you stepped into the land of Iraq,” he said. He described General Musharraf as ”a traitor agent”.
The killing recalled the kidnapping and beheading of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002 in Pakistan. Four Islamist militants have been convicted, but seven other suspects — including those who allegedly slit his throat — remain at large. – Guardian Unlimited Â