BAGHDAD, 12 May 2004 — An Al-Qaeda-related website has posted a video which shows the beheading of a 26-year-old American civilian whose body was found in Baghdad over the weekend, it was reported yesterday.
A senior US State Department official identified the slain American as Nicholas Berg, a private businessman from Pennsylvania who was in Iraq looking for contracts.
The official said Berg’s body had been found by the side of a road near Baghdad over the weekend. US television networks said the video showed five hooded men standing behind Berg while one of them read a statement denouncing the abuses of Iraqi detainees by US soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison.
After the statement was finished, Berg’s captors decapitated him with a large knife, according to the networks, which did not show the video of the actual execution but described it as horrific. The networks said the tape was titled “Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi slaughtering an American.”
Zarqawi is a wanted Al-Qaeda operative. The networks said it was unclear whether Zarqawi himself murdered Berg.
A US official said the Central Intelligence Agency was reviewing the tape.
“At this point we need to review it to see whether it is Zarqawi,” the official said.
Meanwhile, senior aides to Iraqi cleric Moqtada Sadr agreed with other Shiite factions yesterday that Sadr could pull his Mehdi Army out of Najaf in return for a US withdrawal from the city.
“Agreement has been reached on all points of contention. This agreement represents all shades of the Shiite political spectrum,” Qais Al-Khazali, Sadr’s chief aide in Najaf, told reporters after a meeting with rival Shiite leaders.
“This is the beginning of a solution to the crisis that endangers everyone,” said Abu Hassan Amari, head of the Badr Brigades militia which is loyal to the rival Shiite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).
There was no initial response from the US military which occupies a small base and other buildings in Najaf but has kept away from the mosques where Sadr and his fighters have taken refuge as month-long fighting has stalled.
But earlier, the US commander in the region, Maj. Gen. Martin Dempsey said that his forces were prepared to hand over security in Najaf to a locally raised security force that could include members of Sadr’s Mehdi Army.
SCIRI’s Amari said one of the elements of the agreement in principle was the creation of a broad Iraqi security force.
There was no word on whether the deal addressed the fate of Sadr himself, a young firebrand who has irritated the Shiite establishment and is wanted by an Iraqi prosecutor over the murder of a fellow cleric in Najaf a year ago.
Also yesterday, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld denied that the Pentagon fosters a “culture of cover-up” and said the military, not the media, reported the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US troops.
Rumsfeld, who has been supported by President George W. Bush amid demands from some Democrats for his resignation, sharply defended the military’s handling of the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad that has shocked America and infuriated the Arab world.
