lucky wilbury
10-12-2004, 06:00 PM
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6224876/
U.S. tried to rescue hostages in Iraq
Two Americans, Briton were later beheaded
NBC News and news services
Updated: 5:50 p.m. ET Oct. 12, 2004
The United States unsuccessfully tried at least twice to rescue two Americans and a British man who were taken hostage in Iraq last month and later were beheaded, U.S. officials said Tuesday.
The officials, who asked not to be identified, said hostage rescue teams went to two places in Baghdad based on intelligence reports and found nothing.
“They just got there and nobody was there,” an official said of the attempts to free the Americans, Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley, and the Briton, Kenneth Bigley, who were taken Sept. 16 from their home in Baghdad.
CNN, which first reported the attempts from Baghdad on Tuesday, said they involved both U.S. military and other government personnel. A U.S. official confirmed the report in remarks to NBC News.
U.S. officials told Reuters that one attempt was made when all three men were still alive and that the second followed the killing of Armstrong just days after he was taken.
“We don’t really know whether the men were ever at the spots,” one of the officials told Reuters. “But there were attempts to get them.”
Al-Zarqawi’s group blamed
Armstrong was killed Sept. 20 and Hensley a day later by a group headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, which demanded that Washington and Britain release female prisoners from jails in Iraq.
Bigley, 62, an engineer, was killed last week, and a video posted Sunday on the Internet showed him making a last appeal to Prime Minister Tony Blair to meet the demands of the militants holding him.
The edited tape showed a militant putting a knife to his neck and beginning to cut it, before a group of them leaped on him, yelling the Islamic rallying cry “God is greatest.”
Insurgent sources in Iraq had said Bigley escaped briefly from his captors shortly before they killed him Thursday in a town southwest of Baghdad.
Washington says it holds only two women in Iraq, both of them top weapons scientists from the days of former President Saddam Hussein. The British say they are holding no women.
Video shows beheading of U.S.-linked Iraqi
Meanwhile, a video surfaced Tuesday on the Internet showing what was said to be the confession and beheading of an Arab Shiite Muslim, presumably Iraqi, whom the insurgents accused of working with the U.S. military.
The video’s authenticity could not be verified, but it was posted in the name of the Ansar al-Sunnah Army on a Web site where such militant content is often released. It showed a man, who identified himself as Al-Sayed Alaa al-Malki, kneeling in front of two masked gunmen.
Two identification cards were hanging from the man’s gray shirt. One of them bore the name al-Malki and said “local sheik.” It also had a photograph that showed him wearing a black robe and a white turban similar to those worn by Shiite clerics.
The bearded, heavyset man, his face bruised and dark circles under his eyes, spoke in a shaky voice of ties to a Shiite militia and to a former U.S. military commander in Iraq. Then, he was shown held down on his back, his face covered with a white sheet and his head being cut off. Afterward, the sheet was removed to show his face.
The man, whose accent was Iraqi, said he was a follower of Iraqi Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. He said he “had close relationship with the Sadr army ... and relations with political leaders such as the [Lt. Gen. Ricardo] Sanchez.”
Sanchez was replaced as head of U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq on July 1 by Gen. George Casey. He remains commander of the Army’s V corps, based in Germany.
In Baghdad, an aide to al-Sadr, Abdul Hadi al-Daraji, told The Associated Press that he could not immediately verify that the cleric belonged to al-Sadr’s camp. But he condemned those who carried out beheadings, regardless of al-Malki’s affiliation.
“These people do not serve Islam. They blemish the reputation of Islam,” he said. “This is proof that they do not represent resistance to occupation, but rather aim at inciting strife.”
The video showed the man saying he worked with a U.S. military officer named Paul, with whom he allegedly established a “Citizens Claims Office” that was used as a cover “to collect and buy weapons from the street and sell them to the American army.”
A statement purportedly from the Ansar al-Sunnah Army that accompanied the video said al-Malki was killed because “he used the Citizens Claims Office as an underground tunnel — during his work with the American forces — to assassinate a number of Sunni leaders.”
Shiites make up 60 percent of Iraq’s 25 million people but were marginalized and often brutalized under former President Saddam Hussein, who is a Sunni Muslim.
The death was part of a surge in decapitations of both foreigners and Iraqis that have swept Iraq since last spring. Monday, a Turkish contractor and an Iraqi Kurdish translator were beheaded on a video posted on the same site, while 10 Turkish hostages who had been freed by kidnappers arrived at the Turkish Embassy in Baghdad.
Insurgents in Iraq have kidnapped more than 150 foreigners in their campaign to drive out coalition forces and hamper reconstruction. Many Iraqis also have been killed on suspicion of cooperating with U.S.-led forces in Iraq, but Internet videos of beheadings generally have been of foreigners abducted to pressure foreign governments or companies to stop doing business with the Americans.
U.S. tried to rescue hostages in Iraq
Two Americans, Briton were later beheaded
NBC News and news services
Updated: 5:50 p.m. ET Oct. 12, 2004
The United States unsuccessfully tried at least twice to rescue two Americans and a British man who were taken hostage in Iraq last month and later were beheaded, U.S. officials said Tuesday.
The officials, who asked not to be identified, said hostage rescue teams went to two places in Baghdad based on intelligence reports and found nothing.
“They just got there and nobody was there,” an official said of the attempts to free the Americans, Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley, and the Briton, Kenneth Bigley, who were taken Sept. 16 from their home in Baghdad.
CNN, which first reported the attempts from Baghdad on Tuesday, said they involved both U.S. military and other government personnel. A U.S. official confirmed the report in remarks to NBC News.
U.S. officials told Reuters that one attempt was made when all three men were still alive and that the second followed the killing of Armstrong just days after he was taken.
“We don’t really know whether the men were ever at the spots,” one of the officials told Reuters. “But there were attempts to get them.”
Al-Zarqawi’s group blamed
Armstrong was killed Sept. 20 and Hensley a day later by a group headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, which demanded that Washington and Britain release female prisoners from jails in Iraq.
Bigley, 62, an engineer, was killed last week, and a video posted Sunday on the Internet showed him making a last appeal to Prime Minister Tony Blair to meet the demands of the militants holding him.
The edited tape showed a militant putting a knife to his neck and beginning to cut it, before a group of them leaped on him, yelling the Islamic rallying cry “God is greatest.”
Insurgent sources in Iraq had said Bigley escaped briefly from his captors shortly before they killed him Thursday in a town southwest of Baghdad.
Washington says it holds only two women in Iraq, both of them top weapons scientists from the days of former President Saddam Hussein. The British say they are holding no women.
Video shows beheading of U.S.-linked Iraqi
Meanwhile, a video surfaced Tuesday on the Internet showing what was said to be the confession and beheading of an Arab Shiite Muslim, presumably Iraqi, whom the insurgents accused of working with the U.S. military.
The video’s authenticity could not be verified, but it was posted in the name of the Ansar al-Sunnah Army on a Web site where such militant content is often released. It showed a man, who identified himself as Al-Sayed Alaa al-Malki, kneeling in front of two masked gunmen.
Two identification cards were hanging from the man’s gray shirt. One of them bore the name al-Malki and said “local sheik.” It also had a photograph that showed him wearing a black robe and a white turban similar to those worn by Shiite clerics.
The bearded, heavyset man, his face bruised and dark circles under his eyes, spoke in a shaky voice of ties to a Shiite militia and to a former U.S. military commander in Iraq. Then, he was shown held down on his back, his face covered with a white sheet and his head being cut off. Afterward, the sheet was removed to show his face.
The man, whose accent was Iraqi, said he was a follower of Iraqi Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. He said he “had close relationship with the Sadr army ... and relations with political leaders such as the [Lt. Gen. Ricardo] Sanchez.”
Sanchez was replaced as head of U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq on July 1 by Gen. George Casey. He remains commander of the Army’s V corps, based in Germany.
In Baghdad, an aide to al-Sadr, Abdul Hadi al-Daraji, told The Associated Press that he could not immediately verify that the cleric belonged to al-Sadr’s camp. But he condemned those who carried out beheadings, regardless of al-Malki’s affiliation.
“These people do not serve Islam. They blemish the reputation of Islam,” he said. “This is proof that they do not represent resistance to occupation, but rather aim at inciting strife.”
The video showed the man saying he worked with a U.S. military officer named Paul, with whom he allegedly established a “Citizens Claims Office” that was used as a cover “to collect and buy weapons from the street and sell them to the American army.”
A statement purportedly from the Ansar al-Sunnah Army that accompanied the video said al-Malki was killed because “he used the Citizens Claims Office as an underground tunnel — during his work with the American forces — to assassinate a number of Sunni leaders.”
Shiites make up 60 percent of Iraq’s 25 million people but were marginalized and often brutalized under former President Saddam Hussein, who is a Sunni Muslim.
The death was part of a surge in decapitations of both foreigners and Iraqis that have swept Iraq since last spring. Monday, a Turkish contractor and an Iraqi Kurdish translator were beheaded on a video posted on the same site, while 10 Turkish hostages who had been freed by kidnappers arrived at the Turkish Embassy in Baghdad.
Insurgents in Iraq have kidnapped more than 150 foreigners in their campaign to drive out coalition forces and hamper reconstruction. Many Iraqis also have been killed on suspicion of cooperating with U.S.-led forces in Iraq, but Internet videos of beheadings generally have been of foreigners abducted to pressure foreign governments or companies to stop doing business with the Americans.