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Arab news stations air footage of American before execution
The two leading Arab satellite channels, Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, Wednesday continued broadcasting harrowing images from a video showing an American before his beheading attributed to an Iraqi group linked to Al-Qaeda.
The two leading Arab satellite channels, Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, Wednesday continued broadcasting harrowing images from a video showing an American before his beheading attributed to an Iraqi group linked to Al-Qaeda.
Al-Arabiya, based in Dubai, briefly aired footage showing five masked men standing behind Nicholas Berg as he sat on the ground. The video is cut before his armed captors are apparently seen cutting off his head with a large knife.
Its Qatar-based rival Al-Jazeera also repeatedly aired images of the five hooded men, at whose feet their shackled victim sits, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, similar to that worn by detainees at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Like their American counterparts, the two Arab channels, the most watched in the Arab world, did not show Berg's decapitation, described by the US channels as horrific.
The video was first posted on an Islamist website believed to have links to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network.
According to Al-Arabiya, one of the five men shown on the video read a statement denouncing the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison.
The beheading was carried out by top Al-Qaeda operative Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, the station also said, adding that the authenticity of the images could not be independently confirmed.
The tape on the website was titled "Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi slaughtering an American."
The US State Department said the body of 26-year-old Berg, a Philadelphia businessman, was found at the weekend, with his head severed. He had been missing since mid-April.
A US official said the Central Intelligence Agency was studying the video to see whether Zarqawi was involved.
In Jordan, Al-Dustour and Al-Arab Al-Yawm newspapers carried in their inside page a picture showing the five masked men, as the statement is read, with Berg seated on the floor.
In contrast, the two dailies as well as Al-Diyar carried on their front page gruesome pictures showing masked Palestinian militants showing off a body part of an Israeli soldier killed in Gaza City.
The Lebanese newspaper Al-Anwar ran three photographs of the execution, taken from the Islamist website, including one of them, out of focus, that shows the hostage collapsing to one side.
The London-based Arabic dailies Al-Hayat and Asharq Al-Awsat published photographs taken before the execution.
