Home > First american hostage beheaded in Iraq
A militant group headed by al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has killed an American captive in Iraq after the lapse of a 24-hour deadline, a statement posted on the Internet and an Arabic channel says.
The Qatar-based Al Jazeera said a statement announcing the killing of American Jack Hensley, 48, by the Tawhid and Jihad group was posted on the Internet on Tuesday. It gave no further details.
On an Islamist site, a contributor who has in the past posted messages in the name of Tawhid and Jihad said the group would soon post pictures of the "slaughter".
"The sons of our nation have slit the throat of the second American hostage after the deadline passed and we will provide you with pictures soon," said the contributor, who goes by the pseudonym Abu Maysarah al-Iraqi.
Hensley’s death comes a day after the group beheaded American Eugene Armstrong, 52, who was also kidnapped along with Hensley and Briton Kenneth Bigley, 62, in Baghdad last week.
There was no word on Bigley’s fate.
In Washington, a U.S. State Department official said: "We take these reports seriously but I don’t think we have a body yet."
Tawhid and Jihad had threatened to kill the hostages unless women prisoners were freed from Iraqi jails.
The U.S. military says no women are being held in the two prisons specified, but that two are in U.S. custody and are accused of working on ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s weapons programme.
Zarqawi’s group has said it was responsible for most of the bloodiest suicide bombings in Iraq since the fall of Saddam. It has beheaded several hostages, including U.S. telecoms engineer Nicholas Berg in May and South Korean driver Kim Sun-il in June. (Reuters)
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=588156§ion=news
Forum posts
22 September 2004, 11:02
God if we could just quit lying for long enough to get serious maybe these men would be alive today. We probably have other women locked up in secret and we will find out about that later. What purpose is served by keeping these women in prison? If our women were being kidnapped and locked up by Iraqis we would probably do what these desperate people are doing there. I feel sorry for the men who are paying the price for our corrupt dishonest government and their families who believed there men went there to help these people. Obviously they do not want us there we should pack up and leave. I feel even more sorry for the destroyed lives and culture in Iraq nobody deserves what they are going through. Americans should be outraged and ashamed of our government.
25 September 2004, 16:31
I feel very sorry for you. Your message isn’t even logical. My guess is that you are on the side of the terrorists and posting here. Get lost and don’t think for a minute that your trickery is fooling anyone!
26 September 2004, 02:44
You are already a fool.