Horrific image of revenge

By JUSTIN HUGGLER

BAGHDAD - It is a death beyond most people's nightmares. The young American civilian who came to Iraq because one of his goals was to help underdeveloped countries was forced to recite his parents' names to the camera in a gruesome last farewell.

Then, with the camera running, the executioners - men in black masks - held him down. A long knife descended. His last scream was stifled as the blade cut through his throat.

They yelled "God is greatest" as they killed him, and held up his severed head before the camera.

The final moments of Nick Berg were shown in a video released yesterday by an Islamic militant website, hours after his body was found dumped on a Baghdad highway overpass.

He was not the first to die this way. Many Russian soldiers faced the same death in Chechnya. The journalist Daniel Pearl was killed the same way, even down to the taped farewell message referring to his parents.

But yesterday's horrific video had its own message. The men who killed Berg said they did it in revenge for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib Prison. And so in revenge for the digital photographs of Americans torturing and humiliating Iraqis, they made their own film, cruel image for cruel image.

"Nation of Islam, is there any excuse left to sit idly by? And how can free Muslims sleep soundly as they see Islam being slaughtered, honour bleeding, photographs of shame and reports of Satanic degradation of the people of Islam, men and women, in Abu Ghraib Prison?" one of the masked men said, reading a statement.

Berg's orange overalls were reminiscent of those worn by al Qaeda suspects held by US troops at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

The Muntada al-Ansar Islamist website said Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a top ally of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, was the man who cut off Berg's head. The statement in the video was signed off with Zarqawi's name and dated May 11.

The militants' statement, addressing families of US soldiers, said Zarqawi's group had offered to swap Berg for Iraqi prisoners held by US troops "but they refused".

"You will only get shroud after shroud and coffin after coffin slaughtered in this manner," it said.

"As for you Bush, dog of the Christians, anticipate what will harm you ... You and your soldiers will regret the day you stepped foot in Iraq and dared to violate Muslims."

Berg was an unlikely victim for this terrible death. Unlike many of the contractors working on reconstruction projects in Iraq, the 26-year-old from Westchester, Pennsylvania, spoke of his work in idealistic terms.

When he went missing, his mother, Suzanne, said: "He had this idea that he could help rebuild the infrastructure." He wanted to help underdeveloped countries.

But Berg was a practical man: he earned his living climbing communication towers to fix antennas and check wiring. He had his own company, Prometheus Methods Tower Service Inc. So he brought his expertise to Iraq, looking for work on reconstruction.

He kept in touch with his parents, sending emails or telephoning several times a day to say that he was safe. Shortly before he disappeared in April, he told his parents he was on his way home, but wanted to find a way out of Iraq without travelling through Baghdad, because he believed it was too dangerous.

Berg was unlucky in Iraq, even before the people who killed him got their hands on him. He went missing not once but twice. He arrived in Iraq for the first time in December 2003.

On February 1 this year, he returned home on holiday, but he came back to Iraq on March 14. That was when things started to go wrong.

His parents suddenly stopped hearing from him after March 24. He had said he was coming home on March 30, but he wasn't on the flight. That was his first disappearance.

That time, the Americans found him. He had been arrested at a checkpoint in Mosul. He was released on April 6, after his parents filed a lawsuit in the US.

Whether that first, strange episode had anything to do with his subsequent disappearance is not clear.

After he was released, Berg told his parents he was coming home. The US State Department offered to arrange him a ticket on a charter flight from Baghdad, but Berg told his father Michael that he doubted they would be able to do so.

How exactly Berg was taken hostage is not clear. After April 9, his trail disappears.

The next anyone heard of him was when his disfigured body turned up on an overpass in Baghdad. Within hours, the video that appeared to show his last minutes alive appeared on an Islamic website.

"My name is Nick Berg," he is made to recite. "My father's name is Michael, my mother's name is Suzanne. I have a brother and sister, David and Sarah. I live in ... Philadelphia."

The video is disturbingly similar to that of Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter, in which he is made to recite: "My father is Jewish. My mother is Jewish. I'm Jewish."

Berg's parents said he might be alive if he had not been held by Iraqi police and they were angry at the lack of information from the US Government about his detention.

"They caused his death indirectly by detaining him without any rights," said Michael Berg.

"Even after detaining him, I think they at least had an obligation to get him safely out of the country."

The dead man's father added that his son had been Jewish.

"If there was any doubt that they were going to kill him that probably clinched it, I'm guessing."

- INDEPENDENT, REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq