Iraq: Headless body found
2004-07-22 15:27
Tikrit, Iraq - A body of a man was found with its severed head Thursday in the Tigris river in northern Iraq, an Iraqi police chief said.
The body was in a plastic bag in the town of Al-Zuwiya, about 240km north of Baghdad, said Colonel Ismail al-Jubburi, who directs the crime section of the provincial police authority.
He said local police contacted the crimes section in Tikrit, the capital of Salahuldine Province, after finding the body early on Thursday.
An AFP correspondent who viewed the body at the Tikrit teaching hospital said it had begun to decompose and noted that the man was partially bald. While police had earlier said the body was wearing a red jumpsuit, in the morgue it was dressed in a reddish overcoat.
Several foreigners taken hostage in Iraq were dressed in orange outfits similar to those worn by prisoners at the US detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and then slain by their captors.
The finding followed the retrieval by police from the same river on July 14 of a headless corpse wearing an orange outfit, which was handed to the US army.
Jubburi said police were trying to identify the body, but "presume he is not Iraqi".
- AFP