Dead 'US spy' worked for paper

2004-08-26 23:37

Warsaw - A man whose throat an Al-Qaeda affiliate claims to have slit for being a US spy worked with Iraqi correspondents for Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza, the newspaper said on Thursday.

The United States state department said on Wednesday said it could not confirm reports of the alleged killing, photos of which were posted on a radical Islamist website by a group called the Army of Ansar al-Sunna.

Gazeta Wyborcza said the man, Jamal Salman, "had lived for 20 years in the United States".

The newspaper, which on Thursday published a photograph and details about the man, said he had acted as a guide and translator for Gazeta Wyborcza journalists in November 2003 and earlier this year.

"We worked together for nine weeks in Baghdad, in Falloujah and in Samara... We became friends," said Pawel Smolenski, one of the reporters, in the newspaper.

"According to all the information at my disposal, to call him an American spy is a shameless idiocy," he said in an article.

Five photos on website

According to the website, Islamic fighters abducted "a spy called Jamal Tewfik Salman, a naturalised American since 1980, who changed his name to Khaled Abdulmassih, and who confessed to having been recruited by US intelligence in Iraq to spy on the mujahedeen".

Five photos purporting to show a man in his forties having his throat slit were posted on the site.

The Army of Ansar al-Sunna claimed responsibility for a number of attacks in Iraq. <>On Sunday, it posted pictures of 12 men on its website it said were Nepalese taken hostage in Iraq.

- AFP