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World revolted by beheading
13/05/2004 07:35 - (SA)
Baghdad - The international community reacted with disgust at images of an American's beheading in Iraq.
In a grainy video on an Islamist website, Nick Berg, a businessman from Pennsylvania who has been missing in Iraq since mid-April, was shown being decapitated with a large knife by a group of masked men who claimed their action was in revenge for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US troops.
The video of Berg's killing was entitled Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi slaughtering an American, though it was not clear if the wanted Jordanian Al-Qaeda operative was involved.
After the killing, shouts of "Allahu akbar" (God is great) are heard and then the men hold the head up to the camera. Berg's remains were found on Saturday by US troops along a road near Baghdad.
Leaders across the world condemned the killing.
The White House rejected any link between the abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison and the "brutal, barbaric" beheading, and vowed to hunt down those responsible.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said he was "horrified" by it.
"This was a truly barbaric act and there is no justification for this kind of act in a civilised world," a spokesperson for British Prime Minister Tony Blair said.
The "depraved" beheading will not force Australian troops out of Iraq, Australian Prime Minister John Howard said.
Unforgivable
Japan called for the swift arrest of those who carried out the "merciless" killing. "It was an unforgivable act and we strongly condemn it," foreign ministry spokesperson Hatsuhisa Takashima told reporters.
People in Baghdad offered both condemnation and excuses as the two leading Arab satellite channels, Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, continued broadcasting harrowing images from the video showing Berg before his beheading.
"From what we have seen, it was a natural reaction to the human rights violations at Abu Ghraib. What the Americans are doing now is terrible," said one woman, a 45-year-old dentist in Baghdad.
But house painter Ali Abu Nabi, 29, said: "He was a human being and he came to Iraq on a mission to help Iraqis."
Even the Lebanese Islamist group Hezbollah condemned the beheading, calling it a "horrible act which does an immense wrong to Islam and Muslims by a group which falsely pretends to follow the precepts of the religion of pardon and essential human values" and obscures the scandal over the prisoner abuse.
- AFP
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