Militant group threatens second beheading

The grisly beheading was the latest killing in a particularly violent month in Iraq, with more than 300 people dead in insurgent attacks and US military strikes over the past seven days.

The nine-minute tape, whose authenticity could not be verified, identified the hostage as Armstrong and showed a sobbing man, blindfolded and wearing an orange jumpsuit kneeling in front of five militants dressed in black.

The sunburst banner of al-Zarqawi’s Tawhid and Jihad banner hung on the wall behind them in the video, and the alleged Jordanian terror mastermind purportedly conducted the beheading himself.

The man in the centre read out a statement, pulled a knife, rushed to the hostage from behind and sliced his head off. The victim screamed and blood poured from his neck.

The executioner then held up the head to the camera before placing it on top of the body.

In Washington, a US official said Armstrong’s body had been recovered, but the official would provide no information about where or when it had been found.

The taped beheading appears to be of Armstrong, but the CIA is still reviewing the tape to be sure, the official said.

Britain’s Foreign Office condemned the brutal killing in a brief statement Monday night and said the “appalling crime” would not weaken its resolve in Iraq.

In a video released on Saturday, Tawhid and Jihad had threatened to kill Armstrong, fellow American Jack Hensley and Briton Kenneth Bigley, unless Iraqi women were released from two US-controlled prisons here.

In the statement read out before the killing, the speaker gave the United States another 24 hours to release “all Muslim women” from prison in Iraq. It did not specify whether it meant at Abu Ghraib and Umm Qasr or other prisons.

The US military has said there are no women held at either facility, but has acknowledged it is holding two female “security prisoners” elsewhere. They include Dr. Rihab Rashid Taha, a scientist who became known as “Dr. Germ” for helping Iraq make weapons out of anthrax.

The military also did not rule out the possibility that women were held as ordinary criminals at facilities under Iraqi control. But the Justice Ministry said a US-Iraqi committee reviewing the cases of detainees has decided to release all women and juveniles within the next two weeks.

Abu Ghraib is the prison where US soldiers were photographed sexually humiliating male prisoners, raising fears about the safety of women detainees.

The speaker in the video said Tawhid and Jihad was taking revenge for women Iraqi prisoners and called US President George W. Bush “a dog".

“You, sister, rejoice. God’s soldiers are coming to get you out of your chains and restore your purity by returning you to your mother and father,” the speaker said.

Addressing US President George W Bush, he said: “Now you have people who love death just like you love life. Killing for the sake of God is their best wish, getting to your soldiers and allies are their happiest moments, and cutting the heads of the criminal infidels is implementing the orders of our lord.”

Armstrong grew up in Hillsdale, Michigan, but left the area around 1990. His brother, Frank, still lives there. Armstrong’s work in construction took him around the world and he lived in Thailand with his wife before going to Iraq.

“Jack (Eugene Armstrong) was a good guy,” said Cyndi Armstrong, a spokeswoman for the Armstrong family. “He was in Hillsdale for many years, but he didn’t like to stay in one place. He loved to travel.”

Patty Hensley, the wife of surviving hostage Jack Hensley, went on American television today to plead with her husband’s captors to spare his life.

“I understand their political agenda, but what I need them to understand is the man who I have been with for 23 years, who is the father of our 13-year-old daughter, who does not understand this situation, why someone would want to hurt her father,” Patty Hensley said in an interview with CNN. “I would plead with them to please realise this man does not deserve this fate.”

Earlier, she expressed sympathy for Armstrong’s family.

“He was one of my husband’s best friends and best co-workers and I know his family is terribly devastated at this point,” she said.

Tawhid and Jihad – Arabic for “Monotheism and Holy War” – has claimed responsibility for the slaying of three hostages in the past, including the beheading of American Nicholas Berg, who was abducted in April. The group has also said it is behind a number of bombings and gun attacks.

More than 130 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq, and at least 26 of them have been executed. Iraqis have also faced an epidemic of kidnappings in the chaos since the fall of Saddam Hussein last year, in many cases for ransom.

In a separate hostage crisis, suspected Shiite fighters freed 18 US-trained Iraqi National Guard members yesterday on the orders of renegade Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who had denounced the act as insulting to Islam.

Insurgents have used kidnappings and bombings as their signature weapons in a 17-month campaign to undermine the interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and force the US and its allies out of Iraq.

The violence continued unabated, as assailants gunned down two Sunni clerics in predominantly Shiite areas of Baghdad in twin attacks against a powerful Muslim religious group that has emerged as a key representative of Iraq’s fearful Sunni minority.

It was not immediately known who was behind the killings on Sunday night and Monday and there were no arrests, but religious leaders accused renegade militants bent on pitting Shiites and Sunnis against each other with the aim of taking advantage of ensuing chaos to strengthen their grip.

Al-Zarqawi’s group posted a statement condemning the slayings on a website known for its militant content. It could not be verified.

The two clerics belonged to the Association of Muslim Scholars, a group of conservative clerics that opposes the US presence in Iraq but has interceded often in the past to win the release of foreign hostages.

The association is believed to have contacts with Sunni insurgents, though it denies any links with them. Militant groups have asked the association for a religious ruling on whether kidnappings and killing of hostages are permitted.

It has not, however, publicly commented on the abduction of the two Americans and the Briton, despite calling for the release of two French and two Italian hostages.

Gunmen shot and killed Sheik Mohammed Jadoa al-Janabi, a member of the association, as he entered a mosque in Baghdad’s al-Baya neighbourhood to perform noon prayers yesterday, the association said.

The killing came hours after the bullet-ridden body of another cleric, Sheik Hazem al-Zeidi, was found in the Shiite-dominated Baghdad slum of Sadr City, said Sheik Abdul-Sattar Abdul-Jabbar, a senior member of the group. He had been kidnapped late on Sunday outside a Sadr City mosque.

“We do not accuse a specific person but we say that such acts are in the interest of the (American) occupation and some sectarian people who don’t want to see Iraq stable,” Abdul-Jabbar said.

At al-Zeidi’s funeral yesterday, Sunni and Shiite leaders prayed side-by-side at the same mosque where he was taken and vowed not to let the murders drive a wedge between them.

There have been tit-for-tat killings of Shiite and Sunni clerics. A few clerics from the Sunni association have been killed in the past, most recently in February. But the motives in those and the latest slayings have been unclear.

Last year, US intelligence intercepted a statement allegedly from al-Zarqawi to Osama bin Laden in which the Iraqi militant leader said the best way to undermine US plans to stabilise Iraq was to instigate civil war between the Shites and the Sunnis.