Web video 'shows US soldiers' bodies being burned'
An al-Qaida-linked group posted a web video today purporting to show the bodies of two American soldiers being dragged behind a truck, then set on fire in apparent retaliation for the rape-slaying of a young Iraqi woman by US troops from the same unit.
The Mujahedeen Shura Council – an umbrella organisation of insurgent groups, including al-Qaida in Iraq – posted another video in June showing the soldiers’ mutilated bodies, and claiming it killed them.
It was impossible to identify the bodies, but the footage was believed to be of Pfc Kristian Menchaca, 23, and Pfc Thomas Tucker, 25, who went missing after being attacked by insurgents on June 16 at a checkpoint south of Baghdad. Their remains were found three days later, and the US military said they had been mutilated.
The video showed masked men dragging the corpses, first by hand and then behind a truck, beheading one of them and then setting them on fire. Below the graphic footage is a subtitle: “The two soldiers belong to the same brigade of the soldier who raped our sister in Mahmoudiya.”
The US military has charged five soldiers, including two sergeants, in connection to the March 12 alleged rape and murder of 14-year-old Abeer Qassim Hamza in the Youssifiyah area and the killing of her parents and a younger sister.
