Published September 21, 2004
BAGHDAD (AP) — A posting on an Islamic website claimed
yesterday that the al-Qaida-linked group led by Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi has slain a U.S. hostage in Iraq, just 24 hours after
grisly video showed the terror mastermind beheading another
American captive.
- Beth Dykstra
- Hensley family spokesperson Jake Haley, left foreground, talks to the media yesterday in front of the home of American hostage Jack Hensley in Marietta, Ga., after it was reported that Hensley, who was held in Iraq, had been killed. Behind Haley comfor
More like this
The posting was followed about two hours later by a claim on a
different website threatening to kill a third hostage, a British
man, if women prisoners in Iraq are not freed.
Neither claim could immediately be verified.
Al-Zarqawi’s group, Tawhid and Jihad, kidnapped two
Americans — Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong — and
Briton Kenneth Bigley on Thursday from a home that the three civil
engineers shared in an upscale Baghdad neighborhood. Al-Zarqawi
beheaded Armstrong, and the militants on Monday posted a gruesome
video of the 52-year-old man’s death.
The new postings followed the passing of the militants’
24-hour deadline for the release of all Iraqi women from prison,
and after anguished relatives in the United States and Britain
begged for the lives of Bigley, 62, and Hensley, who would have
marked his 49th birthday today.
“The nation’s zealous sons slaughtered the second
American hostage after the end of the deadline,” the first
statement said. It was signed with the pseudonym Abu Maysara
al-Iraqi, the name usually used on statements from
al-Zarqawi’s group. Claims on this website have proven to be
accurate in the past.
The brief statement did not give the name of the hostage killed.
It promised video proof soon.
Tawhid and Jihad — Arabic for “Monotheism and Holy
War” — has claimed responsibility for killing at least
seven hostages, including another American, Nicholas Berg, who was
abducted in April. The group has also said it is behind a number of
bombings and gun attacks.
This week’s back-to-back killings and the threat of more,
however, represented a heightened level of psychological warfare in
al-Zarqawi’s campaign of terror.
A host of militant groups have used kidnappings and bombings as
their signature weapons in a blood-soaked campaign to undermine
interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s government and force the
United States and its allies out of Iraq. The violence has already
persuaded companies to leave Iraq, hindered foreign investment, led
firms to drop out of aid projects, restricted activities to
relatively safe areas and forced major expenditures on
security.
A car bomb wounded four U.S. soldiers on the road to
Baghdad’s airport and two Marines were reported killed in
separate attacks west of the capital, underscoring the inability of
American forces to control key areas part of Iraq 17 months after
starting operations here.
