UPDATE
As I’m sure many of you have heard, the video was not of Bahjat, but of another victim killed in 2004: (via The Jawa Report)
A gruesome beheading video delivered to the Sunday Times purporting to be of slain journalist Atwar Bahjat is a hoax. On Sunday, May 7th, the Times reported that they had received a low-quality video of Atwar Bahjat being slowly beheaded. That video is now being circulated on the internet as the “Atwar Bahjat” beheading video.
The Jawa Report can reveal that the Times and Halal Jabar, the author of the article, are victims of a hoax. The video actually shows the gruesome murder of a Nepalese man by the Army of Ansar al-Sunna in Iraq from August of 2004. The man was one of 12 victims executed by the terrorist organization–the other 11 were shot (original story, video, and images of 12 Nepalese murdered in Iraq here).
The Times describes the Nepalese murder video precisely. However, the video delivered to the Times was actually a low-quality version of a much higher quality film originally made by Ansar al-Sunnah. The Times video also is edited to exclude the murder of the other 11 hostages.
The Army of Ansar al-Sunna has murdered dozens of civilians in Iraq. The organization is an offshoot of the Army of Ansar al-Islam–a Kurdish Islamist organization. The group routinely murders those suspected of collaborating with the U.S. and Iraqi governments. Before the group murders their hostages they accuse them of ‘apostasy’, a crime punishable by death under Islamic law. They therefore justify their murders as ‘executions’ for ‘crimes’ committed against Islam.
Either way, this reporter still died a horrible death and this should not overshadow that fact
END UPDATE
Another innocent person, this time a Iraqi journalist, was tortured and executed the Al-Qaeda way. Beheading:
EVEN by the stupefying standards of Iraq?s unspeakable violence, the murder of Atwar Bahjat, one of the country?s top television journalists, was an act of exceptional cruelty.
[…]Bahjat was abducted after making three live broadcasts from the edge of her native city of Samarra on the day its golden-domed Shi?ite mosque was blown up, allegedly by Sunni terrorists.
[…]Two men drove up in a pick-up truck, asking for her. She appealed to a small crowd that had gathered around her crew but nobody was willing to help her. It was reported at the time that she had been shot dead with her cameraman and sound man.
We now know that it was not that swift for Bahjat. First she was stripped to the waist, a humiliation for any woman but particularly so for a pious Muslim who concealed her hair, arms and legs from men other than her father and brother.
Then her arms were bound behind her back. A golden locket in the shape of Iraq that became her glittering trademark in front of the television cameras must have been removed at some point ? it is nowhere to be seen in the grainy film, which was made by someone who pointed a mobile phone at her as she lay on a patch of earth in mortal terror.
By the time filming begins, the condemned woman has been blindfolded with a white bandage.
It is stained with blood that trickles from a wound on the left side of her head. She is moaning, although whether from the pain of what has already been done to her or from the fear of what is about to be inflicted is unclear.
[…]A large man dressed in military fatigues, boots and cap approaches from behind and covers her mouth with his left hand. In his right hand, he clutches a large knife with a black handle and an 8in blade. He proceeds to cut her throat from the middle, slicing from side to side.
Her cries ? ?Ah, ah, ah? ? can be heard above the ?Allahu akbar? (God is greatest) intoned by the holder of the mobile phone.
Even then, there is no quick release for Bahjat. Her executioner suddenly stands up, his job only half done. A second man in a dark T-shirt and camouflage trousers places his right khaki boot on her abdomen and pushes down hard eight times, forcing a rush of blood from her wounds as she moves her head from right to left.
Only now does the executioner return to finish the task. He hacks off her head and drops it to the ground, then picks it up again and perches it on her bare chest so that it faces the film-maker in a grotesque parody of one of her pieces to camera.
The voice of one of the Arab world?s most highly regarded and outspoken journalists has been silenced. She was 30.
But it doesn’t stop there. Apparently she had numerous drill holes in her body:
The friend, who cannot be identified, knew nothing of her beheading but had been guarding other horrifying details of Bahjat?s ordeal. She had nine drill holes in her right arm and 10 in her left, he said. The drill had also been applied to her legs, her navel and her right eye. One can only hope that these mutilations were made after her death.
Why was she killed like this? Was it because of her reporting? She was half Sunni, half Shiite, like many inside Iraq and had reported on the mosque bombing recently which many suspect irked the terrorists:
According to a report that was circulating after Bahjat?s murder, she had enraged the Shi?ite militias during her coverage of the bombing of the Samarra shrine by filming the interior minister, Bayan Jabr, ordering police to release two Iranians they had arrested.
There is no confirmation of this and the Badr Brigade, with which she maintained good relations, protected her family after her funeral came under attack in Baghdad from a bomber and then from a gunman. Three people died that day.
Bahjat?s reporting of terrorist attacks and denunciations of violence to a wide audience across the Middle East made her plenty of enemies among both Shi?ite and Sunni gunmen. Death threats from Sunnis drove her away to Qatar for a spell but she believed her place was in Iraq and she returned to frontline reporting despite the risks.
The writer of this story attempts to make the case that this kind of thing never occurred prior to our invasion:
Just as Bahjat bore witness to countless atrocities that she covered for her television station, Al-Arabiya, during Iraq?s descent into sectarian conflict, so the recording of her execution embodies the depths of the country?s depravity after three years of war.
Apparently he never heard of the gassing of the Kurds, the rape chambers, the wood chipers, the acid tanks, or about a few planes that crashed in the United States. No, this kind of violence was never seen prior to our arrival.
It’s appalling the level of depravity the terrorists wallow in. How can ANYONE excuse this? I know the video will be hard to watch but those who excuse these scum need to see this. They need to hear the terror in her voice, they need to see the pain these scum cause. They need to understand we do not fight against a group that has a bone to pick with the US. We fight against a ideology from hell itself.
These killers said “allahu akbar” just as those who put Flight 93 into the ground did, just as those who flew planes in the WTC and the Pentagon did. Just as those who detonate a belt of explosives do.
Will this teach us anything?
Other’s Blogging:
- Mudville Gazette
- Blue Crab Boulevard
- Michelle Malkin
- Captain’s Quarters
- The Jawa Report
- Protein Wisdom
- Hyscience
- Ace Of Spades HQ
- Blackfive
- Brutally Honest
- Dinocrat
- Pajamas Media
I know the video will be hard to watch but those who excuse these scum need to see this. They need to hear the terror in her voice, they need to see the pain these scum cause. They need to understand we do not fight against a group that has a bone to pick with the US. We fight against a ideology from hell itself.
See author page
Dear Curt,
I sent off to many and glad to see the links growing. I asked all to let free their rage, Vanderleun has in his “own way”.
A small excerpt:
http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/006366.php
CLEAR HISTORY by Vanderleun
And yet we see, in our current political malaise, that there are many among us who evidently “Clear History” on a daily basis in order to keep their dark dream of a perfect world, a single world, a utopian realm alive in the clear light of day. It is, as you can see today, even possible for these people to “Clear History” of a videotape of a woman having her throat cut and head severed in the name of Islam last Saturday. With “Clear History” all erasures are possible.
This is a curious phenomenon. Something that is quite new. It is not the “Revisionism skills” common to the Marxist, Leninist, and Maoist of old, where history was remade with the destruction of texts, the alterations of photographs, the burning of books, and the issuing of the Party Line of the day to the faithful. This is a complete and immediate blotting out of history en masse. It is accompanied by a careful retention of a fixed number of “historical facts” in a Curiosity Cabinet of Argument found in a dusty chamber filled with monuments to aged intellect; a go-to place where the only events of history worth keeping are those that buttress a reality that exists nowhere but must surely, in some future perfect day, exist everywhere. For when you “Clear History” one of the things that go away in the real world are the books. And then you are left, not with History Books but with only that other ubiquitous element of cyberspace existence, Bookmarks.
Clear History @ AMERICAN DIGEST
This makes me sick to my stomach when I hear what these animals have done to innocents.
Where is the outrage from the Democrats? I listen…but the silence is deafening.
There was alot on the internet about kidnapping of reporters(4) in Afghanistan and taking Advice from ‘locals.’ Any Afghanistan connections?
Read the article again. This was apparently done by the Iran-allied Shiite majority that we invaded Iran in order TO PUT IN CHARGE. This was not “terrorists” or “the enemy.” This was the people WE put in charge. Of course the minority, Saddamist Sunni insurgents are doing the same thing. And the al Queda terrorists. But don’t try to say stopping this is the reason we invaded – this was the Shiites.