"Yvonne Ridley [who] reported in last weekend's Sunday Express that Saddam Hussein was actually captured by Kurdish forces who then drugged him and abandoned him for U.S. troops to find after brokering a deal. In 2001, Ridley was imprisoned for 10 days by the Taliban while on assignment in Afghanistan." Democracy now

...and they offered a ransom to the US of say 50 million USD...

but the US renage on that when Saddam is wheeled out... and ask the kurdish forces to do some dirty black ops-

like for instance :
kidnap members of countries thinking of pulling out...

giving the political weight to those regimes as to appearing not to capitulate to 'terrorists' while actually still in reality being aggresive occupiers... what if...???

why would insurgents kidnap people with whom the government doesn't really sympathise with? namely 2 volunteers & a journalist...

these workers have been targets of the coalition for a year!!!! they haven't been kidnapped for the benfit of the Gov... it's for public sympathy...pure psyops.

rebels are to be made into terrorists...PURE CIA!!!!

this is a deliberate process of demonization through negative association...aimed at the apathetic masses in order to keep them in line...

The Arab-language station reported that the slain soldier was Spc. Keith M. Maupin, but the US military said it could not immediately confirm whether a man shown being shot in a murky videotape was indeed Maupin, who was taken hostage after an April 9 attack outside Baghdad.

The report did not say when Maupin, 20, of Batavia, Ohio, was killed.

The family of Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun began an anguished wait as images surfaced from around the world showing him being held by Iraqi captors and threatened with decapitation.

Cpl. Hassoun's relatives in Utah issued a brief statement late Sunday confirming that the Marine, a Muslim of Middle Eastern origin, was the same man shown blindfolded with a sword held over his head. Kin of captured Marine wait in anguish

Why would Captors release Turkish hostages because of Muslim solidarity while others take a US Muslim hostage?

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 29 The American marine who is being threatened by his kidnappers with beheading had deserted the military because he was emotionally traumatized, and was abducted by his captors while trying to make his way home to his native Lebanon, a Marine officer said Tuesday.

The officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said he believed that Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun was betrayed by Iraqis he befriended on his base and ended up in the hands of Islamic extremists.

The officer said Corporal Hassoun, a 24-year-old Marine linguist who was born in Lebanon, was shaken up after he saw one of his sergeants blown apart by a mortar shell.

"It was very disturbing to him," the officer said. "He wanted to go home and quit the game, but since he was relatively early in his deployment, that was not going to happen anytime soon. So he talked to some folks on base he befriended, because they were all fellow Muslims, and they helped sneak him off. Once off, instead of helping him get home, they turned him over to the bad guys."

"It's all we know right now," the officer added.

New York Times

- Militants said on Saturday they had beheaded U.S. Marine Wassef Ali Hassoun, the second reported killing of a kidnapped American soldier in Iraq this week.

"We beheaded the marine of Lebanese origin Hassoun and you will see the film with your own eyes soon," the Army of Ansar al-Sunna group said in a statement on at least two Internet sites. The group said it was holding another "infidel" hostage.

It was not immediately possible to verify the authenticity of the Arabic-language statement, which was addressed to President Bush and demanded he withdraw troops from Iraq. No immediate comment was available from the U.S. military.

Arabic television Al Jazeera last Sunday broadcast a video tape of militants holding a blindfolded Corporal Hassoun, 24, with a sword poised over his head.

The militants had warned previously they would carry on attacking Iraqi officials and U.S.-led foreign forces, despite Washington's handover to an interim Iraqi government last Monday, until "God's law" prevailed in Iraq.

Hours after Washington's handover, al Jazeera broadcast a video tape showing what militants said was the killing of U.S. Private Keith Matthew Maupin, 20. (Reuters)

WEST JORDAN, Utah July 6, 2004 A glimmer of hope grew in this Salt Lake City suburb on word Tuesday from a relative in Lebanon that an U.S. Marine abducted in Iraq was well and might even have been freed.

Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun, a translator with the Marines in Iraq, disappeared on June 20. On Saturday a militant group claimed it had beheaded him, a claim that was later denied.

On Tuesday, a brother of the Lebanon-born Marine said the family was confident he was well.

"We have received reliable information the guy is free," Sami Hassoun told The Associated Press from the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, where the missing Marine has family.

ABC news

07jul04
AN Islamic group holding a US marine hostage was reported as saying yesterday it had released him unharmed after he announced his desertion from the military.

The unconfirmed announcement came as US planes bombed a suspected rebel safehouse in Fallujah, based on intelligence from the new Iraqi government, killing at least 12 people.

Rumours swirling around US marine Corporal Wassef Ali Hassoun, who has been missing from his unit since June 21 and was reported executed only two days ago, took an unexpected twist yesterday when his presumed captors said the Lebanese-born marine had been freed and taken to a safehouse because he had promised to take off his uniform.

Herald Sun

WASHINGTON (AFP) Jul 19, 2004 Marine Corporal Wassef Ali Hassoun denied Monday reports that he had deserted, in his first public comments since returning to the United States last week.

"I did not desert my post. I was captured and held against my will by anti-coalition forces for 19 days," Hassoun said from the Quantico Marine base near Washington.

"This was a very difficult and challenging time for me," he told reporters.

spacewar

WASHINGTON -- The Air Force translator accused of espionage at the prison camp for terror suspects was under investigation before he arrived at the Guantanamo Bay base, a military investigator says.

The Air Force Office of Special Investigations began looking into the case of Senior Airman Ahmad I. al-Halabi in November 2002 while he was a supply clerk at Travis Air Force Base in California, the agent wrote in court documents. Al-Halabi was sent to the Cuban base weeks later as an Arabic language interpreter for the al-Qaida and Taliban suspects there.
Newsday

Beheading shows world must unite against terror: UN

"On behalf of the members of the security council, I wish to condemn in the strongest terms this abominable act of terrorism against an innocent civilian," she said. The Philippines holds the rotating presidency of the 15-nation council for June.
Navhind Times

ZAMBOANGA CITY, 5 July 2004 American and Filipino troops are to hold anti-terrorism training exercises in southern province of North Cotabato, where separatist rebels are actively operating, the provincial governor revealed yesterday.

There will be joint training in North Cotabato, probably in Carmen town, Gov. Emmanuel Pi?ol said during an interview with the radio network DZRH.

Carmen town is a known stronghold of the countrys largest separatist group, Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). Pi?ol said troops participating in the exercises are also expected to hold a series of medical missions in remote villages in the province as part of the training dubbed Balikatan 04, which means shoulder-to-shoulder.
Al Jazeerah

A Pakistani man freed from captivity in Iraq last week said Saturday he saw his captors behead three hostages -- two Americans and an Iraqi -- while he was being held.

His account could not be independently confirmed and there have been no recent reports of two Americans and an Iraqi being abducted. Previously, militants have been quick to announce the taking of hostages, usually releasing videotapes showing armed, masked men standing threateningly over the captives.

Amjad Hafeez, a driver working for a U.S. contractor, was taken hostage on June 25 as he returned from work north of Baghdad. He was blindfolded and taken to a nearby house.
reuters

July 08 2004
A Filipino abducted in Iraq will be executed unless the Philippines withdraws its troops from the country within 72 hours, said a video broadcast on Al-Jazeera television, showing a hostage cowering on his knees.

The kidnapped Filipino, employed by a Saudi company working with US troops based in Iraq, was kidnapped by an armed group calling itself the "Khaled Ibn al-Walid Brigade" linked to the "Islamic Army in Iraq," Al-Jazeera said.

The pan-Arab television station broadcast footage of a man sitting on his knees, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, and surrounded by three masked men touting guns and reading their threat from a statement.

The group said it had killed an Iraqi security guard who was with the Filipino. An identity card bearing the picture of an Iraqi and a company card on which was written: Hafidh H. Amer, Security Officer, was also broadcast by Al-Jazeera.
New Straits times

Thu Jul 15,
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A headless corpse dressed in an orange jumpsuit has been found by Iraqi police in the Tigris River and handed over to U.S. forces, but it has not yet been identified, a U.S. military spokeswoman said Thursday.

She said it was not known whether the body was that of a Bulgarian hostage killed by his captors earlier this week. A deadline for the threatened execution of a second Bulgarian hostage passed last night without news.

The body was found near Baiji, 112 miles north of Baghdad, Wednesday night.

"The body had been decapitated. It was dressed in an orange jumpsuit," the spokeswoman said.

Videotapes of foreign hostages in Iraq have often shown them wearing orange jumpsuits, which are typical of U.S. jails and associated around the world with images of Muslims detained at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
reuters

June 30, 2004
In an interview with NPR, researcher and cyber-terrorism expert Gabriel Weimann has confirmed that the recent terror websites that have posted beheading videos and pictures have been uploading their files from London and Texas. This interview confirms the information that JackBlood.com has been reporting since the Nick Berg beheading video was posted on the Al-Ansar 'Islamic' websites last May of 2004.

Mr. Weimann, however, says that the web hosting companies could have been 'hijacked' by Al-Qaeda without the web hosting technical personnel knowing about it. Further in the interview, he doesn't discard the possibility that some of the 'terror' websites may be actually created and controlled by the CIA or the Mossad in order to "provoke or send false information to the terrorists." As a solution for the 'abuse of free speech,' he calls for giving up civil liberties, such as freedom of speech, in order for the government to monitor and track websites more efficiently.

It is important to know that Professor Gabriel Weimann is a GLOBALIST. He is a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace and professor of communication at Haifa University, in Israel. He has written extensively on modern terrorism and the mass media. Some of his research material has been adapted from a six-year study of terrorists' use of the Internet published in March 2004 by the United States Institute of Peace, and later appeared in YaleGlobal Online (www.yaleglobal.yale.edu), a publication of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization.
JackBlood.com -

NPR terrorism interview

More

analysis of 'terrorist' ISPs

DUBAI (Reuters) - A Web site used by Islamic militants carried a video on Wednesday purporting to show militants beheading a "CIA agent" in Iraq. The four-minute long footage showed a Western-looking man sitting on a chair surrounded by armed masked men. One of the men struck the captive's neck repeatedly with a sword, severing his head amid shouts of "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest).

A militant later held up the severed head for the camera.

An Arabic sign placed around the man's neck identified him as a "CIA agent." The video, which could not be immediately authenticated, showed what seemed to be the captive's picture identification card with the caption "visitor."

The Web site did not say which group issued the video, nor did the masked men identify themselves or make any political statements as previous kidnappers in Iraq had. The men could be heard speaking in the background but the audio quality was too poor to understand. The tired-looking captive was wearing a plain shirt and trousers. Militants in Iraq have waged a campaign of kidnapping aimed at driving out individuals, companies and troops supporting U.S. forces and the new Iraqi interim administration. Scores of hostages have been kidnapped by armed groups. Some have been freed but at least nine have been killed -- including an American, a South Korean and a Bulgarian. - Reuters

Video - WARNING Graphic content

A British journalist was abducted by gunmen from his hotel in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, according to the hotel's management.

In London the Sunday Telegraph newspaper told AFP Friday it was extremely concerned about the situation regarding its journalist James Brandon but said it couldn't confirm directly that he had been abducted.

"James Brandon was in Basra filing materials for this Sunday newspaper amongst other projects," said Sunday Telegraph deputy editor Matthew d'Ancona in a statement read to AFP.

[snip]

An AFP correspondent in Basra said he met with the British journalist on Wednesday afternoon shortly after he arrived from Baghdad.

"He told me he wanted to work on the Mehdi Army and oil topics and asked for my help," said Nawfal Hashim. "We chatted for about half-an-hour at the hotel lobby."

Hashim said he heard again from the journalist on Thursday by telephone to inquire about a demonstration that day against the US-led assault on Najaf.
- Channel news Asia