Zarqawi might have been beaten to death
Zarqawi might have been beaten to death
LONDON: The leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, may have been beaten to death by US forces following the air strike on his safe house, two British newspapers claimed on Sunday.
The Observer and the Sunday Times both carried reports on events leading up to his death, citing apparent eyewitnesses to the immediate aftermath of the attack near the city of Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, last Wednesday.
In a two-page report, The Observer said that although there had been no corroboration of the claims that the badly-injured Zarqawi was beaten to death, revelations of revenge killings by US troops “means it cannot be discounted”. It quoted one man as saying that US soldiers had pulled a man resembling Zarqawi from an ambulance where locals had placed him, wrapped his traditional Arab robe, the dishdasha, around his head and “battered him severely till he died”. The Sunday Times went into more detail, citing 25-year-old labourer Ali Abbas as saying: “They (the US soldiers) were shouting and screaming and in a very tense and agitated mood.”
He added: “The Americans tore his dishdasha and they kept on asking him through an interpreter, ‘What is your name, what is your name?’”
The troops were said to have been worried that the man was wearing a suicide belt. Abbas said that the soldiers kicked the wounded man in the chest until he grew paler and began bleeding from his mouth before he died. He apparently recognised the dead man as Zarqawi after seeing pictures in newspapers the following day. Both newspapers carried US military confirmation that Zarqawi had not died after the initial air strike and that he had tried to roll off the stretcher when he realised the soldiers’ identity.
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