Video: Turkish Hostage Murdered
Reuters – Website shows video of Turkish hostage death
Islamist websites have showed a videotape of the killing of a Turkish hostage in Iraq by a group linked to al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The tape, carried by several Islamist sites on Monday, showed a masked man shooting the hostage while he was seated in a chair. When he fell to the ground, the gunman shot him two more times with a pistol while shouting “God is Greatest”. The tape had shown the hostage, in a shirt and trousers, speaking in Turkish while three masked gunmen stood in front of a banner resembling that of Zarqawi’s Tawhid and Jihad Group. It was not immediately possible to identify the hostage or to verify the authenticity of the tape.
“Turkey is still insisting on aiding the infidel U.S. operation…We will apply God’s law on this apostate and ask Muslims in Turkey to help their Muslim brothers and not the occupation,” one gunman said in a statement read out in Arabic. Some sites carried still pictures depicting the execution. A number of Turks have been taken hostage in Iraq and at least two have been reported killed.
On Saturday Al Jazeera television broadcast a videotape from Zarqawi’s group threatening to “apply Islamic law” and behead two Turkish drivers unless their company stopped supplying the U.S. military in Iraq and quit the country completely.
Rusty Shackleford has the video.
Jeff Quinton has a roundup of blogger commentary and notes that, “The murdered hostage’s name is Murat Yuce.”
