An al Qaeda faction has released a video showing the murder of two soldiers captured June 19. SITE reports:
The Mujahideen Shura Council in Iraq issued today, July 10, 2006, a 4:39 minute video that shows the mutilated corpses of the two American soldiers the group stated to have captured on June 19, 2006. The extremely graphic footage is preceded by an audio clip of a past Usama bin Laden speech, and an audio track from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is heard over the scenes in which the Mujahideen display and prod the corpses.
A message introducing the video states that this video is presented as “revenge for our sister who was dishonored by a soldier of the same brigade,” referencing the rape and murder of an Iraqi girl and her family by a group of American soldiers in al-Mahmoudiya
The Jawa Report has the video and numerous still photos. Rusty Shackleford provides the following description:
The two victims, Kristian Menchaca and Thomas Tucker, were members of the 101st Airborne division abducted by al Qaeda in Iraq. A third soldier died in the attack.
Their bodies were later recovered not far from where they had been kidnapped. The US military now says that their corpses were found tied together with a bomb between them. Three roadside bombs were planted around the bodies. The bodies had been decapitated.
The video bears the logo of al Qaeda in Iraq. Contrary to reports by al Qaeda, the video appears to show that the two soldiers were already dead before at least one of them was beheaded.
After a brief introdcuction with an image and the voice of Osama bin Laden, the video shows the two dead soldiers lying on a bridge. Both are already dead. One of the men has already been beheaded, the other man is dead. An al Qaeda member holds the severed head of one of the dead soldiers. One of the two soldiers appear to have been shot, the other has multiply wounds but appears to have also been hit by an explosive. The video also blurs out one of the dead men’s genitels, apparently al Qaeda believes showing that would be over-the-top. Later, an image of the now dead leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, is superimposed over the film. Zarqawi had personally murdered several people by beheading and then released those films on the internet.
The entire video has a voice over of what sounds like Abu Musab al Zaraqawi–but it could be the new al Qaeda leader in Iraq calling Muslims to jihad. A nasheed, or Islamic jihad song, can also be heard in the background.
The photos, as one might imagine, are quite disturbing.
UPDATE: Video is available at dozens of sites including here, here, and here. (Update: Rusty has it, too.)
UPDATE: Hot Air had the video up briefly but Michelle Malkin decided to have it taken down out of respect for the families.
