Bulgarian Beheading Photo
Reuters – Picture of Bulgarian’s Severed Head Posted on Net
An al Qaeda-linked group in Iraq posted a picture of what it said was the severed head of a Bulgarian hostage on the Internet on Wednesday. The picture showed a masked man holding up a bloody head in front of a black flag of the Tawhid and Jihad Group led by suspected al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
The group kidnapped two Bulgarians in early July. It later sent a video to Al Jazeera showing one of them being beheaded, which the Arab television network said was too gruesome to broadcast. Truck drivers Georgi Lazov, 30, and Ivailo Kepov, 32, were seized as they delivered cars to northern Iraq.
Last week, Bulgarian authorities identified a headless corpse found in the Tigris river as that of Lazov. Diplomats say Kepov is also almost certainly dead. Another head and decapitated body have been found in the same area but have still to be identified. It could not be immediately confirmed whether the picture posted on the Internet on Wednesday was one of the Bulgarians.
Rusty Shackleford has a copy of the photo on his site, with various disclaimers about how gruesome it is and why it’s important that you see it. More interesting to me is his compilation of victims, whose names do tend to run together:
1) Georgi Lazov (July 13)
2) Ivaylo Kepov (presumed dead) (probably July 14)
3) Keith M. Maupin (June 28)
4) Kim Sun-il (June 22)
5) Paul Johnson (June 18)
6) Hussein Ali Alyan (June 12)
7) Nick Berg (May 12)
8) Fabrizio Quattrocchi (April 16)
9) Martin Burnham (June 7, 2002)
10) Daniel Pearl (Feb. 2, 2002)
Indeed, a couple of the names are unfamiliar to me.
Jeff Quinton and Chris Short have coverage as well.
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About James Joyner
Report: Bulgarian Hostage Beheading Released?
I received the following forwarded e-mail (from Northeast Intelligence Network’s mailing list) on this subject: Tuesday evening, messages appeared on several Arabic language forums as well as on the website that claims to be the “official” voice of …
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Picture of Bulgarian’s Severed Head Revealed
Thanks to Jeff Quinton for the heads up on this one. The Northeast Intelligence Network reports: “Tuesday evening, messages appeared on several Arabic language forums as well as on the website that claims to be the “official” voice of Zarqawi’s…
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Bulgarian Hostage Beheaded
A Bulgarian hostage held by Tawhid and Jihad Group led by al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been beheaded according to Reuters.
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Martin Burnham was shot, not beheaded…and quite possibly by Philippine troops (Scout Rangers) attempting to rescue him and his wife from an Abu Sayyaf Group cell moving through the jungle north of Zamboanga on Mindanao Island.
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