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There have been two postings on jihadi boards about Zarqawi's death in the past week. The postings were made several days apart and explicitly stated that he had achieved martyrdom. The only means of doing that is by death. Abu Mus'ab al Zarqawi is not a common name so I don't think they were referring to anyone else.

The posting taking credit for the Basra attacks was made this morning on Al Ansar on behalf of ZARQAWI'S GROUP by one of the SAME people who last week was asserting his martyrdom. I'm in the process of comparing the writing styles to known Zarqawi communications to try and determine whether it is likely to be authentic or not.

Here's the posting:

BEGIN TRANSLATION
The sheikh Abu Mus'ab Alzrqawy Amir the Al Tawhid group and the jihad adopts operation of the port of the last Basra
In the name of Allah Most Gracious Most Merciful
{ then you kill the polytheists where you find them and take them and count them and show them so that all may see }

( A battle to conquer the Crusaders in memory of Sheikh Yousef Aleiri, may Allah have mercy upon him)

The praise of Allah, the noble and great, the all powerful Almighty, benevolent supporter, who humiliates the libertines, and our prayers and greetings to the cheerful epic prophet, who leads the fight, and who is the hero’s leader, and to his family and his mighty companions.

As for after:

We have made our choice and raised the jihad flag, and we took the spearheads and the spears from a compound, and we sail in it to the glory, a belief from us that the neigh of the horse and the clatter of the swords are our keys, and the way to glory as said that was above : { you fight them who torture Allah with your hands and stab them and Allah supports you against them and spreads to the hearts of the believers }; then there we bring the good news to our brothers, all of the Muslims and especially the militants who rush in multitudes to the smell of an Al Aranin, the brave warriors in the time of the Ubayyid, the men of the falcons of glory falcons, imitated what their Al Qaeda brothers did when they knew that the destroyer (Cole) was in the port of Aden, then they returned this battle to their minds with new faces, and a stubborn insistence on attacking the key economic elements of the countries of the world and their unbelief, calling for the destruction of the flag of the cross in the Muslim countries; our brothers have targeted with their marine boats, the oil tankers in both deep water ports and in protected ports, and the Australian forces protected it until the malicious Australian prime minister rushed to the location so that he could see what happened to his forces, claiming that is not an increase in declared instructions.; but some of the satellite TV stations pointed to this sudden visit .

You the Muslims :

They are Allah enemies, and as in their habit, they hide this blessed battle and only reveal the portions of the operation that they wish to, not exposing the hidden portions and not removing the veil of secrecy of the blessed operation, by Allah, these are the enemies of Allah above.

Then we say for you O the enemies of Allah, the oil thieves stealing the wealth of Iraq, and the drug dealers, we have drawn the sword of Allah against you, as said Khaled Bin Al Walid, may Allah be pleased with this armies: “If you ascend to the sky we will bring Allah to you, and if you stayed in the seas than Allah descend to you”

And we, oh the evil snakes who persist in the persistent ahead in the attack on our land, we will come to you and attack you by land, sea and air until Allah grants us victory or until we perish. There is no choice to us except one of these two honors, and we wait for Allah to injure you with torture, or we do it my our hands, you are in wait for this.

You the Muslims :

What the apostates and their masters repeat, that the militants kill the innocents and consider lawful the blood [family], then this is the trick of the villain and we must be more careful in the practice of our religion so that when we meet Allah, we are of Muslim blood, and Allah and his messenger protect their blood [family].
Then so that the world hears of its capture we bring you people who love death as they love life, the nation’s armour and fortress as decreed by Allah the most Exalted, and for us with your powers and messages to Allah’s ear above…

Allah is the greatest and the honour of Allah and of his messenger and of the militants

Our last prayer is our praise of Allah, the Cherisher and Sustainer of the worlds

Abu Mus'ab Alzrqawy
The prince of the Al Tawhid Group for Jihad
6 Rabi I 1425
END TRANSLATION

We (NEIN) think that based upon the information we have that this is the case.

MEMRI reported on its news ticker last week that he was captured by the Iranians. MEMRI reported that Iran was willing extradite him to the US in exchange for Mujahideen Khalq members we hold.

Then we found a kind of jihadi obituary immediately after that.

Today we see another message allegedly from him.

We do have enought information to make the call that is headlining our website mainpage.

"Sean says Zarqawi is dead."

Yeah, ok, sure, I can accept that. However, always bear in mind that NEIN is a Team and that is how we make our assessments. This is clearly referenced in the quote:

"Conferencing among Northeast Intelligence Network analysts took place in response to these findings and it was unanimously agreed that based on the evaluation of evidence that was developed from our investigation – it appears that Abu Musab Zarqawi is dead - for real this time."