Posted on 05/13/2004 11:21:09 PM PDT by Dems_R_Losers
BAGHDAD, May 13 -- Nicholas Berg came to Iraq in December with little more than a bag of tools and a desire to find work in his chosen trade: repairing transmission towers. He hoped to tap the opportunities available to individual contractors willing to brave the hazards of living in a war-scarred country.
In the four months before he was decapitated by Islamic guerrillas who said they were avenging the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers, Berg was robbed once, detained twice and held for 13 days by Iraqi police who were both incredulous and suspicious that an American would travel alone.
Yet he resisted the advice of friends and family members to leave Iraq, despite the emergence in early April of a violent insurgency and the frequent abductions and killings of foreigners, irrespective of nationality or occupation.
"The good thing was that he meant no harm to anyone," said Radhi Munthri, an Iraqi who worked for Berg as a driver. "The bad thing was that he never listened to anyone."
The portrait of Berg that emerges from interviews with his associates here and his family in Pennsylvania, as well as from his e-mails to friends, depicts an independent, optimistic and somewhat reckless young man who impressed engineers with his technical knowledge but exasperated others with his naive willingness to take risks.
His carefree nature may have contributed to his untimely death. A video distributed on the Internet on Tuesday showed five masked, black-clad gunmen beheading Berg and attributed the act to Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant who is wanted by the United States for the killing of a U.S. official in 2002. The CIA said Thursday that it believed Zarqawi was behind the killing of Berg.
--- snip ---
Berg left the United States in December, flying to Tel Aviv and then to Amman, Jordan, before getting a ride to Baghdad. He checked into the large Babylon Hotel, in the well-to-do Jadriyah neighborhood, and began making business proposals to various companies working on reconstruction projects.
Omar Abdul-Karim, who met Berg in January, said he used to pick up an American colleague from the same hotel and was startled to see Berg take a taxicab to the Green Zone, the heavily fortified compound that serves as the headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority.
"He was careless," said Abdul-Karim, an Iraqi operations manager for ASCS/GSCS, a construction and services company based in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates. "We told him so many times: You should not go anywhere without security. He was not listening to this."
--- snip ---
Berg arranged to call Mardam-Bey after he returned from a trip to the northern Iraqi city of Mosul to visit a distant relative. At 6:30 p.m. on March 23, he checked into Room 102 at the $25-a-night Al-Kalaa Hotel, in Mosul's southern Guzlani district.
"He seemed very nice and extremely friendly," said Khalid Mahmoud, a clerk at the hotel. "There was nothing unusual about him." Mahmoud recalled being surprised, however, that Berg had Iranian and Jordanian currency in his pocket, along with Iraqi dinars.
At 10 a.m. the next day, Mahmoud said, Berg left the hotel, saying he was going to visit friends in the eastern part of the city. He never returned. In his room, the staff later found an Arabic-English dictionary and a book in Persian.
Around 9 p.m., Berg was detained near the hotel by Iraqi police. "He seemed confused, and he was taken in by the police patrol," said 1st Lt. Sayel Abdullah, the officer in charge of the Guzlani district.
The police, who placed Berg in the central jail in Mosul, notified a local U.S. military police commander. "We were informed of this man being picked up by the Iraqi police, so we made sure that he got food to eat and a cot to sleep on," Army Lt. Col. Joseph Piek, a military spokesman in Mosul, said Thursday.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
He had a little beard around his face didn't he,,how long would that take to grow. He looked much thinner. In fact he looked quite different. This is a mystery to me. When was he in Israel by the way?
"From the video it looks as if he had been held several weeks before being killed"
He looked well shaven except for his thin beard. Maybe they wanted him to look nice for the video.
He seemed totally clueless as to what was coming until
they kicked him over.
As it was so obvious to this observer that he meant no harm, it is obvious to me that Berg felt the altruistic, do gooder intentions of his would protect him against harm.
When will people learn that simply exuding the good vibes of appeasement only puts them at greater risk?
No, his body was found Saturday and his killers were aware of the Abu Ghraib matter before beheading him.
That is very interesting!!... so many wierd things going on with this...
The more I hear about this guy the more my Red-dar goes off. His father's association with A.N.S.W.E.R. confirms that he was at least raised as one.
I know no more than anyone else but my nose works.
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