Posted on 06/19/2004 7:36:52 PM PDT by Destro
ISLAMIC MILITANTS RECORD GRUESOME KILLINGS AND POST THEM ON WEB TO GET MEDIA COVERAGE
Beheading a tool for propaganda
WASHINGTON
THERE has been a progression in the terrorists' exploitation of images to announce and dramatise their killings.
Beheading has been adapted widely by Muslim radicals for killing enemies in recent conflicts in Algeria, Bosnia and Chechnya, experts said.
But the executioners of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan in 2002, Pennsylvania businessman Nick Berg in Iraq on May 11 and aviation engineer Paul Johnson in Saudi Arabia on Friday have turned the act into propaganda by using digital cameras to record the spectacle.
On Friday, the grisly images were posted on the Web for a global audience, including Westerners for whom decapitation is particularly shocking.
The Site Institute - a Washington organisation which tracks terrorist groups - located on Friday an Arabic-language communique about Mr Johnson's killing accompanied by grim photographs of the murder on a website set up recently using the free service provided by Geocities, a subsidiary of Yahoo!.
Said Site analyst Josh Devon: 'Terrorism doesn't work unless the media is involved. Shooting someone isn't necessarily terrorism.
Beheading someone and posting it on the Web is terrorism.'
In Mr Pearl's case, video footage of the murder was delivered to the US consulate in Karachi. Only later was it posted on the Internet and aired in part by CBS News.
The video of Mr Berg's killing was posted immediately on the Web, provoking a storm of grief and outrage.
Mr Johnson's killers managed to draw even more attention by announcing in their Web posting on Tuesday that he would be killed in 72 hours if their demands were not met.
'Here, we had the countdown: This guy was alive, but yet we knew he was doomed as the 72-hour countdown went on,' said Mr Robert Thompson, a media and culture expert at Syracuse University in New York.
The combination of ritual murder with digital communications 'is this bizarre collision of worlds'.
He said the Internet had a powerful pull for terror groups because it allowed instant, international distribution to groups that otherwise could not broadcast their message through traditional media.
He said terror groups had been savvy enough to recognise, however, that only the most violent, most graphic events will draw attention.
'You can't put just anything on the Internet and expect people to pay attention,' he said.
'I can think of few things other than a beheading that is able to singularly focus people's attention.'
Mr Marc Sageman, a former CIA officer and author of Understanding Terror Networks, said decapitation had been used widely by militants in Algeria, Chechnya and Bosnia.
'This has become the ritual way of slaughtering infidels,' he said. 'That's the way you slaughter animals, so I suppose it's a way of saying infidels are no better than animals.'
While beheading went out of use long ago in the West, the Saudi government still uses it for executing men and occasionally women for serious crimes, occasionally including religious crimes such as blasphemy.
The government's senior executioner, Mr Muhammad Saad al-Beshi, gave several media interviews last year, bragging that his sword is 'very sharp. People are amazed how fast it can separate the head from the body'. -- LAT-WP
FreeRepublic was one of the places where such truth was shouted out - and many a times the pictures of those decapitated Serbs - whose decapitations are on video and sold throughout the Islamic world - are deleted. We have to get news from Singapore in English to read about it.
When the USA was supporting the Chechens under Clinton the Russians gathered Western press and showed them the videos they captured from the Chechens. The Western reporters fainted - vomited - and buried the story. Freepers posted those video links on FreeRepublic.
Lastly, beheading is called for in the Koran by the so called prophet Mohammed as a means to instill terror onto the infidels. Instituting terror on infidels is a Koranic testament of faith.
bump
Bump.
Chele Kula - The Skull Tower At the end of the summer 1809 A.D., after the battle on Cegar Hill, the skulls of the killed Serbian soldiers were built into a tower, the Skull Tower, on the way to Constantinople. It was done by order of Turkish pasha Hurshid, the brutal Turkish commander of the town of Nis at that time. Rectangular in its base, 3 meters high, the Skull Tower was built out of 952 skulls of the Serbian heroes as a warning to the Serbian people.
It sounds like the jihadists need a similar message. They are vermin.
I would post examples found in Bosnia - Algeria and Chechnya but they would get deleted - again.
WEll the USA media is more concerned with dogtags and underwear on heads..
I am horrified
They all do it and have always done it.
If anyone want to email my email address is DavisMarkS@aol.com.
My brother was a Vietnam vet in 1972- chopper pilot. He didn't talk much about it; but he hauled a lot of Americans out of prisons. He threw up more than a few times. His door gunners did some justice.
Amen brother!
Are you suggesting that Oregon didn't have plenty of home-grown leftists?
Terrified? Not one bit. Pissed off and ready to take names? You bet.
I'd rip their (insert close relative's name here) arms off and leave the head firmly attached to the body to think about what they've done, and suggest to their countrymen what they might do differently in the future.
As for their underware, I'd let 'em don it any way they wish to wear it, provided they put it on with their feet, and whatever teeth they might have left after their "free" dental examination and treatment.
bttt
ping
INTERNET HAGANAH.US: "PROFILE OF ABD-AL-AZIZ AL-MUQRIN Al-Sharq al-Awsat in Arabic [FBIS translated text]" (June 5, 2004) (Read More...)
GOOGLE Search Term: "AL-MOQRIN" (Read More...)
TOWNHALL.com: "MUTILATIONS AND MUSLIM LAW" -Column by Jeff Jacoby (June 14, 2004) (Read More...)
SFGATE.com - SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE: San Jose, California (AP): "SAN JOSE COMPANY UNWILLINGLY HOSTS VIDEO FOOTAGE OF KIDNAPPED AMERICAN" (ARTICLE SNIPPET: " In a video posted on the Internet Tuesday, a hooded Abdulaziz al-Moqrin, the reputed leader of al-Qaida in the kingdom, held an assault rifle and shouted demands for the release of al-Qaida prisoners as Johnson sat blindfolded. Redd said he didn't know people were using his Web site to access images of Johnson until a reporter from German magazine Der Spiegel contacted him. He subsequently reported the matter to the FBI.") (June 18, 2004) (Read More...)
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