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Zarqawi Is Using Hostages to Ransom Old Friends, Drs Germ and AnthraxDEBKAfile Special ReportSeptember 21, 2004, 5:15 PM (GMT+02:00) The dreadful moment - 2:44 am Iraqi time on Tuesday September 20 - when the Jordanian terrorist Musab al-Zarqawi applied a knife to the 53-year old American construction worker, Eugene Armstrong, from Hillsdale, Michigan, was meticulously recorded on one of al Qaeda’s unspeakable videotapes for broadcast. US sound experts who checked the tape identified the voice reading the short statement before the “execution” as belonging to the masked man who dictated the terms for freeing all three hostages on the tape...

The US has dismissed reports from Iraq's justice ministry that one of two female scientists held in a US-run prison was to be released. A US source told the BBC that both prisoners were in the physical and legal custody of the Americans and would not be freed imminently. Militants have reportedly killed two American hostages and are threatening to kill a third, Briton Kenneth Bigley. They had demanded the release of all Iraqi women held in US-run prisons. The US says it is only holding two women prisoners - Rihab Rashid Taha and Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash - that...

Iraq's justice ministry has said that one of two female scientists held in US custody will be released. It said the move was not linked to the demands of kidnappers who have reportedly killed two Americans and who have threatened to kill a British man. Militants on Tuesday killed the second American, Jack Hensley, according to a statement on an Islamist website. They renewed a threat to kill Briton Kenneth Bigley, the last hostage, if female prisoners were not freed. A justice official told the BBC that Rihab Rashid Taha, a biological weapons scientist nicknamed Dr Germ during Saddam Hussein's...

The group that seized three Western hostages this week, said to be Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s Tawheed Wal-Jihad (Unification and Holy War), demands the release within 48 hours of all Iraqi women in prisons at Abu Ghraib, near Baghdad, and Umm Qasr, in the south of Iraq. The Associated Press reports that U.S. military deny holding any Iraqi women. Yet, the BBC and the Agence France Presse say otherwise: that the U.S. claims to hold just two Iraqi women. One of them is identified as Rihab Rashid Taha - the woman dubbed Dr Germ for her role in developing Iraqi biological...