"Zarqawi" in beheading video?

The beheading of an American on video by
militants who said it was in retaliation for American
abuse of Iraqi prisoners has highighted the intense
focus on Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, the man who has emerged
as the key Al Qaeda militant active in Iraq.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has said that it
tends to believe that the masked man who was seen as
sawing off Nicholas Berg's head was indeed Zarqawi as
the video, released ll May 2004, is titled: "Abu Musab
Al Zarqawi shown slaughtering an American."
A CIA assessment of the video showing Berg's death
concludes it is a "high probability" Zarqawi is the
hooded speaker who is shown decapitating Berg.
According to intelligence information made available
to Malayalamanorama, Zarqawi, 37, a
Jordanian-Palestinian Sunni, leads a group called
Jamaat Al Tawhid wa'l-Jihad (Unity and Jihad Group) as
well as Ansar Al Islam, which is said to be linked to
Al Qaeda.
Zarqawi, who real name is Ahmed Fadeel Al Khailaleh
and who is also known as Ahmad Fadil Nazzali Abu Al
Mu'ataz, comes from a prominent Palestinian family
which fled to Jordan when Israel was created in
Palestine in 1948.
He worked with Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in
Afghanistan in the 90s and maintained his own unit and
camp in Herat, Afghanistan, until the US-led invasion
of that country in 2001. He financed himself to a
large extent from funding received from a business his
family operated in Europe.
The US is offering a $10 million reward for
information leading to his capture dead or alive.
Following is a summary of the intelligence information
available on Zarqawi:
He has ties with several groups, including Al Qaeda,
Asbat Al Ansar and Hizbollah as well as Beyyat Al
Imam in Turkey. He was behind the October 2002
killing of American diplomat Lawrence Foley in Amman.
He was earlier indicted indicted in absentia in
Jordan for his role in an Al Qaeda Millennium bombing
plot targeting the Radisson SAS hotel in Amman as well
as other American, Israeli, and Christian religious
sites in Jordan.
In Iraq, he is said to have been behind the bombing of
the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad in 2003.
Nearly 120 alleged members of his group have been
arrested in various countries, including Germany,
France, Spain, Turkey and Jordan.
His links with Al Qaeda dates back to 1999 when he
went to Pakistan and contacted Bin Laden with a
request that Jordanian militants be trained in use of
weapons and making of bombs. as well as chemical
weapons. Bin Laden agreed.
Subsequently, Zarqawi moved to Afghanistan and
supervised the flow of Jordanians and
Palestinian-origin Jordanians for training at Al
Qaeda's Al Farouq camp. He called his followers Jund
Al Sham. He was in Kandahar in June and July 2001.
He moved to northern Iraq in an area beyond the reach
of Saddam Hussein when the US invaded Afghanistan in
2001. There he set up an Ansar Al Islam camp. The camp
was cited by the US government as evidence that Saddam
has links with Al Qaeda. But, the intelligece report
shows that, there was no such link and Washington
officials were totally off the mark when they said
chemical weapons were stored in the northern Iraq
camp. When the claim was made, international media
organisations rushed to the site and found no trace
whatsover of any chemical weapons. "The closest to any
chemical we found there was detergents to wash
clothes," said one newspaper report.
While in Iraq, Zarqawi established contacts with
Lebanon-based secretive Asbat Al Ansar, which the US
has designated as an international terrorist
organisastion, and Hizballah of Lebanon in order to
smuggle Palestinian fighters into Israel to fight the
occupation forces in Palestine. Some of the fighters
managed to make it while others were caught. Those who
made it have given training on explosives, poisons,
and remote controlled devices to other Palestinians in
the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Zarqawi travelled to Baghdad in May of 2002 for
medical treatment and stayed for two months during
which secret meetings were held with Iraqi groups and
fellow militants from the Arab world who had gone to
Iraq to meet him.
His Iraqi contacts helped him co-ordinate the movement
of people, money and supplies into and throughout Iraq
for his network. He received funds from Bin Laden, but
there is no estimate of the amount.
There is no evidence to support charges that he had
met with senior Saddam Hussein aides during the two
months he spent in Baghdad.
(An earlier intelligence report has said that Zarqawi
was wounded in the Afghan war and he reached Iraq
through Iran and that he had one of his legs amputated
during the two months of "medical treatment" in
Baghdad. He was fitted with a prosthetic device).
Abuwatia, said to be a Zarqawi follower and detained
by the US during the Afghan war, has admitted to
dispatching at least nine North African extremists to
travel to Europe to conduct poison and explosive
attacks. They planned chemical attacks with various
toxins in Britain, France, Georgia's Pankisi Gorge,
and Chechnya, says the intelligence information.
According to Matthew A. Levitt, a senior fellow in
terrorism studies at the Washington Institute for Near
East Policy:
"The Zarqawi network highlights the matrix of
relationships that define today's international
terrorist threat. Indeed, international terrorism is a
web linking many disparate groups. Senior US and
European officials have noted that although Hizbollah
and Al Qaeda do not appear to share operational
support, they have engaged in logistical cooperation
on an ad hoc and tactical basis, as well as
co-operative training."
Zarqawi is blamed for the March 2 bombings in Baghdad
and Karbala in which at least 181 people died and the
coordinated suicide bombings in Basra in April in
which at least 74 people, including many
schoolchildren, were killed.
Zarqawi was targeted for killing on three separate
occasions for US military strikes since June 2002,
according to NBC News. And three separate times the
attack was called off.
German intelligence information shows that Zarqawi
heads Al Tawhid ("unity of all the faithful" ), which
is a core Palestinian Sunni movement with roots in
Jordan and waging a campaign against the Jordanian
royal family.
The group advocates "jihad" as a "fight against
non-believers and crusaders."
The group, which was set up in Beckum, Germany around
the same time as the Sept.11 attacks in the US,
included as members Mohamed Abu Dhess Shadi Abdallah,
Ashraf Al Dagama and Ismail Shalabi.
It group specialised in smuggling militants and
forging passports of dozens of countries. It planned
to carry out an attack on a busy square in a German
town or city and to explode hand grenades in another
German town in the immediate vicinity of an Israeli or
Jewish property with the aim of killing as many people
as possible. The plans were foiled because German
intelligence was keeping tabs on the group and
arrested Shadi Abdullah, Mohammed Abu Dhess, Ashraf
Al Dagma and Ismail Shalabi as well as
Dusselfdorf-based Jamal Mustafa on April 23, 2002.
All five of them are currently in detention in
Germany.
Zarqawi slipped through the fingers of Jordanian
security agencies in mid-September 2002 when he was
there planning and financing the murder of Lawrence
Foley. He managed to evade capture and entered Syria,
from there he crossed into Iraq and went to the Ansar
Al Islam camp in northern Iraq.
That camp was attacked by the US invaders in March and
April 2001 during the war that toppled Saddam Hussein.
Several key Zarqawi aides were caught alive and now
they are in US custody.
Zarqawi again managed to elude arrest and went
underground. Since then, he appeared in Baghdad
several times, but the US forces were not able to
capture him. He left a hideout apartment in the Dora
neighbourhood of Baghdad less than 10 hours before the
US forces stormed the place late last year.

Editors (For your information only):
Please note that it is widely held among the Arabs
that the Berg beheading was staged by American agents
in order to deflect public opinion from the Abu Ghraib
prison abuses. The Arabs who favour this theory
believe that Zarqawi died sometime in Iraq and the
Americans are maintaining that he is alive in order to
keep reports of the alleged Iraq-Al Qaeda terrorism
link, which Washington has not been able to prove.
It has been suggested that Berg was in American
custody shortly before his decapitated body was found
by the roadside outside Baghdad).
Both Pravda and Al Jazeera have questioned the
authenticity of the Nick Berg video (as has this guy).
The thesis is that Zarqawi has a prosthetic leg, but
the tape's alleged Zarqawi seems limber. Zarqawi
identifies himself by name on the tape but wears a
mask, presumably to hide his identity. why?