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Bigley escape plotters executed
 Hat tip Jihad Watch
UP TO 20 people suspected of taking part in an operation to free the British hostage Ken Bigley have been murdered in a purge of the terrorist group headed by Iraq's most wanted man, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, it was claimed yesterday.
| Oooh! Purge! I like purges! |
A senior Iraqi resistance source in al-Zarqawi's stronghold of Falluja said two Syrian guards had helped the 62-year-old Liverpool-born engineer to escape after he was held at a mosque on the edge of the city. Their car was halted for routine checks by insurgents with links to al-Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad group before they could reach the safety of an area under American control. According to the resistance source the Iraqis recognised Bigley, who was disguised in Arab dress. Al-Zarqawi is said to have been incensed that his group had been compromised and ordered the insurgents to behead Bigley.
| "Awright! That does it! Off with his head!" |
Instructions were given that the murder should be filmed and presented to resemble as closely as possible the beheadings of Bigley's American companions, Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley, who had been abducted with him in Baghdad three weeks earlier. The Syrian guards were handed over to senior Tawhid and Jihad members for further interrogation and were killed later, along with as many as 18 suspected collaborators. The details emerged a week after a Saudi described as a spokesman for Tawhid and Jihad claimed the guards had received a large sum of money from British intelligence. A western military intelligence source said MI6 had paid a network of local Iraqis for information in the hunt for Bigley, but insisted that the principal aim had been to kill or capture al-Zarqawi. Intelligence specialists flew out to Baghdad to assist in the search for Bigley, the source said. But the four or five raids they helped organise on "safe houses" all proved fruitless.
| They gave it a try, and it beats hell out of paying ransom... |
The source said the coalition remained confident that the Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi's reign of terror would eventually be halted. "It's only when the Iraqis themselves tire of al-Zarqawi that he will be found," he added. Much of the secret information-gathering work against al-Zarqawi is being co-ordinated by the Iraq Survey Group, whose intelligence experts were originally focused on the vain search for weapons of mass destruction. The group is using agents seconded from the CIA and MI6, while the main force on the ground involved in raids on militant hideouts is the US 10th Mountain Division.
Posted by: ed 2004-10-20 |
