October 26, 2004

Terrorist Group Releases Video of 11 Captured Iraqis

A new video released by the Army of Ansar al-Sunnah shows 11 Iraqi National Guard soldiers being held hostage by the group. The video can be downloaded here. The video shows the eleven men sitting in what appears to be the same courtyard the group has used to murder several other hostages. The video shows each soldier dressed in various Iraqi National Guard uniforms or in 'LSF' shirts and each soldier is asked to state his name for the camera. [Right: image from the video showing the hostages]

While this Boston Globe article claims that 'the authenticity of the posting cannot be confirmed', let me just put that to rest. This is authentic. The saddest part is that these men are dead already. The Army of Ansar al-Sunnah has murdered all of their hostages, including several Iraqi nationals and those who appeared to 'repent' of their collaboration with the US. All of their earlier victims have been civilians. Further, as reported here earlier, the group has deepened it's ties to al Qaeda in the past few weeks.

The Army of Ansar al-Sunnah murdered an Iraqi citizen named either Yassar Musil or Seif Adnan Kanaan on Oct. 23rd [information, images, and links to video here]. During the taped beheading of Turkish truck driver Ramadan Elbu on October 15th by the Army of Ansar al-Islam, one of the murderers identified himself as a follower of Zarqawi [information, video, and images here]. On October 11th, another individual claimed to be a member of Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad group on a beheading video released by the group--the victims were a Turkish truck driver and his Iraqi translator [information, video, and images here]. The Army of Ansar al Sunnah murdered an Iraqi named Barie Nafi'a Daoud Ibrahim on Oct. 2nd [images, link to video, and information here]. The same group murdered three Iraqis on September 16th (information, links to video, and images here). On August 31st, these terrorists executed 12 hostages from Nepal, one of them by beheading (information, links to video, and images here). On August 11th the group beheaded a man they claimed was a CIA agent (information and images here) and on August 25th the group beheaded a second alleged CIA agent (information and images here).