WASHINGTON, 14 May 2004 — The US government warned a young American to leave Iraq, and offered him a flight out of the country, a month before his grisly beheading was broadcast on an Al-Qaeda-linked website, officials said.
But authorities in Baghdad denied that Nicholas Berg, 26, was held in US custody before he disappeared in early April, despite claims to the contrary by his family. The authorities said he had been held by Iraqi police for about two weeks and questioned by FBI agents three times.
The final movements of the telecommunications businessman from suburban Philadelphia remain unclear as officials in Washington and Baghdad try to piece together how Berg crossed paths with a group of Islamic militants who savagely decapitated him in a video released Tuesday bearing the title “Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi shown slaughtering an American.” It referred to an associate of Osama Bin Laden believed to be behind a wave of suicide bombings in Iraq.
Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top US commander in Iraq, told reporters yesterday in Baghdad that it appears Al-Zarqawi was responsible.
Saudi Ambassador to the US Prince Bandar ibn Sultan said that, “There is no doubt that killing detainees and mutilating the remains of the dead are acts which are condemned by all religions. That is why I condemn this criminal and inhuman act. The Al-Zarqawi group is criminal, deviant and unIslamic, who are killing even Muslims and Arabs for no reason.”
Berg’s body was found Saturday in Baghdad. Two e-mails he sent to his family and friends show he traveled widely and unguarded throughout Iraq, an unsafe practice rarely done by Westerners.
Shortly before Berg’s disappearance, he was warned by the FBI that Iraq was too volatile a place for unprotected American civilians and that he could be harmed, a senior FBI official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Wednesday.
On April 10, four days after Berg was released from an Iraqi prison, an American diplomat offered to put him on a flight to Jordan, State Department spokeswoman Kelly Shannon said.
But Berg told the diplomat he “planned to travel overland to Kuwait and would call (his) family from there,” Shannon said.
Several days later, around April 12, the diplomat received an e-mail from Berg’s family in West Chester, Pa., that “noted he had not been in contact,” Shannon said. Staff members at the $30-a-night Al-Fanar Hotel in Baghdad told the Associated Press that Berg stayed there for several days until April 10.
Berg’s father, Michael Berg, said that although his son wanted to leave Iraq, he refused the flight offer because he thought the travel to the airport would be too dangerous. Attacks had taken place in the areas his son would need to drive through, Michael Berg said.
