BAGHDAD, 19 May 2004 — Four people have been arrested over the beheading of US businessman Nicholas Berg, whose killing was shown earlier this month in a video on an Al-Qaeda-linked website.
Berg’s beheading was shown on a grainy video posted on the Islamic website linked to Osama Bin Laden’s terror network, days after his body was found in Baghdad on May 8.
A top Iraqi source, who announced the arrests, declined to name the four. But other sources said the detainees did not include Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, who US authorities believe carried out the killing of the 26-year-old businessman.
US Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the coalition’s deputy director of military operations, however told a Baghdad news conference that he had not been informed any arrests were made yesterday.
In Washington, US officials said the Pentagon planned to stop funding Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi exile it once hoped might help lead Iraq but whose intelligence reports and motives were doubted elsewhere in Washington.
The officials said the Pentagon would stop giving Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress roughly $340,000 a month as of June 30, when the United States plans to give some authority to a still unnamed interim government.
US officials have for weeks said the US government was debating cutting off the INC, saying they had questions about the intelligence it provided as well as about whether Chalabi was motivated chiefly by a desire for power.
— Additional input from agencies
