Setting The Stage For Today's Dissemination Of Behe@dings On Social Media

Setting The Stage For Today's Dissemination Of Behe@dings On Social Media

In May 2004, the filmed behe@ding of American contractor Nicholas Berg by Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi was posted by numerous jihadi websites, and widely reposted, setting the tone for many similar videos that would follow during the second Iraq War. It was found most recently on Twitter on December 14, 2015.

Nicholas Berg beheading (@357Che, December 14, 2015)

A few months later, in July 2004, the video of the beheading of Lockheed Martin employee in Saudi Arabia Paul Johnson Jr. also went viral, as did still images of his severed head in the hands of one of his murderers. Following that beheading, Al-Qaeda's Sawt Al-Jihad magazine wrote in an article titled "A Letter to the Wife of the Slain Paul Johnson From the Wife of One of the Martyrs" that warned: "We are just getting started, and the corpse of your husband shall be followed by mountains of corpses of his countrymen."

The video of the beheading of Illinois contractor Robert Jacob in Riyadh was posted online in June 2004, and those of the beheadings of Georgia engineer Jack Hensley and Michigan contractor Eugene Armstrong were both posted online in September 2004. In June 2006, the Mujahideen Shura Council, of which Al-Qaeda in Iraq was a part, claimed in an online statement to have "slaughtered" U.S. Army PFCs Thomas Tucker and Kristian Menchaca, suggesting that they had been beheaded.[2] While no videos of those killings have surfaced,[3] a video, released by the Mujahideen Shura Council, of the beheading of one and killings of two more of four Russian diplomats[4] kidnapped in Iraq that same month was released.


Left, Jack Hensley; right, Eugene Armstrong

Other online videos of beheadings in Iraq were of Italian photographer Salvatore Santoro and of Korean translator Kim Sun-il, both in December 2004, and of Japanese contractor Akihiko Saito, in May 2005.

In its September 11, 2013 editorial on the 9/11 attacks, the Tunisian daily Al-Haqaiq wrote: "The absurd thing is that the global terrorism mill, which had struck what it calls infidels in their bastions in New York, Madrid, London, and Moscow, later began harvesting the heads of thousands of Muslims in the mosques and markets of Iraq."[5]

During the Iraq War, and since then, jihadis have been beheading Syrians, Iraqis, and other locals. Turkish truck drivers and contractors were shown being beheaded in a video filmed in October 2004 in Iraq; a January 2005 video captured the beheading of Lebanese businessman Badri Ghazi Abu Hamzah, also in Iraq; also, a July 2005 video showed the beheading there of Egypt's Ambassador to Iraq Ihab Al-Sherif.[6] A video of two captured Algerian diplomats to Iraq, Ali Balarousi and colleague Azzedin Belkadi, was posted later in July 2005 by Al-Qaeda in Iraq; the group later reported that it had killed them.[7]

A popular terrorist confession television program, aired by Iraq's Al-Iraqiya and Al-Fayhaa channels, often focused on the subject of beheading. For example, on the February 23, 2005 show, captured Iraqi terrorist Shihab Al-Sab'awi explained how Syrian intelligence officials in Syria taught him to kill and behead[8]; the March 30, 2005 show featured another captured Iraqi terrorist, Omar Allawi, who said that he had been paid $200 to film beheadings[9]; and on the April 21, 2005 show, captured Iraqi terrorist Adnan Elias said he had killed hostages by disembowelment.[10]

In 2005, people were shocked by these early beheadings; today, a decade later, a new group has emerged in Syria, Iraq, and the region that makes these early beheadings seem tame.