Berg mystery grows murkier: Details emerging but fail to answer the big questions
The story of the shocking murder and decapitation of Nicholas Berg is only becoming more disturbing. The involvement of our own FBI now raises questions of American complicity in the brutal murder of one of our own.
A U.S. official here said Wednesday that soldiers from the Army's 1st Cavalry Division on a routine patrol found his headless body at 5:30 p.m. Saturday, hanging from a highway overpass a few miles east of Baghdad International Airport. His severed head lay nearby, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Berg's parents contend that because he was detained by the Iraqi police, one of several security agencies established by U.S.-led occupation authority, the U.S. military effectively had custody of him and was holding him without cause. On Wednesday, U.S. officials denied that the military held Berg but acknowledged that FBI agents interviewed him three times during his detention before concluding he was not a threat.
Berg's family disputed U.S. officials' claims that since Berg was held by Iraqi police he was not in U.S. custody.
"The Iraqi police do not tell the FBI what to do; the FBI tells the Iraqi police what to do. Who do they think they're kidding?" Berg's father, Michael, said from his home in West Chester, a Philadelphia suburb.
Once again, we're faced with the question of possible American malfeasance in Iraq. Would Nicholas Berg be alive today if the Iraqi police- with the likely and knowing cooperation of the FBI- hadn't incarcerated him? It's a moot point, I suppose, in that there is no bring him back from the dead. I'll bet his family will be asking those questions, though, and they deserve some honest answers- not that they'll likely get them from this Administration.
