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Doubts Emerge About Berg Decapitation Video

This article in Al Jazeera says bloggers around the world are questioning the authenticity of the Nicholas Berg decapitation video. Conspiracy theorists take note - it raises many questions and points out several oddities in the video. Here's a few:

Net surfers point to the unlikely timing of the executioner's dubbed announcement that Berg was to die for "Iraqi prisoner abuse". Berg was last seen alive on 10 April, when his father Michael Berg believes he was killed - two weeks before the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal broke in the world's media.

The body is completely motionless even as the knife is brought to bear – not so much as an instinctive wriggle. More graphically, some claim that cutting the throat's artery would cause a significant amount of blood to gush out. But little emerges and when the head was raised – not a drop of blood is seen to fall.

His last email on 6 April to his family stated he wished to return home as soon as possible – yet the FBI claims he refused an offer of help to get home....Some claim the face in the video looks remarkably unlike Berg's...The Jordanian accused of the beheading Berg is himself believed to have been killed in March, according to two Islamist groups.

Was he killed first and beheaded later? Was it really Berg? Why was Berg detained by Iraqi police? Berg was last seen on April 9. His body was found May 8.

Update: The CIA maintains the beheader was Abu Musab Zarqawi. One question we have that goes against the conspiracy theorists: If Berg was not decapitated live, what were the blood-curdling screams on the tape we could all hear? Or, was the audio dubbed in later?

CIA officials said Thursday that they had performed a technical analysis of the video and concluded "with high probability" that the speaker on the video was Zarqawi, and that Zarqawi was the person shown decapitating Berg.

Update: Sniser has put together a running page of links to the inconsistencies in the video. [Note: the link now redirects to a memorial page for Nick Berg.] Here's a link to a list of 50 inconsistencies that as of now, May 21, are still up.

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