The video, aired on the Arab news channel Al-Jazeera, is frightening for what it shows—the three men at gunpoint—and for what it demands. The hostage takers say Americans Jack Hensley and Eugene "Jack" Armstrong and Briton Kenneth Bigley will be executed within 48 hours if women in two Iraqi prisons are not released. The three worked for an Arab construction company.[1]
Then will come a video or group of videos in which a group's demands are made, and its demands are linked to threats to the hostages. Obviously, as this example shows, steps can sometimes be compressed. And then comes the execution tape.
Why go to the extra trouble of filming these executions? Once the victim's bodies are found, we know they have been killed—as well as the method of their execution. Why take the risk, even if it is a minimal risk, that such a tape might provide any worthwhile intelligence information to the other side?
The answer is that these tapes are of enormous value to the groups who make them. They are of value for recruiting, they are of value in rallying those who already support the cause (particularly donors), and they are valuable insofar as they have the potential to demoralize the other side. It is noteworthy that for quite some time bodies were found in Baghdad day after day with no tapes being released of these poor souls' executions. In those cases, the bodies themselves "embodied" the message of intimidation that was being sent. It is when foreigners have been killed that tapes have been made.[2]
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- ↑ Barry Peterson, "Al-Jazeera Airing Video of Two Americans and a British Man Taken Hostage in Baghdad," September 18, 2007, CBS News, The Saturday Early Show, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic, web.lexis-nexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/universe/document?_m=e7e67f79005c9342621b4655d1384ef2&_docnum=12&wchp=dGLbVtb-zSkVA&_md5=c0440b37b05326bfe31fb02a8a193404.
- ↑ Obviously this is not always true, but in those cases when tapes have been made of Iraqis being killed, the point being made has centered on the number of Iraqis being killed, and quite frequently also on some relationship of the victims to the government (thus implicitly highlighting the weakness of the government, their inability to protect their own, and thus the danger in cooperating with—or perhaps even supporting—the government.) See "Iraqi Group Posts 'Execution Video'," Al Jazeera.net, March 4, 2007, available from english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2007/03/2008525125854381924.html.
137. Paul Eedle, CNN, "Live From …" 13:00, May 13, 2004, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic, web.lexis-nexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/universe/document?_m=35ff7c18e0230d82e00f3c45c32061b8&_docnum=26&wchp=dGLbVtz-zSkVA&_md5=f80c8917a602713e56124be3b3d1255a.
