Sydney Morning Herald asks, "Who Killed Nick Berg?"

[stickdog]

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/28/1085641717320.html

As no autopsy is available, little is known about the state of the body. No time of death, no forensic analysis. On April 6, a month before the discovery of the corpse, Berg had been released from custody. But whose custody?

Dan Senor, adviser to the US Presidential Envoy in Iraq, has said Berg was never held by the Americans. Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, the Coalition's deputy head of operations, claimed he was in the custody of Iraqi police from March 24 to April 6. However, the Iraqi police chief, Major-General Mohammed Khair al-Barhawi, told Associated Press "the Iraqi police never arrested the slain American". Berg's family are certain his jailers were the US military. His father, Michael, had been told so by the FBI. He has produced an email from a US consular official in Baghdad, Beth Payne, confirming that his son was in the hands of the US. (Later, another official said this was an error.) On April 5 in the Philadelphia office of the US Supreme Court, the Berg family had launched an action against the US military for false imprisonment. The following day, Berg was released.

The issue of custody is significant; in his final moments on screen Berg is wearing an orange jumpsuit of the kind familiar from Guantanamo Bay. The official reasons for Berg's arrest were "lack of documentation" and "suspicious activities". He carried sensitive electronic equipment for which he lacked documents. In custody, he was visited three times by the FBI. Such interviews are bound to have been recorded but no transcripts have been produced.

(snip)

The first few seconds of the video shows Berg sitting on a white plastic chair in an orange jumpsuit. He speaks directly to the camera in a relaxed way: "My name is Nick Berg . . . I have a brother and sister, David and Sara. I live in Philadelphia." His white chair is identical to those in the photographs of the Abu Ghraib prison tortures, but such chairs are probably common in Iraq. It is highly likely that this segment is edited from the interrogation of Berg during his 13 days of custody.

[truebrit71]

1. WOW!!!! Let's hope this gets some legs...

....

[Beetwasher]

2. The US Media Will Never Be Ready To Ask These Questions

Unfortunately...

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

6. Let's make this clear.

Never.

[9215]

3. Kick!

Lot's of weird stuff going on with Berg's death.

If Bush destroys that prison he may destroy vital evidence.

[daleo]

9. Probably the main reason he wants it destroyed

A agree, the Berg story gets more peculiar every week, and harder to ignore the potential black ops angle.

[KoKo]

4. Where are those DU "Berg" threads where this was all hashed out. It would

be interesting to see how DU'ers did against the "Sidney Herald," in "investigative reporting.

Anyone know where those threads went? :shrug:

[Beetwasher]

5. It seems as if the SH read those threads actually!

n/t

[keithyboy]

7. We are still around. All I want is a thorough investigation and report of

the truth with evidence. Then i will shut the fuck up about this!

[9215]

13. Here are a few from my notes

63d) Stickdog thread on Berg. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=1600191&mesg_id=1600191

63e) Shady Iraqi (dope dealer, Russian emigre'?) last one to see Berg alive.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x560487

63f) Powell expresses outrage at lack of Arab outrage over Berg phony beheading. This is high level PSyops here. See my response #25: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=560100&mesg_id=560598
NOte: how much mileage the fascists get from the power of the first message when it is particularly grotesque.....it goes further......because of the sensational effect that numbs the thought processes.

63g) Some very interesting inconsistencies in scarf knots of "Arabs" in video:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=1624099&mesg_id=1624099&page=

63h) Berg arrested twice in 2000 at OK U. Minstrel boy topic. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=1625766&mesg_id=1625766

[IA_Seth]

8. Calm

Does anyone else think it is odd that when he was speaking to the camera he just said "I am from Philadelphia"

I might be out on a limb here, but if you were speaking to someone from another country (ie. Iraqi kidnappers), wouldn't you add a qualifier to that, like Philadelphia, USA, Pennsylvania, or something similar.

By just saying Philadelphia it gives me the impression he was speaking to someone who he thought would be familiar with the term.

Just a thought.

[Elidor]

11. Good point.

[stickdog]

17. Yep. I had the same thought.

He was being interviewed by Americans in US custody at that point.

[Elidor]

10. Does anyone know if Berg's father commissioned an autopsy?

[JohnyCanuck]

12. Non-US press seems to be less afraid to ask embarrassing questions

In addition to this column about Berg in the Sydney Morning Herald, A few days ago there was a neutral to slightly positive article by a columnist in the Toronto Star discussing the 911 citizens inquiry currently underway in Toronto.


This week, at the unlikeliest of locations, the Ukrainian Cultural Centre in west-end Toronto, the International Citizens' Inquiry into 9/11 picks up where it left off in San Francisco in March.

Here, international authors, filmmakers, academics, military and intelligence experts as well as, yes, probably the occasional conspiracy theorist, are mixing it up with ordinary people who can't accept that all the systems simply failed on one terrible and tragic morning.

They're gathering to focus attention on why, still, nearly three years after two planes tore through the World Trade Center, one crashed into the Pentagon and a fourth into a Pennsylvania field, the White House still hasn't produced a plausible explanation for why so much went so wrong all at once.

"To ask questions and to ask them fearlessly," says Citizens' Inquiry director Barrie Zwicker. "This is the heart of this."

Poking holes in the official story of 9/11 from The Toronto Star.

www.911inquiry.org

[Piperay]

14. The whole Berg case

just stinks too high heaven, to many coincidences and too many unanswered questions.

[gauguin57]

15. this sounds ridiculous but ...

... the only "known" TV personality who has said "the Berg killing doesn't pass the smell test" on national television (that I know of) is Geraldo Rivera. Yes, he drives me nuts, and he'd have to worry for his job if he finds out (and reports) that

1) Berg was CIA

2) Berg was roughed up (to death) in Abu Ghraib (because of his ties to "20th hijacker") and the merry-prankster prison torturers covered it up with the terrorist video

... but perhaps we should be sending this stuff to him. At least he's curious about it.

[Wind Dancer]

19. Shocking Geraldo said this, I guarantee you

he will never say it again! Would love to have been a fly on the wall when they switched to a commercial break.

[daleo]

16. Pretty good recap of what I have seen discussed

I found this particularly interesting:

"Three days later, the "live beheading" clip was uploaded from London to the Malaysian website http://www.al-ansar.biz. The statement in the video is signed with al-Zarqawi's name, dated May 11. After Fox News and CNN had downloaded the video, it disappeared from the site."

Put that way, it does seem rather scripted.

[stickdog]

18. But it's missing the Aziz al-Taee connection.

Am I the only one who thinks that the place to start any investigation into Berg's death is with his business partner Aziz al-Taee?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1615190

[daleo]

20. You are right

That was a big connection too, given that the guy had links to all kinds of players in the exile community. Someone also posted that he (Aziz) had links to a Russian drug crime syndicate or something like that.

[Fusions_Minion]

21. He owned stores in Philadelphia

They were a dime a dozen, these types of stores. They sold jewelry, cds, cell phones, beepers, crack vials etc etc. These crack vials (sans the crack) were provided by a russian syndicate. Aziz claimed he didn't know what they were used for, which is laughable. I was 10 and I knew what they were. They were scattered all over the neighborhood, thousands and thousands of them(I kid u not)- along with the hundreds of zombies that they created. :hi:

[Disturbed]

22. Michael Moore

I wonder if he is wondering about this?

[Fusions_Minion]

23. Berg's killers have been identified!

Huh uh huh, we whacked him good and dead.