Terrorist leader al-Zarqawi seeks greater impact in videos

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- Recent beheading videos by Iraq's most-wanted terror leader have been growing in sophistication, using animated graphics and editing techniques apparently aimed at embellishing the audio to make a victim's final moments seem more disturbing. It is a sign of the importance that terrorists in Iraq now place on such propaganda efforts.

U.S. officials say Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose group is blamed in the beheading deaths of two Americans last week, seems acutely aware of the impact he and his followers can have through the media, and they are becoming more adept in how to use it.

"They have, obviously, a media element because they make these terrible videos of the hostages, including the executions, and they get that media out to the different outlets," said John Brennan, director of the U.S. government's leading terror-threat analysis unit, called the Terrorist Threat Integration Center.

Early videos from al-Qaida and like-minded terror groups were grainy and sometimes just thumb-sized video boxes that popped up on a computer monitor. But the quality of a video posted on a Web site last week, showing the beheading of American contractor Eugene Armstrong, demonstrates that militant groups now apparently have access to improved technology.

In the nine-minute Internet video, the images of Armstrong are captured in greater and more gruesome detail than early videos. Animated graphics were used, including a Koran with an assault rifle standing atop it. The opening sequence also is more elaborate than earlier ones, including words that fade in and out. A title page says in Arabic: "The Media Division of the Tawhid and Jihad Group presents: The slaying of the first hostage."

Al-Zarqawi, roughly 37, is believed to lead a loose, yet powerful, band of insurgents in Iraq who have wreaked havoc on U.S. efforts to stabilize the country.

In June, the United States increased the reward for information leading to his killing or capture to up to $25 million, the same as for Osama bin Laden.

"All evidence points to Zarqawi being a real problem, not just for American forces and American civilians in Iraq, but also the Iraqi government," said Brennan, who heads the relatively new terrorism center connecting CIA, FBI and other agencies.

Zarqawi's group "unfortunately has become a magnet for a lot of the anti-coalition activity," he said, adding later, "He is a real force to be reckoned with."

This summer, Jonathan Schanzer, who recently left the Washington Institute for Near East Studies think tank, was shown a memo detailing interrogations of one of al-Zarqawi's deputies, Umar Baziyani, captured in late May. The document was shared by an Iraqi intelligence source.

According to the memo, Baziyani said Zarqawi's network has one leader specifically responsible for media, Schanzer said.

"There is quite a bit of importance placed on what they catch on film and what they can show to the world," he said. A U.S. intelligence official declined to discuss the memo.

The idea of taking videos of attacks began with a now-deceased Chechen commander who believed that "if you kill five soldiers and you video it ... it is almost a second attack," Venzke said. "It is like you are able to kill those soldiers over and over and over again."

Venzke said al-Qaida picked up on this and released a tape after the bombing of the USS Cole in a Yemeni port in 2000.

Since then, al-Qaida and its affiliates simply have continued to tap improving technology.

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Associated Press reporter Lee Keath in New York contributed to this report.

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On the Net:

An excerpt from the start of the Armstrong video, not showing the slaying, is available at:

http://wid.ap.org/video/video/040924zarq.rm