Two men drove up in a pick-up truck, asking for her. She appealed to a small crowd that had gathered around her crew but nobody was willing to help her. It was reported at the time that she had been shot dead with her cameraman and sound man.
We now know that it was not that swift for Bahjat. First she was stripped to the waist, a humiliation for any woman but particularly so for a pious Muslim who concealed her hair, arms and legs from men other than her father and brother.
Then her arms were bound behind her back. A golden locket in the shape of Iraq that became her glittering trademark in front of the television cameras must have been removed at some point — it is nowhere to be seen in the grainy film, which was made by someone who pointed a mobile phone at her as she lay on a patch of earth in mortal terror.
By the time filming begins, the condemned woman has been blindfolded with a white bandage.
A large man dressed in military fatigues, boots and cap approaches from behind and covers her mouth with his left hand. In his right hand, he clutches a large knife with a black handle and an 8in blade. He proceeds to cut her throat from the middle, slicing from side to side.
Her cries — “Ah, ah, ah” — can be heard above the “Allahu akbar” (God is greatest) intoned by the holder of the mobile phone.
Even then, there is no quick release for Bahjat. Her executioner suddenly stands up, his job only half done. A second man in a dark T-shirt and camouflage trousers places his right khaki boot on her abdomen and pushes down hard eight times, forcing a rush of blood from her wounds as she moves her head from right to left.
Only now does the executioner return to finish the task. He hacks off her head and drops it to the ground, then picks it up again and perches it on her bare chest so that it faces the film-maker in a grotesque parody of one of her pieces to camera.
** Update on this: Photographs distributed by the photo agency Getty Images shows what appears to be the bloody but intact body of Atwar Bahjat, fully clothed and still wearing her headscarf. Atwar Bahjat images on Getty
On May 7, 2006, The Sunday Times of Britain published an article written by Arab journalist Hala Jaber, in which she describes watching a camera phone video of a person being stripped of their clothing and beheaded. Jaber believed the person was Bahjat. It is believed by some that the video actually shows the murder of a Nepalese man by The Army of Ansar al-Sunna in August of 2004. Report on video The video has been described as "hoax" by several key blogs
Lastly check out Pen & Teller bringing some common sense to the rabid looney left new age tree hugger conspiracy theorys about how its was Bush behind 9/11.
Tags: Atwar Bahjat
Iraq
MNF Iraq
Al Qaeda
War on Terror
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101st Fighting KeyboardistsLinks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atwar_Bahjat
http://clarityandresolve.com/archives/2006/05/for_this_god_is.php
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