Jack Hensley Beheading Video Surfaces on the Internet

MND NEWSWIRE
September 22, 2004

A video showing the beheading of American hostage Jack Hensley has been posted to an Islamist website.

MND has made an edited version of the video available. (July 18, 2006: MND is no longer hosting said video.)

American and Iraqi authorities believe Hensley's brutal murder was carried out by al Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Zarqawi, a Jordanian, is also believe to have murdered Hensley's fellow American hostage Eugene Armstrong.

As in the Armstrong murder, Hensley, dressed in an orange jump, was made to sit facing the camera as a group of five hooded, black-clad Arabs brandishing weapons stood behind him. One of the men read a lengthy statement in Arabic. At the end of the statement, a second man pulled a long knife from his shirt, and lunged at Hensley.

Hensley cried out for a moment as the terrorist cut his throat. The film transitions to a shot of the murder hacking at Hensley's jugular as his blindfold falls away. Sounds of Jack Hensley's last breath on this earth can be heard in the background.

Both Hensley and Armstrong were kidnapped along with Briton Philip Bigley last Thursday in Baghdad by an Al Qaeda group headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Hensley's headless body was recovered today in Baghdad.

These vicious murderers remain at large.

(update 7/18/2006: the leader of the gang responsible for Mr. Hensley's killing was killed recently in a U.S. airstrike.)