Ranwa Yehia, Deutsche Presse-Agentur  --  Arab News

CAIRO, 14 May 2004 — The Arab world has denounced the on-camera beheading of an American civilian, in part because the murder allowed the United States to deflect public attention from its abuse of Iraqi prisoners.

“Whose payroll are these murderers acting upon?” the Egyptian daily Al-Akhbar charged yesterday in the caption beneath a photograph taken from video footage showing telecommunications technicians Nick Berg sitting in front of his kidnappers moments before his death.

The tape “resulted in a sharp change in public opinion with American officials rushing to take advantage of the incident to reduce pressures on the US administration from the scandal of prisoners’ abuse,” Al-Akhbar said.

Echoing this view the United Arab Emirates Gulf News condemned the killing yesterday: “There is never any justification for taking life in this cold-hearted way. No political purpose will be served and indeed a lot of damage will be done, especially in Iraq.” “Indeed the act totally alienated the executioners from the Iraqi people,” the English-language daily continued, but went on to note the “atrocity took the spotlight away from those who are suffering in detention.”

Amongst Arabic-language papers, the Lebanese An-Nahar daily pinpointed the ugly irony with which it felt the White House was benefiting from the killing. Columnist Rajeh Khoury said: “What could be uglier than Nick’s death is a feeling among some groups in the US that what happened within Iraqi prisons can be accepted or justified. It is extremely strange that some US statements had embedded messages that the video of beheading the hostage could lead to reduced sentences to the torture crimes in Abu Ghraib.”

Wissam Saadeh — columnist with As-Safir, another leading Arabic- language daily in the country — said the murder reflected the “deterioration of the conflict to a level full of ugliness and barbarism.”

Many Arab media also downplayed the Berg’s murder. While pictures of Berg appeared on inside pages of most Arab newspapers, the editorials continued to focus on the prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq.

Editorials that did comment on the killing strongly condemned it, but those were mainly found in the English language newspapers across the region.

However, Islamic organizations in Lebanon and Egypt also denounced the murder as a violation of Islam.

The Hezbollah movement said late Wednesday the killing defamed Muslims, but went on to point out: “The timing of this incident is aimed at benefiting the interests of the US administration. It will give them (Americans) more excuses to carry out uglier actions against the Iraqi prisoners.”

A spokesman for the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood movement told Deutsche Presse-Agentur that the killing was “a barbaric act not endorsed by Islam or any other religion.” Issam Al-Aryan said: “The Muslim Brotherhood condemns this crime and considers that it harms the worldwide campaign against the torture crimes in Iraqi prisons.”