Benjamin Vanderford, 22, faked his own beheading!
He he posted the 55-second clip, which shows a knife sawing against his neck, on an online file-sharing network in May. It circulated in cyberspace before crossing over to major media, airing on television.
The tape, which carried an Arabic title that translates as “Abu Musab al-Zarqawi Slaughters an American,” shows Vanderford sitting on a chair, his hands behind his back, rocking back and forth.
The tape then shows a hand with a knife cutting at the motionless man’s neck, but it did not show any militants.
It’s unbelievable how someone can go on and make a joke out of something like this. It’s totally disgusting.
But if goes to prove anything, it proves how easy it is to make up this stuff and fake it and that we shouldn’t believe stuff like this without it being researched and proven.
[Via ABC News, Al Jazeera]
I thought that was the hoaxer’s point. It’s easy to fake. Anybody can pretend to be al Zarqawi, with a few resources. Turks, russians, americans, israelis, you name it. This is likely to get confusing.
Zarqawi should publish a public key. All the Zarqawis should do that, and then when they make announcements we can at least make a reasonable guess which zarqawi is doing it.