Muslim entertainment

Sunday, December 11, 2005

Italy tape: 'Joy' over beheading

Sunday, December 11, 2005; Posted: 5:41 p.m. EST (22:41 GMT)


MILAN, Italy (AP) -- Italian police were listening as the man identified as an Egyptian radical shouted with joy while watching a video of the beheading of American Nicholas Berg by his al Qaeda captors.

"Come nearer, watch closely, this is the politics you have to follow, the politics of the sword," he advised another man as Berg's screams rang out.
"Go to hell, enemy of God, kill him, kill him, cut it well, cut off his head," he said.

Authorities say the statements recorded from phone taps and microphones show that Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed, a 34-year-old Egyptian facing trial in Milan next month on terrorism charges, preached a radical form of Islam and the need to carry out holy war against Western elements.

The trial is considered one of Europe's major terrorist prosecutions in recent years. Ahmed is not only accused of terrorist crimes in Italy and of having links to cells across Europe, but he also is considered one of the masterminds of the March 11, 2004, train bombings in Madrid that killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,600.

Guido Guella, Ahmed's lawyer, said his client maintains his innocence and claims he "never had any role in any association with terrorist aims." He said the Egyptian also says he is not the person speaking on the tapes.

But prosecutors say the statements, which appear in a report prepared by Italian anti-terrorism police, are proof of Ahmed's extremist beliefs. He has been indicted on terrorism charges for allegedly planning an attack in an undisclosed location.

In the May 28, 2004, conversation about the Berg tape, Ahmed's co-defendant, 22-year-old Egyptian Yahia Ragheh -- described by authorities as a would-be suicide bomber -- questions Ahmed's assertions.

"It's not a sin?" he asks.

"Who said this?" Ahmed replied. "It's never a sin ... because the cause is never a sin ... Are you scared? Are you shocked?"

"No no, I think it is a sin, I only think it's a sin," Ragheh said.

"When you enter a movement it's never a sin because there's a cause, the Islamic cause, all in hell ... everyone finishes in hell, everyone. For those who wound Islam the end is this."

Ragheh's lawyer, Roberta Ligotti, did not return calls from The Associated Press seeking comment.

Berg, a 26-year-old entrepreneur, went missing April 10, 2004, after leaving his Baghdad hotel. The video that surfaced shows him in an orange jumpsuit being held by captors, then being beheaded by a man who some U.S. officials believe to be terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The taped conversations also reveal Ahmed's alleged connection to the Madrid bombings, authorities say.

"There is something, there is something I can't hide from you," he said, lowering his voice in a conversation overheard in a Milan apartment two months after the attacks. "The Madrid attack is my project and those who died as martyrs are my dearest friends."

Spanish officials have described Ahmed as one of the March 11 ringleaders. Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu said after his arrest that Ahmed was "probably among the principal authors" of the Madrid bombings, and that he was "preparing other attacks."

Officials have not said where Ahmed, who was trained in the use of explosives in the Egyptian army, was planning the attacks.