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| -Lurid Crime Tales- |
| ‘He wept, hands bound. Then I heard two shots’ |
| 2009-06-07 |
| Being British was a capital crime in the eyes of Edwin Dyer’s Al-Qaeda killer A harrowing account of the final hours of the kidnapped British tourist Edwin Dyer before he was murdered by Islamic militants in the Sahara desert last week has been given by an Arab intermediary who was negotiating for his release. According to the negotiator, the fate of Dyer, 60, an opera-loving sales manager who came from Reading, Berkshire, but lived in Austria, was sealed two days before the killing when his captors separated him at gunpoint from Werner Greiner, 57, a Swiss lawyer they were also holding hostage. The men’s ordeal had begun in January when they were captured with other tourists from Germany and Switzerland after setting out for a nomadic cultural festival near the lawless border between Niger and Mali. They are believed to have been sold on to a hardline Islamist group in Mali under Abel Hamid Abu Zeid, 43, an Algerian militant listed by western governments and the United Nations as an Al-Qaeda member. Informed sources say that after weeks of intensive negotiation, Germany and Switzerland paid a substantial ransom, although they deny it. This apparently led to the release in April of the other tourists, Marianne Pezold, 76, a retired teacher from Germany, and Greiner’s wife Gabriella, 54, a Swiss politician. Having freed the women, the kidnappers decided to hold on to the two men to extract Finally the kidnappers grew tired of waiting, decided to make an example of Dyer, who was unmarried, and killed him. “They separated Dyer in front of us. I could tell it was a bad sign,” the intermediary said. “Negotiations were deadlocked. Britain was categorical that it would not give in to their demand to release Abu Qatada, the radical cleric who is imprisoned in Britain, in return for Dyer and, above all, it rejected paying ransom money for him.” The negotiator said that Zeid, the leader of the Islamist group, was particularly hostile towards Britain. “Who are these British?” he asked. “Just western unbelievers. Islam tells us not to have any links with unbelievers. That is why this man [Dyer] will be executed in the name of God.” Also invoking the name of Allah, the intermediary told Zeid not to kill Dyer. Zeid ignored him, abruptly turning his back and walking away into the sand. The intermediary, who cannot be named but is a dignitary from northern Mali with substantial influence among local tribes, used a satellite phone to alert the Malian authorities in Bamako, the capital, to Dyer’s imminent execution. The next day he was summoned back by Zeid, giving him hope that the militant leader had changed his mind. Instead, Zeid became even angrier, warning that henceforth any westerner caught venturing into the Sahara would die. “They will see that we are jihadists, envoys of God, and their deaths will be the fault of their governments and their policies,” he said. Dyer was then reunited briefly with Greiner. “Dyer was wearing a turban. He was very afraid and was sobbing. The Swiss man lowered his head,” he said. “Dyer knew what awaited him. He said something I did not understand and wept. His hands were bound. Zeid told me to leave. As I turned away I heard two gunshots. I do not know whether these shots killed Dyer and they beheaded his corpse afterwards.” Other sources said Dyer had been beheaded in what Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, called an “appalling and bar-baric act of terrorism”. In a statement announcing Dyer’s death, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (a region of north Africa) quoted a verse from the Koran: “When ye meet the unbelievers, smite at their necks.” Zeid had indoctrinated the young members of his faction, which called itself the Sahara Mujaheddin, with videos showing the beheading of hostages in Iraq and Afghanistan and hate-filled preaching by radical clerics. Paradoxically, given the extreme conditions in which his group lives in the desert, they watched the videos on lap-tops and listened to preaching on MP3 players, showing a sophistication they had probably acquired in militant Islamic schools. Otherwise they were dirt poor, claiming to own nothing but their AK-47 rifles and the clothes on their backs. One of the most graphic accounts of what it was like to be a prisoner of Zeid’s militants came last week from an Austrian couple, Wolfgang Ebner and Andrea Kloiber, who were held captive between February and October 2008. “There was constant awareness that we would be killed at any instant,” said Ebner, an accountant. “They repeated to us, ‘We will kill you if your governments do not pay,’ and we knew they meant it.” When the negotiations for their release reached a stalemate, the kidnappers received permission from an Islamic cleric to kill Kloiber as, according to sharia (Islamic law), women, children and old people must not be harmed during a jihad, or holy war. “We knew then they would not hesitate for a second to execute us. We had to live in a constant fear of death as we were being transferred from one place to another every few days.” Ebner said he had been abused only once as a punishment for losing his temper. “They made me sit in the sun at noon for two hours at a temperature of over 55C. I almost died then, but I learnt my lesson and did not resist after that.” |
| Posted by:ryuge |
| #17 I feel little sympathy for Mr. Dyer, his family and loved ones on the other hand I feel quite bad for. I have no doubt that Mr. Dyer and his companions exhibit the same mentality as what we call "Liberals" here, the Kumbaya sort. Ditto here. My sympathy is reserved for the folks in Special Ops who may now be called upon to risk their lives in order to get some payback. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2009-06-07 20:29 |
| #16 Strange, that didn't get mentioned in the Cairo speech No need to mention it. It's just assumed. |
| Posted by: ed 2009-06-07 20:13 |
| #15 Actually it is. Australian Aborigines do not kill tourists (although feeding them big maggots... uh well) |
| Posted by: European Conservative 2009-06-07 20:12 |
| #14 The Australian Outback sounds more fun. |
| Posted by: Lumpy Angaith3743 2009-06-07 19:40 |
| #13 Flater and OS have it right. Our governments will never do it. Is there a time when western civilians will start doing this? |
| Posted by: Hellfish 2009-06-07 19:27 |
| #12 European Conservative,our empty suit, Bambi, has his head stuck so far up his a$$, he will never see daylight. |
| Posted by: WolfDog 2009-06-07 18:50 |
| #11 "When ye meet the unbelievers, smite at their necks." Strange, that didn't get mentioned in the Cairo speech |
| Posted by: European Conservative 2009-06-07 18:23 |
| #10 Above all - find and execute this cleric and his family" kidnappers received permission from an Islamic cleric to kill Kloiber |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2009-06-07 16:30 |
| #9 "any westerner caught venturing into the Sahara would die. "They will see that we are jihadists, envoys of God, and their deaths will be the fault of their governments and their policies," he said." Poison the wells. Salt the land. Napalm. Over any village associated with that guy. He wants misery and loss of life, I say we give it to him. Tell the locals: Blame the Islamists - we left you alone until they started murdering. WHen you fore them to stop, then we will stop. Until then, your lands will not be allowed to bear food and you will be without drinkable water, and we will hunt and destroy any human settlements in the region that associate with him and his murdering band. It worked before, on the shores of Tripoli. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2009-06-07 16:29 |
| #8 great qoute Deacon. |
| Posted by: Elmusosing Wittlesbach aka Broadhead6 2009-06-07 15:11 |
| #7 I have no particular desire to understand them except to ascertain how much lead or iron it takes to kill them George S. Patton. |
| Posted by: Deacon Blues 2009-06-07 14:50 |
| #6 It's not idiotic to take risks in life... That's debatable. These people took a risk that was beyond foolish. For what? Adventure? The trip they took had a very high probability of being a disaster, in my book that equates to idiotic. I applaud whomever decided not to give in to their kidnappers demands. I feel little sympathy for Mr. Dyer, his family and loved ones on the other hand I feel quite bad for. I have no doubt that Mr. Dyer and his companions exhibit the same mentality as what we call "Liberals" here, the Kumbaya sort. I hope the survivors go home with a lesson, and spread that lesson. Unfortunately like most Liberals they are probably unteachable. As for Islam, it is way past time to make a few examples of our own. They want jihad, then we should give it to them. Unrestrained, unrestricted and violent in the extreme. It is the only way. The Koran says, leaders of Islam have said, that there can be no accommodation between Dar al Islam and Dar al Harb. We should take them at their word and lay waste to them. I see no upside in deluding ourselves by saying we're better than that, and we have to be above that. BS! That is suicidal. I say slaughter them until they beg for mercy, then slaughter them some more. When their population numbers become manageable, quarantine them in their crap holes, bulldoze their Mosque's, force their children into non-religious structured schools and control their existence. For as many generations as it takes to extinguish Islam. |
| Posted by: Flater White1380 2009-06-07 13:05 |
| #5 Interesting is it not Parabellum, with a few exception, how often it is folks educated in the....soft disciplines who find themselves in these encampments? |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2009-06-07 12:19 |
| #4 Choosing not to vacation in Niger is not exactly a 'restriction of my movements', it's a logical choice. |
| Posted by: Parabellum 2009-06-07 12:10 |
| #3 And the worst thing you can do if taken hostage is to do the expected. Instead, you have to focus on creating a psychology in them that you are either worth more alive, or that it might be dangerous for them to kill you. By this latter I mean that such primitives are deeply superstitious, and very susceptible to carefully crafted "magic", that is not imminently threatening, but could be if they weren't careful. Optimally, you can pull a variant of the "Scheherazade" trick, weaving some b.s. tale that they have to know the ending of, or they are going to get eaten by "it". It helps if you give them "secret knowledge" from their own belief system. Of course, if you get the chance to stick their own knife in them at any point, take it. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2009-06-07 11:39 |
| #2 Idiots. It's not idiotic to take risks in life and not only restrict your movements according to where you fear terrorists. Reckless, maybe, but not by any means necessarily idiotic. The only idiots in this story are the Islamist retards themselves and the Governments who are prepared to fund and encourage their peurile antics by cowing to their demands and paying ransoms. |
| Posted by: Bulldog 2009-06-07 09:41 |
| #1 The men's ordeal had begun in January when they were captured with other tourists from Germany and Switzerland after setting out for a nomadic cultural festival near the lawless border between Niger and Mali. Idiots. |
| Posted by: Parabellum 2009-06-07 08:47 |