Killing of Nick Berg

Nicholas Evan Berg (April 2, 1978 – May 7, 2004) was an American freelance radio-tower repairman from West Chester, Pennsylvania, who traveled to Iraq after the 2003 U.S. invasion to seek contract work for his family's company, Prometheus Methods Tower Service. He first arrived in Iraq in December 2003 and returned in March 2004 after work he had been promised failed to materialize.

Berg was detained in Mosul on March 24, 2004. His family said he was held for 13 days without access to legal counsel; FBI agents visited his parents on March 31, 2004, to confirm his identity, but he was not released until after his parents filed a federal lawsuit in Philadelphia on April 5, 2004, alleging he was being held illegally. He was released on April 6, 2004, according to the Associated Press, and advised by U.S. officials to leave Iraq, an offer he reportedly declined. He then traveled to Baghdad and stayed at the Al-Fanar Hotel. His family last heard from him on April 9, 2004, and he had his last contact with U.S. officials on April 10, 2004. He did not return to his hotel after that date, and his family grew concerned when he stopped communicating with them.

Berg's decapitated body was found on May 8, 2004, on a Baghdad overpass by a U.S. military patrol. His family was notified of his death two days later. Military sources initially said his body showed "signs of trauma" without disclosing the decapitation. On May 11, 2004, a video was posted to the jihadist forum Muntada al-Ansar under the title "Abu Musab al-Zarqawi slaughters an American," showing Berg, seated and wearing an orange jumpsuit, identifying himself before masked captors read a statement and then killed him. The statement described the act as revenge for the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse. Because all the men in the video were masked, the identity of the person who carried out the killing could not be confirmed from the footage itself, though the video's title and the CIA attributed responsibility to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The killing was condemned by the Arab League, the United Nations, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the UAE, and was reported to have been widely condemned in the Arab world as contrary to Islam and as a reaction to U.S. prison abuses.

It later emerged that Berg's email account had been used, without his knowledge, by 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui prior to the September 11 attacks, after an acquaintance of Moussaoui borrowed Berg's laptop on a bus in Norman, Oklahoma; the FBI found no direct terrorism connection between Berg and Moussaoui.

Reports following the killing described arrests of Iraqi suspects, later releases, and a subsequent claim of responsibility by an unnamed leader of a Fallujah-based militant council, published by a French magazine. No one has been definitively identified or convicted for the killing.