SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 7: A tech-savvy young San Francisco man who staged his own mock beheading on the Internet duped international media on Saturday into believing kidnappers had executed an American hostage in Iraq.
The video, which appeared on a web site used by militants, showed a man who identified himself as Benjamin Vanderford appealing to the United States to leave Iraq. The web format was that used by Al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al Zarqawi and was introduced by a headline that said it showed Zarqawi killing an American.
"If we don't (leave Iraq), everyone is gonna be killed in this way ... I have been offered for exchange for prisoners here in Iraq," the terrified-looking man said, rocking back and forth in his chair, his hands tied behind his back.
The video showed a hand with a large knife apparently slicing through the neck of a limp body.
But it was all a hoax.
The blood was dye, the setting was a friend's garage, the reading from the holy Quran was a tape and the knife was held by a friend. Mutilated bodies and sound effects were edited in from photos on websites and the video was purposefully blurred to make it seem even more amateur, Mr Vanderford said.
A major motivation for his action, an unrepentant Vanderford said, was to see how the world media would react and to see if they would be fooled. "It really illustrates the potential that this kind of thing would happen," he said.
Mr Vanderford, 22, said he worked at branch of Wells Fargo bank. A college dropout, he was a candidate for the local city council earlier this year but had since dropped out of the race. His web site also says he is a video game programmer and works with a local record label.
INTERNET EXPERIMENT: He said the video parody of actual beheadings of hostages in Iraq posted on websites was made and posted on the web about three months ago, intended as an experiment into how quickly videos spread on the Internet. He was surprised at how long it took.
"It is unfortunate that it had to be the type of video that was offensive and shocking, but it was necessary to see how quickly this kind of thing would spread," he said.
Local police and FBI officials arrived at his door early on Saturday, but had no immediate comment as to whether he would face criminal charges.
Mr Vanderford said he distributed the staged video on Kazaa and other Internet peer-to-peer networks which are popular swapping forums for films, music and software. He said if his staged death appeared on any terror-related websites it was the work of others who found the video on the networks.
Scores of hostages from two dozen countries have been seized in the last four months. Most have been freed but at least 10 have been killed, and at least 20 are still being held in Iraq.
Mr Vanderford expressed the hope that his stunt would not affect his bank job.-Reuters