Paul Johnson's remains NOT found?!

[Career Prole]

It's mentioned almost as an aside in this story about the Saudi claim of the killing of al-Muqin
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/06/19/saudi.kidnap/index.html

In the middle they stick in this:

"Despite earlier reports, Paul Johnson's corpse is still missing and a search is under way Saturday, said Adel Al-Jubeir, the foreign affairs adviser to Crown Prince Abdullah.

The determination that Johnson was killed was based on an analysis of the videotape released by the terrorist group, Al-Jubeir said. Earlier reports said Johnson's remains had been discovered Friday night."

I'd sure like to know how one screws up something like that.
Reminds me of when Patrick Dennehy (Baylor basketball player) was killed. They reported finding a body, but said they were unsure if it was the missing player until forensic tests were completed.
My little brother yelled at the TV, "Is it a black man's body, about 6'10"-ish? Try starting there!"
How many headless caucasian bodies do they have laying around Riyadh?

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. "How many headless caucasian bodies do they have laying around Riyadh?"

Took the words right outta my mouth. :(

[SoCalDem]

2. The Saudi Ari Fleischer TOLD us that the "bad guy" was killed

while disposing of the BODY !!!

Liaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh

[TeeYiYi]

7. Is that you, Al?

TYY:7

[Career Prole]

12. Johnson's body evidently escaped

while the firefight raged. They should have set up a secure perimeter.
:eyes:

[lanparty]

16. Headless Johnson

Johnson's body is now roaming the streets of Riyadh on an ATV looking for his severed head.

I expect this type of bullshit idiot propoganda from the likes of Saudi Arabia. What disturbs me is that we're getting more and more of it out of Washington. It doesn't even some feasible. They think we're stupid!!!!

[hlthe2b]

29. Well, Friday afternoon is the official time for state-sponsored beheadings

at the Dira suq (gold market) clock tower. (Westerners learn quickly to avoid that area on Friday afternoons since there were always some Saudis anxious to aid the unwitting westerner in securing a better view) So, I suppose it is remotely possible.....:eyes:

[frylock]

3. but didn't authorities claim to kill al-qeada leader, al-moqrin..

while he was "dumping the body"? :wtf:

[GreenPartyVoter]

4. Jon Stewart will have a field day with this one.

[mike1963]

10. really...so has anybody seen the 'video' on the net of the beheading?

I've seen some mention of it but I don't want to see it...point being, are we absolutely sure it really happened? Just askin'

[TeeYiYi]

23. I saw the photo . . .

. . . of the body with the severed head sitting on its back.:puke:

TYY

[stickdog]

50. Me, too. They weren't believable, but they weren't laughable either.

Seems like the black ops boys may have learned something from their Berg fiasco.

As in, less is more when it comes to amateur psyops.

[Career Prole]

27. I saw some still pictures...rather poor quality, at that.

I couldn't dismiss the possibility of a photoshop job. :shrug:

[AntiCoup2K4]

36. That entered my mind as well.

Haven't seen the actual video, and don't care to, but the fact that no video, and no body, can be proven to exist - for the moment- leaves the possibility of the photos being faked open.

Or to put it another way, the killers of Daniel Pearl and Nick Berg made a point of circulating their videos in a timely manner, and the bodies were found soon after.

But then, the authenticity of the Berg video, and questions about who exactly were the killers were might have made them nervous.

[Tinoire]

28. I have not seen the video but was sent this by someone

I saw the video last night and it was professionally done. The video of Johnson was shot in the usual poor quality with bad lighting, but the inserts of someone calling themselves al-Moqrin were top-notch. Good lighting with no shadows, better camera work, nice backdrop, and quality CG work in arabic and english. Looked like it had been done in a studio somewhere and edited into the shots of the hostage. I'm betting al-Moqrin was no where near Johnson.

I would like to see it because I noticed the shocking difference in lighting when I was looking at the pictures.

If anyone has a link to it, please PM it to me. Thanks

[mike1963]

5. I thought someone reported yesterday the guy was trying to 'dispose' of

the body and was shot.....this whole thing smells fishy

[Bozita]

15. But, that was yesterday's story

Stories must start anew each day.

[mike1963]

21. <pounding head on desk> Right. What the hell was I thinking?

:eyes:
;-)

[seabeyond]

43. you made me chuckle

lol lol, i literally saw you pounding that head

[seabeyond]

44. and people wonder, why everyone on du questions

friggin everything. thought this one was going to be a not having to explore what happened, but not. want to just be able to call it what it is and have empathy for family, but now, i have to start listening to everything that is up with this

those saudi's they dont mess, you know 1 or 2 of the family members died suddenly once they got back to saudi from u.s. after 9/11

[DarbyUSMC]

48. I don't know but if you find out please let me know. Arrrgh.

:shrug:

[TeeYiYi]

6. I called bullshit . . .

. . . when they said they had already killed Paul Johnson's killers. How did they find the killers so fast AFTER the beheading when they couldn't find them before?

Another fishy Psy-Op story out of the ME. How surprising.

TYY

[lanparty]

17. How do you identify 16 highjackers 24-hours after crashing 4 planes????

One would think they knew BEFORE it was going to happen.

[TeeYiYi]

20. Easy . . .

. . . with a brand spankin' new, freshly printed passport sitting on top of the debris, a Koran and a 'little black' address book. See . . . now wasn't that easy?

TYY

[mike1963]

25. Not to mention finding their car in a 5 acre lot in 2 hours and a PASSPORT

in the WTC wreckage.....
:eyes:

[MUSTANG_2004]

38. In at least one plane, a flight attendant told them

which seats the hijackers had been in.

[newyawker99]

39. Hi MUSTANG_2004!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Tinoire]

30. I didn't call it. Thought it & still do

but damn... didn't get on this one as quickly as on the Berg case.

The story reeks.

Militant Islamic web-site registered in Dallas & Houston Texas. Right :eyes:


Amazing isn't it? :hi:

[TeeYiYi]

34. It reeks alrighty . . .

. . . what struck me was the video of the killer — the skinny killer with the uber tight itchy mask, shaking his fist and pointing his finger in quick, jerky movements. I swear to gawd, the guy reminded me of Spiderman. :7

TYY:hi:

[Catfight]

8. Bush is recanting the new commercials on how those brown people

in the middle east want to chop of the heads of Amera-cans. UG. Someone make this nightmare go away, I feel like I'm living in the twilight zone with the dumbest man in the world running the most powerful country in the world. It makes for great fiction but NOT non-fiction!

[SheepyMcSheepster]

9. so the only plausible situation that goes along with the orginial story is

they tracked down the al qaeda guy, asked him what he was doing, he says: "well i just got finished dipsosing of Paul Johnson's body becaue i am his killer"
so then without asking him where he disposed of the body they shot mr. al qaeda.

that works for me!

[mike1963]

11. If the twilight zone is weird, we must be right at midnight...

:eyes:

[Career Prole]

22. LOL! Don't forget..."After midnight...

...we're gonna let it all hang out!"
We ain't seen nothin' yet.

[Spazito]

13. LOL, I figure he had a sandwich board saying "I did it, I did it"...

and so they shot him. Your scenario and mine are as believable as the "official" story for sure!

[0007]

14. This Johnson slaying is getting stinky

Many unproven screwy stories floating around.

[Bluebear]

18. Yesterday we were advised to let the family grieve, though.

Some people are getting too comfortable with not asking questions about anything dealing with this 'war on terra'.

[Career Prole]

26. Has anyone heard from the family since they were spirited out

to an "undisclosed location"?

[Tinoire]

32. You're kidding? Spirited out?

I haven't been following this charade closely and missed that. Spirited out?

Yesterday I refrained from posting that I would not be surprised to see all these beheaded people walking around alive after the war is over. Rumsfeld's pre-war announcement that they would conduct this war using lies, smoke and mirrors keeps haunting me. He said something to the effect that we would never know what to believe. Damn I wish I could find that quote.

[Career Prole]

33. I remember Donny-boy using words to that effect, too. Yesterday CNN

showed the family being escorted to a car from the family home in NJ while the police blocked the view by holding up coats in front of them. They said they were leaving for an undisclosed location for seclusion...or perhaps a reunion?

[Bozita]

19. So, ... are the beheaders dead?

The Saudis may have some bodies, but I doubt they're the Al-Quaeda guys.

This story's already fallen apart.

[SheepyMcSheepster]

24. i am thinking along the lines of...

saudia arabia made something up or killed somebody just to make it look like they were doing something about the problem.

[chookie]

31. "Ari Al-Fleischer" says: Lucky Lucky Lucky!

Isn't it JUST INCREDIBLE how the Saudis were able to find the Perpetrators HOURS after Johnson's death? Yes, he said -- it was due to a systematic search house to house, and intelligence provided by people on the ground, like firemen and imams. And they just didn't find low-ranking Al Qaeda creeps, but The Top 2 Guys! WOW! And they're both dead now! Hooray! We have nothing to fear from Al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia anymore, thanks to the brilliant operation carried out by the Saudis!! Well, there is the troubling little detail of not being able to locate these murderous fiends before they were able to kill Mr Johnson -- but hey, do you want to think of the glass as half full, or half empty? /sarcasm off

Here we go again -- the timing is ALWAYS off a bit, and they never seem to be able to uncover plots, but the Saudis invariably "catch" the perps "within hours" -- and either kill them during the manhunt, or try them on the spot for their crimesand prove absolutely that they are the perps, so they behead them to obtain Islamic justice. And the Americans are never allowed to look closely at what happened -- we just have to take their word for it.

Sorry -- I am not buying this. And it looks as though very few others are buying it as well. I believe they have made this story up out of whole cloth -- it is an utter fabrication to supposedly placate Americans, and to act like the Saudis are on our side, when they are really very tricksey indeed.

As someone pointed out above -- sadly, our own government has adopted this same ludicrous style of shameless lying. We are subjected to two scenarios: 1) everyone is coached by the same person and tells the same implausible story, right down to using identical words and phrases OR 2) somebody screws up and uses a little bit of initiative to create a deception that has not been carefully rehearsed with the others, leading to minor disagreements about, say, whether a body has been found or not.

[bluedog]

35. these are some of the news releases

Rate Post
Reply

My paper said they found his body...the news conference about a half hour ago said they didn't...........so I did some checking...heres the media stories about this.




http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040......


RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Saudi TV broadcast pictures Saturday of four bloodied bodies that authorities identified as the reputed leader of al-Qaida in the kingdom and three other militants killed in a gunbattle after dumping the mutilated body of an American hostage.
...
After news of Johnson's death was released Friday, a witness reportedly saw his body dumped from a car just outside Riyadh and informed police of the car's license number.


****************************************************************
Witness saw U.S. hostage’s body dumped from car, alerted police


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5196406 /


The men were killed in a shootout on Friday night as they tried to dispose of the body of Johnson, who was beheaded after the Saudi government refused to free Islamist prisoners by a Friday deadline set by Muqrin's cell.


Muqrin's group had posted photographs of Johnson's severed head on a Web site, six days after the 49-year-old aviation engineer was kidnapped in Riyadh.


http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews...


****************************************************************





Note: this is what I heard on the conference............His body has not been found


Hours after Johnson's slaying, security forces at a roadblock intercepted al-Moqrin and the other militants in their car, sparking a gunbattle that ended with the four being killed, Adel al-Jubeir, foreign affairs adviser to Crown Prince Abdullah, told reporters at the Saudi Embassy in Washington.



He said initial reports from Saudi officials that the militants were traced after a witness saw them dumping Johnson's body were incorrect.



Johnson's body has not been found, he said. "We think we know the area where it is," and security forces are searching in an area north of the capital, al-Jubeir said.



http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=5......

[Career Prole]

37. Thanks! Headline News just reported the Saudis "believe the body is

somewhere in the northern outskirts of Riyadh" so that jibes.
I wonder how they arrived at that, though. Reports of an unidentified headless white prowler, perhaps. :eyes:

[Guaranteed]

40. Definitely holey story. How is this possible?

Yesterday the story was that someone witnessed the dumping of the body, got the license plate and turned in the guys. If that's the case, how is it that they don't know where the body is?

If that story isn't true, how DID they figure out who did this? If they already knew who did it, why didn't they attack BEFORE they killed Johnson?

[Guaranteed]

41. Kick. Anyone? Anyone? nt

[Bluebear]

42. First there is a body, then there is no body, then there is.

[Career Prole]

45. Al-Jazeera is still running the body-dumping story on Sunday!

Here's the Saturday story from the English-language site:

Al-Qaida leader, captive killed
Saturday 19 June 2004, 23:42 Makka Time, 20:42 GMT

<snip>

But al-Muqrin's death has been verified based on the pictures, forensic tests and family identification, Saudi political analyst Zuhair Harthy told Aljazeera. He dismissed the website statement, saying they were trying to create a "media tempest" to shake what he said is the triumph of the Saudi authorities.

Saudi security official said a witness noted the licence-plate number of a car from which Paul Marshall Johnson's body was dumped just outside Riyadh on Friday and informed police.
Police stopped the car at a petrol station in central Riyadh and a shootout ensued in which al-Muqrin, Rakan Muhsan Muhammad al-Saykhan - the second most-wanted Saudi fugitive - and three other fighters were killed, said Saudi officials and Washington.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/093D5749-FBF1-485B-8B73-039F86F3ECFE.htm

Now here's the Sunday story:

Al-Qaida admits to leader's death
Sunday 20 June 2004, 3:42 Makka Time, 0:42 GMT
Al-Qaida in Saudi Arabia have allegedly confirmed the killing of their leader Abd al-Aziz al-Muqrin and three others by Saudi security forces in Riyadh. "On Friday, the leader Abd al-Aziz al-Muqrin was martyred along with three others...in an ambush carried out by the soldiers of the despot (in Saudi Arabia). They opened fire on
them in a sudden way which led to their killing," said a statement attributed to al-Qaida in the Arabian peninsula posted on the al-Qalaa website on Saturday.

<snip>

Saudi security officials said a witness noted the licence plate number of a car - from which Johnson's body was dumped just outside Riyadh on Friday - and notified police.
Police stopped the car at a petrol station in central Riyadh and a shootout ensued in which al-Muqrin, Rakan Muhsan Muhammad al-Saykhan - the second most-wanted Saudi fugitive - and two other fighters were killed, Saudi officials said.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/CB52BFBC-F36E-46E9-A459-B385885784BF.htm

I was thinking maybe they had left in the bit about the body-dumping from an earlier disproved story unintentionally, but they've changed the number of people killed with al-Muqrin from three to two between Saturday and Sunday so it appears the body-dumping part was left in intentionally...what the hell is up with that?

:wtf:

[Career Prole]

47. Anyone know what the official "replacement" story is

since the body-dump is out of play?

[Guaranteed]

49. Kick nt

[mountainvue]

46. Here we go.

WTF really happened here? We'll probably never know.

[Must_B_Free]

51. kick