Arabic papers play down beheading
By Sameh Abdallah, CNN.com Arabic
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| VIDEO |
 The grisly execution of Nicholas Berg prompts outrage and brings vows to hunt down the hooded killers responsible.
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 In West Chester, Pennsylvania, the family of Nicholas Berg is devastated by his slaying.
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 A portion of the video shows Berg and his killers speaking to the camera. NOTE: The slaying is not shown.
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DUBAI, UAE (CNN) -- Many Arabic newspapers published the story of the beheading of U.S. civilian Nick Berg on Wednesday -- but all did so without commenting and the amount of coverage varied greatly.
However, several Arabic dailies, including leading Egyptian papers Al-Ahram and Al-Akhbar, as well as the Kuwaiti daily Al Qabas, did not publish the story at all on their Web sites.
The papers mentioned the execution had been carried out by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of an Islamist terrorist group that has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks on coalition forces in Iraq. This claim has not been verified.
The London-based Arabic daily Al Quds Al Arabia and the Yemen Daily Al-Ayam devoted most space to the story.
Al Quds used long quotations from a statement read by Berg's captors in which they said the killing was retaliation for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners.
Al-Ayam published several pictures of the incident on the lower part of its front page, but the full story was published on page seven.
On the other hand, the Saudi-owned, London-based daily Al-Hayat published details of the killing as part of its lead story on the Iraq abuse scandal front page.
Both the Bahrain daily Al-Ayam and the Jordanian daily Al-Rai did the same.
