AIRO (Reuters) - Al Jazeera television broadcast a video tape on Monday showing what militants said was the execution of a U.S. soldier captured in Iraq in April.
A gunman could be seen firing one shot at the soldier, wearing greenish overalls and seen only from the back, in a dark setting. The body fell into a hole.
U.S. defense officials said the family of Private Keith Matthew Maupin, 20, seized by militants in April, had been told about the existence of the video, but that there was no confirmation he had been killed.
The video was aired hours after the United States handed sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government two days earlier than expected, aiming to forestall guerrilla attacks with a secretive ceremony formally ending 14 months of occupation.
Al Jazeera quoted a statement from a previously unheard of group as saying the soldier was killed because of U.S. policy in Iraq and in revenge for what it described as their "martyrs" in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Algeria.
The group was identified as the Implacable Power Against the Enemy of God and the Prophet.
Since April militants in Iraq have seized a number of foreign workers and military personnel. Some have remained captive.
"RUMOR OF AN EXECUTION"
The U.S. military has said Marine Corporal Wassef Ali Hassoun was reported missing from his unit on June 21. On Sunday, militants appearing on Al Jazeera threatened to kill Hassoun if prisoners in Iraq were not freed.
A senior U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Maupin's family had been told "there's a rumor Al Jazeera or an Arab network may have a tape of an execution, but we do not know if it's their son or not."
Maupin, of Batavia, Ohio, has been missing since April 9 when his military fuel convoy was ambushed near Baghdad
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=5534836