Bay Area man's mock beheading airs on Arab TV

http://www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/0,1413,82~1865~2322110,00.html

Local man's mock beheading airs on Arab TV

East Bay native gets visit from FBI, may face federal charges

By Josh Richman and Chris De Benedetti, STAFF WRITERS

A Bay Area man who made a phony video depicting his own beheading by Islamic
extremists touched off a media maelstrom and an FBI investigation Saturday.

"It makes a mockery out of the pain and suffering of the families of those
who were beheaded in Iraq," said FBI Special Agent LaRae Quy, spokeswoman
for the bureau's San Francisco office.

Benjamin Vanderford's hoax is "no joking matter to anybody, including the
U.S. government and the FBI," she said.

Vanderford, 22, an East Bay native living in San Francisco, told the
Associated Press he had videotaped the bogus beheading months ago at a
friend's house in Pleasanton using fake blood. He distributed the 55-second
video on the Internet in hopes of drawing attention to his campaign for a
seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors; when his political
aspirations waned, he thought the video would serve as social commentary.

"It was part of a stunt, but no one noticed it up until now," he said. "I
did this for a couple of reasons. One is to attract attention. But two is to
just make a statement on these type of videos and

how easily they can be faked."

In the video clip, Vanderford is seated on a chair in a dark room, his hands
behind his back, trembling and rocking back and forth. The clip shows a hand
with a knife cutting at the motionless man's neck, but doesn't show any
militants.

The video was posted on a militant Web site and aired on Arab television
Saturday. Vanderford was clad in a T-shirt, not the orange jumpsuit in which
other hostages have been dressed.

"We need to leave this country alone. We need to stop this occupation," he
said on the video, adding that he had been offered for exchange with
prisoners in Iraq. "Everyone's going to be killed this way."

Quy said the FBI was contacted by American officials in Baghdad who had seen
the video clip but had no record of a Benjamin Vanderford in Iraq. The FBI
went to Vanderford's San Francisco address "bright and early" Saturday
morning, she said: "We knocked on his door, he answered, so we interviewed
him ... he did acknowledge it was a hoax.

"We're still investigating, we're still trying to collect all the facts ...
we will pursue any and all legal avenues," Quy said, adding it'll be up to
the U.S. Attorney's office to decide whether to file any charges. If no
federal law applies, the FBI could work with local authorities to pursue
state charges, she said.

Vanderford's cell phone went unanswered Saturday, and he didn't return any
e-mails.

Vanderford's parents, Gary and Theresa Vanderford of San Lorenzo, were
besieged by phone calls from local, national and international media
Saturday. "My wife is upset, in general, and at all the attention," said
Gary Vanderford, standing at the door of his home.

He said his son is a 1999 graduate of Hayward's Moreau Catholic High School
who moved to San Francisco about a year ago. He'd taken some college classes
but now works at a Berkeley bank branch, his father said. "He's a good kid.
He's a smart kid. He's never been in trouble."

Gary Vanderford said he had not yet seen the video clip "and I haven't
talked to my son yet. My wife has. I intend to (talk to him). All I know is
by what I've seen on the news. I think it's been blown out of proportion --
basically, it's much ado about nothing, I think."

He called himself "a patriotic American" and a conservative-leaning
Democrat, and said his son is the same.

"I guess he was trying to get a point across that you can't always believe
what you see in the media," Gary Vanderford said. "He was trying to make a
statement ... Obviously, it got some attention. He got a reaction. The fact
that Al-Jazeera picked it up, that's what's caused the whole thing
(controversy)."

Benjamin Vanderford was one of about 30 people who took out papers this
spring seek the seat soon to be vacated by San Francisco Supervisor Matt
Gonzlaez. His campaign Web site, which became inaccessible before noon
Saturday, said he aimed to "(m)ake San Francisco the model of economic and
environmental stability and self sufficiency... the model of govern-

ment efficiency and transparency" and "the city with the highest quality of
life, for everyone."

Sipping soda in his kitchen Saturday morning, a shirtless Vanderford told
the Associated Press he had spliced the video with images of mutilated
bodies taken from a Web site operated by Hamas, a terrorist group
responsible for suicide bombings in Israel. He later edited the

55-second video using production software to downgrade the quality so it
would resemble beheading tapes distributed since the war in Iraq began.

"We had to make it more lower quality to make it more realistic," he said,
who works at a bank when he's not performing in his rap group and designing
video games.

That was another experiment that was part of this to see how quickly that
system will spread news.

The video was titled "Abu Musab al-Zarqawi Slaughters an American" and had
no indication of when, or where, it was made. Zarqawi is an al-Qaida linked
militant whose group, Tawhid and Jihad, has claimed responsibility for
numerous deadly attacks across Iraq, including the beheadings of U.S.
businessman Nicholas Berg, South Korean translator Kim Sun-il and a
Bulgarian man, Georgi Lazov. Their beheadings were filmed, the videos posted
in the Internet.

Vanderford, who opposes the war in Iraq, told the Associated Press he
understood if relatives of those killed in Iraq thought his stunt was
misguided, but he offered no apologies.

"I see how it could be considered disrespectful. But I think people, if they
look at it, will understand two other big issues it brings up," he said. "A
small group of disgruntled people in Iraq or Saudi Arabia could just get
more attention just by easily releasing something like I did on the Internet."

Gary Vanderford said Saturday he feels bad for the real beheading victims
and their families. "It's a horrible thing. We should do everything we can
to find the people who did them."

Wire services contributed to this report.

_______________________________________________
heads mailing list
[email protected]
http://ballistichelmet.org/mailman/listinfo/heads/
http://ballistichelmet.org/donate/