Militants say they beheaded Marine

Iraq's prime minister is considering offering amnesty to insurgents.
COMBINED DISPATCHES
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraqi militants claimed Saturday to have beheaded a Lebanese-born U.S. Marine and said footage of the gruesome execution would soon appear on Arabic-language satellite television networks.
The reported slaying of Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun, in what would be the fourth beheading by militants in the region in two months, served as a chilling rupture of the relative calm that had prevailed in Iraq since U.S.-led occupation forces handed sovereignty to an interim Iraqi leadership.
"In the name of God, for those who follow guidance, we would like to inform you that the Marine of Lebanese origin Hassoun has been slaughtered," said the Internet message from a group calling itself the Ansar al Sunna Army. The claim couldn't be verified.
"We will show a new video of the detention of a new infidel hostage and as recently promised, the beheading of rotten heads," the statement said.
Addressed to President Bush, it warned: "Withdraw your Army, and you will be safe. Or else we will keep on doing what we are doing."
Providing evidence
Ansar al Sunna, which claimed responsibility for Feb. 1 suicide bombings that killed more than 100 people in the Kurdish stronghold of Irbil, also said Saturday it would soon release evidence that it had kidnapped "a new infidel." It made no mention of the captive's nationality or how the group came to detain him.
In the Web site claim of Hassoun's killing, the militants contended that the 24-year-old from West Jordan, Utah, had been intimate with an unidentified local woman, suggesting his execution was at least in part in punishment of violating Muslim religious values.
"Your soldier had romantic relations with an Arab girl," the statement asserted.
Hassoun, whose family moved to the United States in the 1990s, was last seen with his unit June 19. The military reported him missing two days later and revised his status from "missing" to "captive" only Thursday.
"His primary next of kin was notified shortly after he was determined to be missing from his unit," said Maj. Earle Bluff of the multinational forces information center in Baghdad. "However, the Marine Expeditionary Force has determined nothing further about his status at this time."
Al-Jazeera broadcast footage of the blindfolded soldier June 27, with his captors holding a sword at the back of his head and demanding that all Iraqi prisoners held by U.S.-led forces be freed.
Hassoun's father, Ali Mohammed Hassoun of Tripoli, Lebanon, had appealed for mercy for his son, noting he was a Muslim and an Arab.
Amnesty
Meanwhile, Iraq's prime minister, less than a week after taking power, may offer amnesty to insurgents and could extend it to those who killed American troops in an apparent bid to lure Saddam Hussein loyalists from their campaign of violence.
A spokesman for Iyad Allawi went as far as to suggest attacks on U.S. troops over the past year were legitimate acts of resistance -- a sign of the new government's desire to distance itself from the 14-month U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.
"If he [a guerrilla] was in opposition against the Americans, that will be justified because it was an occupation force," the spokesman, Georges Sada, said Saturday. "We will give them freedom."
Choking the brutal 14-month insurgency is the No. 1 priority of Allawi's government, and the prime minister is expected to make a number of security-related policy announcements in coming days. Besides the amnesty plan, those include the resurrection of Iraq's death penalty and an emergency law that sets curfews in Iraq's trouble spots, Sada said.
The amnesty plan is still in the works. A full pardon for insurgents who killed Americans is not a certainty, Sada told The Associated Press. Allawi's main goal is to "start everything from new" by giving a second chance to rebel fighters who hand in their weapons and throw their weight behind the new government.
"There is still heavy discussion about this," said Sada, interviewed in the prime minister's office. He said the U.S. Embassy has encouraged Allawi to try creative solutions to end the insurgency as long as they don't infringe on human rights.
Analysts say Allawi's plan is critical to ending a grinding rebellion in Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartland that has shown no sign of bowing to the U.S. military. Especially worrying for Allawi's government is recent evidence that shows secular fighters -- ex-members of Saddam's Baath Party -- forming an alliance with radical Islamists.
Roadside bomb
Early Saturday, seven Iraqi national guardsmen were killed by a roadside bomb at a checkpoint in Mahmudiyah, 20 miles south of Baghdad, U.S. officials said.
A U.S. Marine died Saturday of wounds suffered Friday during operations in Anbar province, a Sunni-dominated area west of Baghdad that has been a hotbed of resistance, the military said. The U.S. military gave no details. The Marine was the fourth to die this month in Anbar.
An Iraqi police officer was killed Friday when insurgents attacked a checkpoint in the northern city of Mosul, the U.S. military said in a statement Saturday.