IS Foley- and Sotloff-Beheading-Video could be Hollywood-Fake

The Arabic version of Aljazeera, the Doha-based broadcaster funded by the House of Thani in Qatar, has joined the growing chorus questioning the beheading of journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff.

The news channel says the videos are “unconvincing” and Foley and Sotloff are actors right out of “Hollywood” casting. It believes the videos were produced as a pretext ahead of a U.S. invasion of Syria.

“Perhaps the first thing that draws the attention of the viewer” in the first beheading video is that “Foley was playing the role of champion not the victim only, for he recites a lengthy statement in peerless theatrical performance, and it seems from tracking the movement of his eyes that he was reading a text from an autocue,” Aljazeera reports.

The news network poses questions similar to those asked by Infowars.com and other alternative news sites soon after the video appeared. For instance, a clue the video was staged is the lack of blood when Foley and Sotloff supposedly have their throats cut by a masked jihadist. The “knife being moved on the neck of the victim six times triggered no blood,” Aljazeera notes.

Moreover, neither of the supposed victims display fear despite the fact they are about to have their heads sawed off.

“It also raised questions over how Foley, who was kidnapped since 2012, reached the hands of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Even more, it raised doubts over the identity of the executed man, claiming that he does not look like Foley,” reports Al Arabiya News.“It quoted unidentified ‘activists’ as claiming that Foley had previously worked for the U.S. Department of State and that he might have had links with intelligence, ‘which could mean that he colluded in the fabrication of the tape.’”

Al Arabiya, a Saudi-owned pan-Arab television news channel, questions why the report criticizing the alleged beheading videos only appears in Arabic. It notes “there was no translation or mention of the article which doubts of Foley and Sotloff found on Al Jazeera English website.”

Al Arabiya quotes a Lebanon-based media specialist and commentator who tries to prove a negative in order to claim the beheadings in fact occurred.

“If, as he claims, it’s all staged, can he prove that without a shadow of a doubt? Does he have tangible proof it didn’t happen, or is he just rehashing others’ suspicions? In a court of law, one would need solid data, not just circumstantial evidence. Were there witnesses?” Abu-Fadil said, casting doubt on the Aljazeera writer who posted the report.

Confirming  alternative media-analysis , British forensic experts have concluded that the ISIS beheading video involving James Foley was in all likelihood staged using “camera trickery and slick post-production techniques.”

An international forensic science company which does work for police forces across Britain found that, “James Foley’s execution may have been staged, with the actual murder taking place off-camera,” reports the Telegraph.

The experts noted that despite Foley’s executioner appearing to draw a knife across the neck area at least six times, no blood is seen. The video itself does not show the actual beheading, merely a still image which purports to show Foley’s decapitated head resting on his body.

“Aymenn al-Tamimi, a fellow at the Middle East Forum think-tank, remarked that ISIS has greatly improved their video production over the last few years,” reports the Inquisitr. “Techniques to fake a beheading would not be difficult for them to manage, and the video doesn’t exactly leave their failures on the hidden: Despite six slashing motion to James’ neck, no blood can be seen in the video; Foley’s reaction seems to be very disconnected with what is actually occurring, the analysts said.”

This point was also covered in our analysis which emphasized how calm and collected Foley appeared to be as he read out his statement, a demeanor completely contradictory to the notion that he was about to be brutally executed.

The experts also concluded that a blip in the footage suggests Foley misread one of his lines from the script and had to re-film the sequence.

The obvious question that arises out of this is why ISIS militants, who have quickly developed a global reputation for their barbarity and carelessness for human life, would not simply have beheaded Foley on camera without the need to stage the event.

The only logical conclusion, whether Foley was later killed or not, is that the video was not produced or released by actual ISIS militants but by western intelligence agencies to be used as a casus belli to expand military expansion in the middle east.

For years US alternative media has exhausetively documented  how so-called Al-Qaeda, Bin Laden and other terrorist propaganda videos were in fact produced by companies working on behalf of the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency.

It has also emerged that the identity of the individual seen staging the murder, one Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, is a former rapper from a wealthy family who left London to fight in Syria. Bary fits the profile of an informant for British security services.

The beheading video has been used as a poster child to push for a renewed U.S. military strike on Syria, a prospect that was derailed last year after it emerged that a supposed chemical weapon attack which was blamed on the Assad government had in all likelihood been carried out by western-backed rebels.

U.S. officials have cited the “new context” for confronting ISIS that was spurred by the release of the Foley beheading video, with Washington signaling its intention on Saturday to prepare a new military assault on Syria.

In our analysis, we pointed out several other factors that clearly suggested the James Foley video was not what it purported to be, including the absence of other militants who normally appear in beheading videos, the lack of references to the Koran and no chants of “Allahu Akbar” as the execution is taking place.

Watch our original analysis of the Foley beheading video below. Note the video does not contain any footage of the staged beheading, which wasn’t actually shown in the original footage anyway. Despite this, YouTube partially censored the video by labeling it “offensive” and blocking access to non-You Tube account holders.