Who Had Custody of Nick Berg, and When?
Michael Berg, Nicholas’s father, insists that for eleven days Nicholas was detained by U.S. forces in Iraq, and the reason Berg lost his life “was the fact that the U.S. government saw fit to keep him in custody for 13 days without any of his due process or civil rights.” According to Berg’s friend, Chilean journalist Hugo Infante, Berg told Infante that “Iraqi police caught [him] one night, they saw [his] passport and [his] Jewish last name and [his] Israeli stamp. This guy thought [he] was a spy so they put [him] with American soldiers and American soldiers put [him] in a jail for two weeks.” U.S. officials deny that Berg was ever held in custody by U.S. forces. However, a U.S. general says that FBI agents were the ones who instructed the Iraq police to detain Berg for two weeks, since he was traveling In Iraq without proper documentation. According to the official story, local police in Mosul arrested Berg on March 24 and released him on April 6, during which period the FBI visited
