Benjamin Vanderford, a 22-year-old San Francisco man formerly believed to have been beheaded in Iraq, is alive and well and has acknowledged that he faked his own execution, the FBI said Saturday.
"He was interviewed by the FBI at his home this morning and he acknowledged that his own beheading was a hoax," San Francisco FBI special agent LaRae Quy said.
"He was not arrested. The matter is still under investigation by the FBI," she said.
Prosecution
"We're still collecting all the facts and information regarding the incident and we are pursuing any and all legal avenues of prosecution in the matter.
"We're working with our US Attorney's office, as well as local law enforcement, trying to find the appropriate avenue of prosecution, if any," Quy said.
"We are trying to determine what laws may have been broken by such an act," Quy said.
Al-Arabiya television in Dubai, showing excerpts from the video, reported Saturday that a US hostage had been killed "at the hands" of al-Qaeda's alleged chief in Iraq, Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi.
In the video, Vanderford, wearing a white T-shirt, sitting on a white plastic chair with his hands tied behind his back, called for the "immediate" departure of US forces from Iraq, warning that foreign troops would face death otherwise, the station said.
Vanderford, who had previously been identified in other news reports as Benjamin Ford or Benjamin Danforth, was shown speaking to the camera, but the television station aired the video without sound.
Fake Blood
The network did not air parts of the video that appeared to show Vanderford being beheaded.
Vanderford told KCBS television in San Francisco that he videotaped the mock execution at the home of a friend months ago using fake blood.
He said he circulated the video on the Internet hoping to draw attention to a campaign he was running for city supervisor.
When the campaign fizzled, he decided that the video could continue to serve as a kind of social commentary.
`Good Experiment'
"It was a really good experiment," he told KCBS.
"It tested out the theories of how could the media use the Internet without checking," he said.
In recent months, al-Qaeda operatives have released several videos showing the decapitation of hostages in Iraq.
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