corrente

Looks like the Iraqis police held him because the FBI asked him to:

Nicholas Berg, the West Chester businessman decapitated in Iraq last weekend, was questioned repeatedly in Iraq by FBI agents who thought he might have ties to Zacarias Moussaoui, the confessed al-Qaeda member and accused Sept. 11 conspirator, government officials said yesterday.

Not, apparently, in Iraq.

When FBI agents questioned Berg on March 26, while he was detained at an Iraqi police station in Mosul, he was not suspected of being linked with Moussaoui, a senior Justice Department official said.

But during the questioning, Berg volunteered that he had been questioned by the FBI once before in connection with the Moussaoui investigation, after his computer password turned up in Moussaoui's belongings, the official said.

That piqued the FBI agents' interest, and they asked that he be held while they investigated further.

Never volunteer information, eh?

The original Moussaoui link was determined in 2002 to be "a total coincidence," the official said, and FBI agents in Iraq determined that Berg should be released, indicating they also found nothing suspicious.

But the investigation delayed Berg's release long enough that he missed a flight back to the United States on March 30. By the time he returned to Baghdad on April 6, Iraq was in the grip of a bloody insurgency, with U.S. troops fighting throughout the country and foreigners being taken hostage.

Berg's father said in an interview with reporters yesterday that his son had once been questioned by the FBI because of the computer password.

Michael Berg said that when his son was a student at the University of Oklahoma, he took a course on a remote campus and had to take a bus with fellow students to get there.

"Someone asked, basically, to use his computer. And it turned out that this guy was a terrorist, and that he used my son's e-mail, amongst many other people's e-mails."

Berg said the other student "was not a friend of my son's. He was not even an acquaintance, but just a guy sitting next to him on the bus."

The FBI investigated a little over a year ago, Berg said. "Of course, my son cooperated... . This was never an issue. No one knew they were terrorists at the time. They were just students that were also taking the bus."
(via our own Inky)

So. Lack of planning led to the Iraqi looting, including the looted towers. That brought Nick Berg to Iraq. Then, the FBI holds him because he volunteered information. So Nick Berg missed his flight. And so he died.

So I'd like to know more:

1. What's the FBI doing in Iraq, anyhow?

2. How did the FBI get the email and link it to Nick Berg?

3. Can an expert in investigative procedure tell me if it's usual to hold people who volunteer information like Nick Berg did?

4. And I still wonder whether the FBI/CPA/Military intelligence or whatever had Berg followed after they released him. If they were still suspicious, that would the thing to do, eh?

5. Kudos to Dan Senor for parsing! "US forces" didn't have him! The Iraqi Police and the FBI did. Honestly, these guys need a corkscrew when they put on their pants in the morning!