Photos Prove Death of French Hostage, Islamic Jihad Says
A radical Shia Muslim group released photographs Monday purporting to show the body of French hostage Michel Seurat, with a statement saying the pictures proved the terrorists’ claim to have killed him last week.
Islamic Jihad (Islamic Holy War) left three pictures at a Western news agency in Beirut.
One picture showed what appeared to be a body in a coffin, wrapped in a blanket. Another picture showed a closed coffin with a crucifix on the lid.
In the third photograph, the only one to clearly show a human body, the chest and face of a man they said was Seurat was pictured. The man lay bare-chested with his eyes half closed, but there was no evidence of wounds or blood in the photo, and no way to confirm that the man was dead. Friends of Seurat confirmed that the man in the photo was the 37-year-old Frenchman.
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