IN A small, bare house to the west of Baghdad, a highly educated Arab fighter armed with an unusual combination of computer skills and European languages was packing spoils of war into cardboard boxes last week as his resistance cell prepared to take its battle into the Iraqi capital.

He removed aerial photographs from the walls, saying he had obtained them by hacking into a US military database in Iraq, and stacked laptops that had been brought to him from the vehicles of dead Americans to be checked for intelligence.

Then he flicked nonchalantly through the documents of Fabrizio Quattrocchi, a 36-year-old Italian hostage who was forced to kneel, handcuffed and blindfolded, in front of a grave before being shot in the forehead at point blank range.

“Would you like to know what happened to him?” the Sunni militant asked with a polite smile. “I filmed him as he was executed.”

The smile vanished as the fighter, who gave his name as Abu Yussuf, began his story of mayhem and murder with the latest twist, an act of treachery by a member of the group that killed Quattrocchi.

The “traitor” had vanished with $200,000 (about £110,000) he had made on the quiet by “selling” the body to the Italians, Abu Yussuf said. “He will be found and dealt with,” he added.

It was in a telephone call before dawn that I was summoned by Abu Yussuf. I knew little about him except that he was in a cell that had kidnapped Quattrocchi and three other Italian hostages in April.

The risks were obvious. Three foreigners have been beheaded by militants in recent weeks. I watched a video showing the decapitation of the first, the young American entrepreneur Nick Berg, and the images have haunted my dreams.

Kim Sun-Il, a South Korean translator, was also filmed begging pitifully for his life before he was murdered last week.

In between came the killing of Hussein Olayyan, who worked for a telecoms company. Like me, he was Lebanese, an Arab and a Muslim.

My origins were no guarantee of safety. Only my trust in an intermediary who promised that no harm would come to me while I was under his protection persuaded me to proceed.

Modestly dressed with a scarf over my head, I drove to the rendezvous, anxious that I did not know whether I was meeting a follower of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — the brutal leader of a group linked to Al-Qaeda — or a member of the Iraqi resistance.

It was a relief to discover that Abu Yussuf fell into the second category. When the intermediary had introduced us and niceties had been exchanged over several small cups of strong, sweet tea, the reason why the meeting had been granted became clear.

Explore World News

• World Agenda

• Iraq News

• US & Americas News

• Europe News

• Middle East News

• Afghanistan News

• Asia News

• Africa News

• Ireland News

Times Recommends

• Times Charity Appeal: SolarAid
• Is it Black Monday all over again for Dubai?
• Behind the scenes at the biggest deal