THREE weeks ago in these pages, I reported that I had seen a video recording of a friend and colleague, Atwar Bahjat, one of Iraq’s top female journalists, having her throat cut and then being decapitated.

I was mistaken. It was a hoax, and I apologise to her family for the pain I have caused them and to the many readers who were distressed by what I wrote.

The video was not of Atwar but of a Nepalese male hostage decapitated two years ago. How could I have got it wrong? Atwar became a television journalist after Saddam Hussein’s downfall. She was well known across the Arab world for her fearless broadcasting. I first met her in the southern city of Najaf in August 2004. We were the only two Arab women journalists there and we struck up a friendship, meeting regularly on my visits to Iraq.

On Wednesday, February 22, she drove to her native city, Samarra, after the bombing of its Shi’ite shrine. After her third live broadcast from just outside the city, gunmen seized her and she was killed.

Reports at the time said she had been shot. But rumours soon surfaced that she had been decapitated. Although these rumours were quashed, I was not surprised early this month when I heard that a source linked to the Sunni insurgency in Baghdad was sending me a video of her beheading filmed with a mobile phone.

I set my personal feelings aside and, for several hours, examined the horrifying footage repeatedly with my husband, a photographer hugely experienced in Iraq and in the forensic examination of videos.

I watched in dismay and anger. The victim, who was half naked, appeared to have breasts. Bandages half covered the face, but each of the visible features was checked against still photographs of Atwar. And it looked like her in close-up after the beheading.

We looked at her last broadcast, the position of the sun, the backdrop, the clothes, the length and direction of the shadows to compare them with the video. All seemed consistent. A colleague in Baghdad, who had known Atwar well, also spent hours poring over the frames in the video and agreed it was her.

We showed the film to a close friend of hers. He broke down in tears, saying emphatically it was Atwar. We called in a relative who burst into sobs at what he insisted was Atwar’s face. In between floods of tears, he told us it was her nose, her mouth and her voice on the tape, crying out as her throat was cut.

The following day, however, he told us that, while the film showed her features, it could not be her as she had not been beheaded. He suggested her features had been superimposed.

We began to examine the detail again, frame by frame, for breaks to indicate it had been tampered with. There was none.

Convinced that the film had not been doctored, I put down the relative’s reaction to fear. I decided to rely on my own judgment and that of the three other people who had confirmed it was Atwar.

I believed the story needed to be told, both for her sake and as an illustration of what is taking place in Iraq.

After the publication of my story on May 7, I called Atwar’s sister and told her what I had written and why. She said Atwar had not been beheaded but did not say how she knew. Our conversation was not acrimonious — she invited me to lunch — and I put down her denial to ignorance of the facts. Her relative had told me Atwar’s immediate family members had been shielded from the full horror of what had happened.

Various sources challenged my story but I remained convinced by the evidence of the video. Last week, however, Sarah Curnow, a journalist with Australia’s Media Watch, provided a link to an insurgent website showing the beheading of the Nepalese. It is clearly the same killing. Although the victim appears to have breasts, this could be due to the bad quality of the video.

It may seem the simplest of hoaxes, but in an Iraq polarised between factions vying to blame each other it has become more and more difficult to corroborate information.

Although the video came from a group that had been reliable in the past, the insurgent who sent it was new to me.

For the past three weeks I have had nightmares over Atwar’s death. It is a relief to know she was not beheaded — although she was still killed most cruelly — but I am appalled by my mistake. I am deeply sorry, and I apologise again to our readers who were shocked by my story.

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