When a renowned British aid worker was kidnapped in Iraq, the world was horrified. Herbody was never recovered, but her execution was captured on video and sent to Al Jazeera,the Arab satellite channel. Robert Fisk watched it and reveals why it has never been broadcast
".....It was Margaret who took leukaemia medicines donated by readers of The Independent to the child cancer victims of Iraq back in 1998 after we discovered that hundreds of infants were dying in those areas where Western forces used depleted uranium munitions in the 1991 Gulf War. She was a proverbial tower of strength, and it was she – and she alone – who managed to persuade Saddam Hussein's bureaucrats to let us bring the medicine into Iraq. The United Nations sanctions authorities had been our first hurdle, Saddam Hussein our second. It is all history. Like Margaret, all the children died......
So who did murder Margaret Hassan? On the video of her apparent execution, there are no Islamic banners, no Muslim chants, no claim of responsibility, just the killer and the fatal shot. After her kidnap, Margaret – who once worked as an English-language newsreader on Saddam's government television station in Baghdad – even found support among the anti-American insurgents; they issued a joint appeal for her release. Even Abu Musab Zarqawi, the al-Qa'ida leader in Iraq who was later killed by the Americans, joined in the appeal. Margaret had worked in Palestinian camps in the 1960s and fought tirelessly for those thousands of Iraqis under her care in Iraq. If her husband's suspicions were correct, then whose "foreign" hand took her away?
The tape leaves no clue. In Al Jazeera's archives, it is difficult to escape this repository of death. The Americans fired a cruise missile at Al Jazeera's Kabul office in 2001 after it had forwarded Osama bin Laden's tapes to Doha. Then an American aircraft fired a missile at the station's Baghdad office in 2003. That time, the Americans killed the bureau chief, Tareq Ayoub. His jacket and his last notes are today on the wall of Al Jazeera's Doha head office. His staff had – for their own protection – earlier given the map coordinates of their Baghdad office to the US State Department. Reporters asked Tony Blair – on a post-prime-ministerial tour of the Doha offices – if Bush had really planned to bomb them. "Blair said something about 'the need to move on'" one of them told me. "So we knew it was true."......
One suggested that 11 years of UN-imposed sanctions had somehow changed the mentality of Iraqis. And I do recall, back in 1998 – when Saddam still ruled Baghdad – an NGO official tried to explain to me what was happening to Iraqis. The Americans and British "want us to rebel against Saddam," the official said. "They think we will be so broken, so shattered by this suffering that we will do anything – even give our own lives – to get rid of Saddam. The uprising against the Baath party failed in 1991 so now they are using cruder methods. But they are wrong. These people have been reduced to penury. They live in shit. And when you have no money and no food, you don't worry about democracy or who your leaders are."
That official was Margaret Hassan. "
".....It was Margaret who took leukaemia medicines donated by readers of The Independent to the child cancer victims of Iraq back in 1998 after we discovered that hundreds of infants were dying in those areas where Western forces used depleted uranium munitions in the 1991 Gulf War. She was a proverbial tower of strength, and it was she – and she alone – who managed to persuade Saddam Hussein's bureaucrats to let us bring the medicine into Iraq. The United Nations sanctions authorities had been our first hurdle, Saddam Hussein our second. It is all history. Like Margaret, all the children died......
So who did murder Margaret Hassan? On the video of her apparent execution, there are no Islamic banners, no Muslim chants, no claim of responsibility, just the killer and the fatal shot. After her kidnap, Margaret – who once worked as an English-language newsreader on Saddam's government television station in Baghdad – even found support among the anti-American insurgents; they issued a joint appeal for her release. Even Abu Musab Zarqawi, the al-Qa'ida leader in Iraq who was later killed by the Americans, joined in the appeal. Margaret had worked in Palestinian camps in the 1960s and fought tirelessly for those thousands of Iraqis under her care in Iraq. If her husband's suspicions were correct, then whose "foreign" hand took her away?
The tape leaves no clue. In Al Jazeera's archives, it is difficult to escape this repository of death. The Americans fired a cruise missile at Al Jazeera's Kabul office in 2001 after it had forwarded Osama bin Laden's tapes to Doha. Then an American aircraft fired a missile at the station's Baghdad office in 2003. That time, the Americans killed the bureau chief, Tareq Ayoub. His jacket and his last notes are today on the wall of Al Jazeera's Doha head office. His staff had – for their own protection – earlier given the map coordinates of their Baghdad office to the US State Department. Reporters asked Tony Blair – on a post-prime-ministerial tour of the Doha offices – if Bush had really planned to bomb them. "Blair said something about 'the need to move on'" one of them told me. "So we knew it was true."......
One suggested that 11 years of UN-imposed sanctions had somehow changed the mentality of Iraqis. And I do recall, back in 1998 – when Saddam still ruled Baghdad – an NGO official tried to explain to me what was happening to Iraqis. The Americans and British "want us to rebel against Saddam," the official said. "They think we will be so broken, so shattered by this suffering that we will do anything – even give our own lives – to get rid of Saddam. The uprising against the Baath party failed in 1991 so now they are using cruder methods. But they are wrong. These people have been reduced to penury. They live in shit. And when you have no money and no food, you don't worry about democracy or who your leaders are."
That official was Margaret Hassan. "
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