Mystery remains over who killed Margaret Hassan

Mystery remains over who killed Margaret Hassan

 

Other Breaking News The people on the streets of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, are filled with revulsion at the apparent murder of the aid worker Margaret Hassan. Local television stations and Arabic satellite channels began broadcasting the news on Tuesday night. Iraqis condemned the brutal killing, describing it as a crime against humanity."She devoted her life to serve the Iraqi people and help them in difficult times," said Ali Najem a resident of central Baghdad. He said: "We considered her to be an Iraqi citizen. The criminals who did this want to spoil the image of Iraq and spoil the efforts now under way to hold elections." Dr Kaydar Al-Chalabi, the director of a Baghdad hospital which specialises in spinal injuriesspent the past 15 months working with Mrs Hassan who, through her aid agency Care International, rebuilt his hospital which was looted after the war and then badly damaged in a bombing. He says: "If Margaret Hassan is dead, it really is a great loss not just for her family but for the whole of Iraq. What she offered to Iraq was beyond imagination, she really felt the suffering of the people. "She was not just director of Care International, she ran everywhere she was needed - whether it was a patient, a child, a hospital, or a water purification project, she was the first there with her staff," he added. READ HERE FOR MORE

Questions are asked:

1. If the Iraqi Mujahadeens claimed they are not responsible for the murder of Margaret Hassan, then who seek to gain for her murder?

2. Are there interested parties who killed Margaret Hassan with the intention of putting the blame on the kidnappers fighting against the Coalition Forces?

3. Was Margaret Hassan made a pawn in the international politics of the Iraq War by foreign powers with vested interest in Iraq?

4. Was it meant to stage the following scenario:

(a) The kidnappers were the same groups who had executed earlier victims to support their demands of withdrawal of the Coalition Forces.

(b)The murder was stage by other parties to further enrage Western countries against the Muslim insurgents thus deepening the turmoil in Iraq?

(c) As claimed by some, the kidnapping and murder were conducted by "rogue groups" or criminals.

The killing of Margaret Hassan had followed a different path as that taken for the execution of the other kidnapped victims.

For the Iraqi Mujahadeen fighting to remove the Coalition Forces, the killing of Margaret Hassan particularly, serves no purpose and in fact, it will be against their own advantage. Mrs Hassan had Iraqi nationality, spoke fluent Arabic and well-respected in the Iraqi community for charity work.

It is most UNLIKELY the kidnappers are those involved in the execution of the earlier victims.

Tawhid and Jihad, the groups which has produced several videos of gruesome murders including that of Ken Bigley, the British contractor, had promised to release Mrs Hassan if she was handed over to them.

Canon Andrew White, of Coventry Cathedral and the international director of the Iraqi Institute of Peace, involved in negotiations to obtain Mrs Hassan's release said that "rogue terrorist groups" had begun to emerge and that her kidnappers were "very likely criminal".

Are these "criminals", simply foreign agents disguised as local criminals, sought to destabilise the political situation and social fabric of Iraq?

Conspiracy theory? Nevertheless, the questions still need to be addressed if justice is to be served for the gruesome murder of Margaret Hassan, if confirmed.

Who and which country or countries in the region stood to gain in the politics of Iraq, for the killing of Margaret Hassan, if confirmed?

Read here article below in The Guardian (UK) "Mystery remains over who killed Margaret Hassan "
by
Rory McCarthy in Baghdad
18 November 2004

Iraqis say they have no clues to group which shot aid worker

Iraqi authorities yesterday admitted they still had no clear idea about who killed the aid worker Margaret Hassan. Investigators are being hindered by the uniqueness of the case, and the complexity of the insurgency.

In previous kidnappings, Iraq's several insurgent groups have been quick to identify themselves and claim responsibility, using videos to make their demands.

From the moment Mrs Hassan was seized her case was different.

Mrs Hassan, who had Iraqi nationality and spoke fluent Arabic, was taken from her car as she drove to work at the Care offices in Baghdad on October 19. Two videos emerged, showing her in an increasingly desperate state pleading for her life and asking for the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq.

At one point her kidnappers described themselves as an "armed Islamic group".

But unlike previous incidents they gave themselves no specific name and used no banners or flags to identify themselves.

Again in the final video showing her apparent death, shot in the head by a masked gunman, there was no insignia to identify a particular group.

Efforts were made to begin negotiations with her kidnappers but to no avail. Information campaigns were started and a poster showing Mrs Hassan holding a sick Iraqi child was put up on billboards across the capital. "Margaret Hassan is truly a daughter of Iraq. She is against the occupation," they read.

Her kidnappers were unmoved. At one point they threatened to hand her over to Tawhid and Jihad, the extreme militant group based in Falluja that is led by a young Iraqi named Omar Hadid and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the wanted Jordanian militant.

But Tawhid and Jihad, which has produced several videos of gruesome murders including that of Ken Bigley, the British contractor, promised to release Mrs Hassan if she was handed over to them.

Her case appears to confirm accounts from figures in the insurgency that the movement is made up of several independent groups with little overall leadership and with frequently different methods and agendas.

It is most likely she was captured by a radical Sunni Islamic group, since they form the core of the violent guerrilla movement that has fought the US occupation.

Among them are several better known groups, including Tawhid and Jihad, which now calls itself al-Qaida in Iraq, as well as the Islamic Army, Ansar al-Sunna, the First Army of Mohammad and the 1920 Revolution Brigades.

But there appear to be other smaller offshoots. For some their agenda appears to be simply to force the US military and all other Westerners from Iraq and to destabilise the Baghdad government into collapse. Most were based in Falluja, at least until the US military operation last week, but have bases elsewhere including Baghdad and the town of Latifiya, south of the capital.

The mutilated body of a woman, apparently a westerner, was found on a street in Falluja last week, though British officials said yesterday they have yet to determine whether it was Mrs Hassan.

Canon Andrew White, of Coventry Cathedral and the international director of the Iraqi Institute of Peace, was involved in negotiations to obtain Mrs Hassan's release. He said that "rogue terrorist groups" had begun to emerge and that her kidnappers were "very likely criminal".

"One of the worrying things about the development of the whole kidnapping scenario is that we are no longer dealing with the established groups where at least we understood something of their methodology. Now kidnapping is the kind of thing taken up by any kind of rogue terrorist group," he told the Guardian last night from Dubai. "They don't play by the rules of kidnapping."

He said the situation in Iraq appeared increasingly out of control. "It is very difficult to have any sense of where things are going. I don't think there will be any magical cure to the tragedy at the moment."

He said elections should still be held. "It is really important to push ahead with the plans, otherwise the insurgents will say they have won. They are trying to prevent any sort of order being re-established."

The leadership of the insurgent groups are predominantly Iraqi, though there are other Arab fighters involved at lower levels. Some of their agendas are regarded as too extreme even by mainstream insurgent figures.

  Go to Latest Posting

---

Comments 0

---