Portait of an innocent victim, Margaret Hassan

 

 

 

Married to an Iraqi, Mrs Hassan had Irish, British and Iraqi nationality. She was born Margaret Fitzsimmons in 1945 in Dublin, Ireland, to parents Peter and Mary Fitzsimmons. However, most of her early life was spent in London, England, where her family moved early on. At the age of seventeen, she married Tahseen Ali Hassan, a twenty-six-year-old Iraqi studying engineering in the United Kingdom. She moved to Iraq with him in 1972, when she began work with the British Council of Baghdad, teaching English. She learned Arabic, converted to Islam, and became an official Iraqi citizen.

 

During the early 1980s Margaret became the assistant director of studies at the British Council. Meanwhile, Tahseen worked as an economist. Margaret remained in Baghdad during the 1991 first Gulf War, although the British Council suspended operations in Iraq, and she was left jobless at the end of it.

 

Margaret Hassan joined CARE in 1991, the aid group having established itself in Iraq during that year. Sanitation, health, and nutrition became major concerns in the sanctioned Iraq. At that time, she became a vocal critic of the United Nations restrictions. In 2003, she was opposed to the United States invasion of Iraq, arguing before it that the Iraqis were already "living through a terrible emergency" an that "they do not have the resources to withstand an additional crisis brought about by military action".

 

Well known in many of Baghdad's slums and other cities, Margaret Hassan was especially interested in Iraq's young people, whom she called "the lost generation". The last CARE project Hassan completed was one for children with spinal injuries.

 

Her friend, the film-maker Felicity Arbuthnot  had once travelled with her to a water sanitation plant in a poor area of Iraq and seen her effect on the local people she was helping. For her, she was so loved and everybody was so open with her.

When she remembers of one of their travel in Iraq, Mrs Arbuthnot explain with emotion that "a crowd gathered and tiny children rushed up and threw their arms round her knees, saying, 'Madam Margaret, Madam Margaret,'  " and that "everywhere she went, people just beamed". Indeed, her presence could draw large crowds of locals.

 

So, her kidnappers did not issue any specific demands. In a video released of her in captivity she pleaded for the withdrawal of British troops. She stated that these might be her last hours and that she did not "want to die like Bigley" in a reference to Kenneth Bigley who was beheaded in Iraq only weeks earlier.

 

CARE International suspended operations in Iraq because of Hassan's kidnapping. Patients of an Iraqi hospital have taken to the streets in protest against the hostage takers' actions. On 25 October, between 100 and 200 Iraqis protested outside CARE's offices in Baghdad, demanding her release. Prominent elements of the Iraqi resistance, such as the Shura Council of Fallujah Mujahedeen, condemned the kidnapping and called for her release.

 

 

The arabic TV channel, Al-Jazeera, reported that the kidnappers threatened to hand her over to the group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who were responsible for the murder of Kenneth Bigley. However, on 6 November, a statement purportedly from al-Zarqawi appeared on an Islamist website calling for the release of Mrs Hassan.

 

On 15 November, U.S. Marines in Fallujah uncovered the body of an unidentified blonde haired woman with her legs and arms cut off and throat slit. The body could not be immediately identified, but was thought unlikely to be Hassan, who had brown hair. There was one other western woman known missing in Iraq at the time the body was discovered, Teresa Borcz Khalifa, 54, Polish-born and also a long-time Iraqi resident. Khalifa was released by her hostage takers on 20 November.

 

On 16 November, CNN reported that CARE had issued a statement indicating that the organization was aware of a videotape allegedly showing Hassan's murder. The British Foreign Office has yet to confirm the tape as genuine. Al-Jazeera reported that it had received a tape allegedly showing Mrs Hassan's murder but was unable to confirm its authenticity. The video shows a woman, referred to as Hassan, being shot with a handgun by a masked man.

 

It is not clear who was responsible for Hassan's abduction and murder, and there have been no claims of responsibility as with previous abductions. But the british journalist Robert Fisk, who knew Hassan, wrote an article in The Independent in which he suggested that the coalition would use Hassan's murder to paint the Iraqi insurgency as inherently evil and murderous, despite the evidence that Hassan's killers were not associated with the insurgents or indeed the terrorists responsible for previous beheadings.

 

The director of the spinal cord clinic she supported in Baghdad, Qayder al-Chalabi, called her loss a huge blow to all Iraqis. "They made a very big mistake", he said on 17 November. "We need to admire and remember her. We must have a ceremony every year to remember her". He believes that a statue should be erected in her honour.

 

Brice Jourdan.