Iraq's tireless worker killed in the country she loved

1.00pm - By JUSTIN HUGGLER


When Margaret Hassan was kidnapped in October, her car was waved down by two men in Iraqi police uniforms. Gunmen surrounded the car and dragged Ms Hassan's driver and unarmed guard from their seats. They started to beat the two men with their guns. Stop beating them, Ms Hassan told them. I will come with you.

Jack Straw has described Margaret Hassan's killing as "repugnant" as he confirmed that a videotape appearing to show her execution had been studied by the Government.

The British Foreign Secretary said: "As a result of our analysis we have today had to inform Margaret Hassan's family that, sadly, we now believe that she has probably been murdered, although we cannot conclude this with complete certainty.

"I want to express my deepest sympathy and condolences to Margaret's family. They have been through a month of the most terrible uncertainty and torment. To kidnap and kill anyone is inexcusable. But it is repugnant to commit such a crime against a woman who has spent most of her life working for the good of the people of Iraq."


Margaret Hassan lived in Iraq through the eights years of war with Iran. Through the bombing of Baghdad in the first Gulf War of 1991. Through the 13 years of sanctions that wrecked the country's economy and brought it to its knees. Through the US-led invasion last year and the chaos and lawlessness that followed.

She never fled to the West, as her Irish and British passports would easily have allowed her to do. She stayed in her adopted land to work for the sick, the weak, the destitute and suffering. She campaigned for them. She built hospitals. She brought medicine and clean water.

And when they heard that she had been kidnapped, they came onto the streets of Baghdad in their wheelchairs to demand her release. Children from a school for the deaf came out holding placards demanding the release of "Mama Margaret".

"If it wasn't for her, we would probably have died," Ahmed Jubair, a small boy in a wheelchair said that day.

"She built us a hospital and took care of us. She made us feel happy again."

There can be few greater epitaphs.

* * *

She was born Margaret Fitzsimmons in Dublin. She was very private about her personal life and details remain sketchy and unconfirmed. She was around 60 years old, and had four brothers and sisters. One sister lives in County Kerry, Ireland. Another sister lives in London. Her father is believed to have died a few months ago.

"Our hearts are broken," said a statement from the family last night. "We have kept hoping for as long as we could, but we now have to accept that Margaret has probably gone and at last her suffering has ended."

When she was still a child, the family moved to London. That is why she had both British and Irish passports as well as her Iraqi citizenship, and why there was so much confusion over her nationality.

It may have given Fleet Street a better story to call her British, but it probably did her little good while she being held by the kidnappers. Her colleagues said she considered herself Iraqi, and there can be no stronger evidence than the fact she stayed in the country through so much hardship.

She moved there in 1972. She had met an Iraqi man, Tahseen Ali Hassan, while he was studying in Britain. Again the details are not clear, but according to one report they married when she was 17 and he was 26. At any rate, they went to live in Iraq where Ms Hassan at first worked for the British Council, teaching English. In 1972 Saddam Hussein had not yet seized power, and the tragic future that was in store for Iraq had not yet begun to reveal itself.

According to her friends, Ms Hassan fell in love with the country and its people. She learnt Arabic. She converted to Islam and took Iraqi citizenship. The men who killed her did not kill a foreign infidel. They killed an Iraqi Muslim.

Ms Hassan rose to become assistant director of studies for the British Council, and then director of the Baghdad office, a senior appointment. But after Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990 and the build-up to the first Gulf War began, the office closed. Ms Hassan was out of a job, and facing the worst aerial assault the Middle East had ever seen.

She survived the 1991 war and emerged from it to become a director of the humanitarian organisation Care International. It was the beginning of the apotheosis of Margaret Hassan.

Care International is the biggest humanitarian organisation in the world. In Iraq, it specialises in health, nutrition, water supplies and sanitation. She began to tackle the aftermath of the devastating 42-day bombing campaign, and the consequences of the draconian sanctions imposed on Iraq. Margaret Hassan was born for that hour.

She and her husband never had children, but she took the children of Iraq to her heart. She began to work tirelessly for the children who suffered the consequences of the 1991 war, the destruction of water facilities and the American sue of depleted uranium shells, and from the sanctions that crippled Iraq's medical services as well as its economy.

The quietly spoken English teacher had become a modern heroine. She became one of the most unrelenting campaigners against the sanctions. She did not oppose them because of some political theory spun in the comfort of London or Washington. She opposed them because she lived with their consequences every day, and walked among their victims. She called the child victims of the sanctions Iraq's "lost generation".

In the build-up to the US-led invasion last year, she travelled to New York and London to campaign against a new war that would heap more agony on Iraq. She told the UN Security Council. She told the House of Commons. But to no avail.

"The Iraqi people are already living through a terrible emergency," she said at a House of Commons briefing.

"They do not have the resources to withstand an additional crisis brought about by military action."

As law and order collapsed in the aftermath of the invasion, she decided once more to stay on and continue her work to help the helpless of Iraq. It was a decision that led to the road where her car was flagged down as she was driven to work at Care International.

The full details of her kidnapping and suspected death are not known. It is not even clear exactly who kidnapped her.

There were initial suspicions it may have been the group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian al Qaeda ally -- but her captors later threatened to hand her over to his group. But even the merciless Zarqawi may not have approved of this killing. A message on the internet claiming to be from his group called for her release.

Margaret Hassan's friend Felicity Arbuthnot called her "Iraq's quiet, unassuming, determined best friend". Now men who claim to be fighting for Iraq have killed her. There are many Iraqi children, the crippled and the sick, who may never forgive those men.

- INDEPENDENT

Herald Feature: Iraq