Margarate Hassan - hostage in Iraq

This is as low as it gets. My only hope is that every Iraqi knows what these monsters did.

They know it,surely. Because not only foreign people are abducted , also Iraqis mainly for ransom money. The insurgents kill them in case,too.

Oh, tell us more about that, Thok... if you have time.

I think of Margaret being killed as some kind of mistake, though perhaps a directed one.

Not at present, but anyway there is not much to say: It is rare of course that the medias report this, nevertheless I read in the German news magazine "Der Spiegel" by a reporter that many Iraqis are abducted from their families and killed in case. As said mainly for ransom money.

So this can fit with that...

yaaak, but hard for all of those people too.

From the Iraqi perspective there may be a rough equality here. This entier situation is getting, or perhaps has gotten, out of control and is reducning to the level of a blood feud, something many Iragi's understand.

Shooting in Iraq Mosque Angers Muslims

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - The fatal shooting of a wounded and apparently unarmed man in a Fallujah mosque by a U.S. Marine angered Sunni Muslims in Iraq on Tuesday and raised questions about the protection of insurgents once they are out of action.

CNN

Onslaught doomed Care chief
John Kerin and Trudy Harris
November 18, 2004/the Australian


THE US-led offensive on the Iraqi city of Fallujah could have been the final straw that led to the execution of Care Australia's Baghdad chief, Margaret Hassan.

Ms Hassan's death was made public early yesterday when Arabic TV station Al-Jazeera revealed it had received a video showing a militant firing a pistol into the head of a blindfolded woman wearing an orange jumpsuit.

Ms Hassan's kidnapping on October 19, as she drove to Care's offices in Baghdad, was part of a string of kidnappings by insurgents and Islamists designed to drive out Coalition forces. The unnamed group later released several videos to Al-Jazeera in which Ms Hassan pleaded for the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq and the release of Iraqi women from prison.

Al-Jazeera did not air the latest execution video but the Scotland Yard counter-terrorism squad the British deployed to Iraq was able to identify Ms Hassan by her height and identifiable markings after watching the video.

The director of terrorism studies at the Australian National University, Clive Williams, said yesterday that negotiators in Iraq might have had a chance to secure her release if the US had held off their onslaught in Fallujah.

Yesterday it emerged that Scotland Yard believed there was a genuine chance of securing Mrs Hassan's release when an unnamed group holding her threatened to hand her over to terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has been responsible for grisly beheadings of Westerners in Iraq. Surprisingly, the Jordanian-born terrorist responded with a statement that if Mrs Hassan -- who worked tirelessly to help her fellow Iraqis over 30 years -- was handed over to him he would immediately release her.

Sources close to the British-led investigation believe Mrs Hassan was never handed over to Zarqawi. It is believed she may have fallen victim to a criminal gang interested only in extortion. It is not known at what location she was shot but government sources have not ruled out Fallujah.

Neither Care nor the British Government had offered any money to the terrorist group, which had not identified itself.

It was left to British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to formally announce that he believed the video to be genuine.

"We now believe that (she) has probably been murdered," Mr Straw said yesterday.

Mrs Hassan's Iraqi husband Tahseen made a plea for the return of his wife's body so she could "rest in peace".

Australia's Foreign Minister Alexander Downer yesterday also extended "my deepest sympathies to Margaret's husband Tahseen, her family and friends and Care".

"Margaret dedicated her life to helping the poorest and most disadvantaged people in Iraq and her kidnapping and probable murder are most heinous and inexcusable crimes."

Iraqi Migrants Council Director Kassim Abood said he would try to organise a day of protest and mourning, saying her murder was a "real tragedy".

It is hard to put into words how these acts affect me..part of me is sickened by her murder...and i struggle with anger at these inhuman people...or maybe they are all to human...

"I have seen the enemy..and he is us..."

I wanted to post this photograph of Margaret Hassan because almost the only image we have seen of her in the media has been the distraught, defeated looking woman from the hostages' video. This is what she actually looked like:

Thank you for this picture, msolga..

The other woman,however, who has lived in Iraq for 30 years, Polish Teresa Borcz Khalifa (married with an Iraqi too) released.

It's interesting that Ms. Hassan's body has not turned up. Usually these bodies are dumped in places where they'll be discovered right away. Makes one wonder and hope whether the "execution" might not have been staged. I know that's a very, very slim chance but hope springs eternal.

Well, it really will be interesting, if we ever will get to know the facts, who was/is behind this kidnapping (and execution).
(We don't know neither until now, who really was behind the Toretta and Pari kidnappings.)

Merry. If only.....

Yes, If only ....

Britain: Body Isn't Kidnapped Aid Worker

By JILL LAWLESS
LONDON (AP) - A mutilated body found in Iraq is not that of kidnapped aid worker Margaret Hassan, the British government said Wednesday. But the Foreign Office said it continued to believe Hassan had been murdered, although the evidence was not conclusive.

The Foreign Office said dental tests conducted in the United States showed the body of a woman of Western appearance, found in Fallujah last month by U.S. Marines, was not Hassan.

The Iraq director of the aid group CARE International, Hassan, 59, was abducted on her way to work in Baghdad on Oct. 19. On Nov. 16, the Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera said it had received a video showing the execution of a female hostage identified as Hassan.

British officials who watched the tape said they believed the blindfolded woman shown being shot in the head by a masked gunman was Hassan

Link

Maybe, just maybe ...?

Fallujah body was not Hassan
December 2, 2004 - 7:41AM

Dental records have shown a mutilated body discovered in the besieged Iraqi city of Fallujah was not kidnapped Irish-born CARE Australia worker Margaret Hassan.

The findings cast doubts over the fate of the 59-year-old head of CARE International's work in Iraq, a position funded by CARE Australia, who was kidnapped by insurgents on her way to work on October 19.

No group admitted holding Mrs Hassan and no contact was made with her kidnappers, but a grainy video received by al-Jazeera television in mid-November showed a blindfolded woman in an orange suit being shot.

US marines found the body of a woman in in her fifties with her limbs severed and her throat cut two weeks ago.

Mrs Hassan's husband Tahseen Ali Hassan told British newspaper The Times he did not know if she was dead or alive.

"In my mind she is still alive," Mr Hassan told the newspaper, which reported the findings of the dental tests today, quoting British sources in Baghdad.

"Maybe I'm wrong, but I was with Margaret for 33 years. I cannot believe she has been abducted and killed."

Care Australia confirmed the results were accurate, The Australian newspaper reported.- AAP

a simultaneous posting, Acquiunk !

Msolga, two sources are always better than one.

This doesn't happen all that often, generally I'm the last to know.

But it's good news, I think? If it's not her in that video, where on earth could she be? It's been a very long time .....