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'They killed with apparent impunity, effortlessly dodging capture by the world’s deadliest special forces. Nothing, it seemed, could stop Al Qaeda’s two top Iraqi terrorists as they orchestrated a campaign of high-profile kidnappings, car bombings and executions in Baghdad and beyond. At the height of their reign, one of them, Maher Ahmed Mahmoud az-Zubeidi, better known by his alias Abu Rami, was believed to have been responsible for the murders of 200 people each month. Yet perhaps even more ferocious was his charismatic co-leader, Abu Uthman, whose exploits in two battles in Fallujah earned him the nickname Abu Nimr –...

Jill Carroll's captors appear to be involved in some of the most high-profile kidnappings of Westerners in Iraq during the past two years. A Monitor investigation - including interviews with other kidnap victims, US, Iraqi, and Italian investigators, as well as court testimony in Iraq - ties her abductors, or others close to them, to at least five kidnapping incidents, including Ms. Carroll: [...] The strongest evidence suggests that the same group that took Carroll also abducted Ms. Sgrena, the Italian journalist. In early March, Abu Rasha, the leader of one of the three cells handling Carroll's kidnapping, went into...

Iraq's ministry of justice has told the BBC that six of the eight women being held by coalition forces in Iraq have been released early. The six were freed because there was insufficient evidence to charge them, a justice ministry spokesman said. The US forces have refused to confirm the releases, but say they would not be based on any operational activities. The group holding US journalist Jill Carroll has said she will die unless all Iraqi women prisoners are freed. The status of prisoners held by coalition forces is reviewed twice a week by a committee made up of...

US and Iraqi forces raided a suspected insurgent hide-out near Baghdad and arrested several people believed linked to the killing of British aid worker Margaret Hassan. Iraqi police say the raids happened near the town of Madaen, about 40 kilometres south-east of Baghdad. They say 11 people have been detained, including five of who have admitted complicity in the murder of Ms Hassan. Ms Hassan, a British national who was head of CARE International in Iraq, was kidnapped last October. She was killed about a month later after appealing in video messages made by her abductors for British forces to...

  Margaret Hassan's killers seized in IraqBy Lutfi Abu Oun BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. and Iraqi forces raided homes on the outskirts of Baghdad on Sunday and detained several men believed to be linked to the death of British aid worker Margaret Hassan, who was kidnapped and killed late last year. Iraqi police said the morning raids happened not far from Madaen, a town just south of Baghdad where insurgents have been active in recent weeks. They said 11 people were seized, at least five of whom had admitted complicity in Hassan's murder. The arrests, which may mark a small breakthrough...

LONDON -- Dental records have shown that a mutilated body found in Iraq is not that of kidnapped aid worker Margaret Hassan, but British officials say they still believe the British-Irish citizen is dead. The Foreign Office said dental tests were conducted in the United States on a body found in Fallujah by U.S. Marines, who believed it was that of a Western woman. The tests showed the body wasn't Hassan's, a Foreign Office spokesman said. He said he believed the tests had been unable to establish the body's identity. The belief that Hassan was killed was based on a...

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...

'I want my wife, dead or alive' 23/11/2004 22:10 - (SA) Baghdad - British aid worker Margaret Hassan's Iraqi husband said in a front-page message carried by a Baghdad newspaper on Tuesday that he wanted her back "dead or alive", a week after an Arab TV network received footage apparently showing his missing wife being murdered. "I want my wife, dead or alive. If she is dead, I urge you to tell me where she is so that I can lay her to rest," said the appeal by Tahsin Hassan printed in the Al-Mashreq daily. "I beg those who took...

Theo van Gogh and Margaret Hassan were murdered within days of each other -- indeed, since we don't know the exact date of Hassan's murder, they might both have perished on the same day. They were more than a thousand miles apart when they died: Van Gogh was murdered in Holland, Hassan in Iraq. And they were very different people. Van Gogh was a Dutch pornographer who sought to outrage respectable Holland and people of faith; Hassan was an aid worker inspired by faith who spent her life helping the poor. Above all, they had very different attitudes about Islam....

EVERY room in Tahseen Hassan’s Baghdad home is dominated by the simple but tasteful touch of his wife Margaret. This was where she always felt happy and relaxed. Last week the house was quiet as he tried to come to terms with the news that, after being held hostage for more than three weeks, she had been murdered. “That was her chair,” he said, pointing to the empty cottage armchair in the living room, her books by the side table and her reading glasses where she left them the night before she was abducted. “The house feels cold and empty....

Hassan was everything MP will never be THE WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Saturday, November 20th, 2004 - CHARLES ADLER DARN it! I missed another episode of This Hour Has 22 Minutes. It was the morning after the airing of the program when I saw the picture of that leather boot applied to the torso of the Bush effigy. I assumed it was a picture from Fallujah or some other city where fundamentalists fantasize about murdering the American president. But after a few swigs of coffee, I began seeing the fine print in the newspaper beside the picture and realized that this...

Such a stance ignores a central fact about the War on Terror that simply cannot be repeated too many times: the terrorists are not fighting to preserve a way of life--they are fighting to impose a way of life on everyone else. Ask the women in Afghanistan who voted for the first time in the history of that country--who risked life and limb to do so and would not be intimidated by the remnants of the Taliban who warned them with bombs not to go near the polling places--if they agree that the terrorists are simply preserving a sacred way...

Islamic terrorists executed 59 year-old Margaret Hassan who had lived in Iraq for thirty years, married an Iraqi and become a citizen herself, and who had devoted her entire life to helping the Iraqi people. For weeks the terrorists tormented this woman physically and psychologically before putting a bullet through her blindfolded head.

All true Muslims were saddened and angered on Tuesday after they heard the unconfirmed news reports saying that Margaret Hassan had been killed in Iraq. Many reacted by saying, “This is not Islam.” Mrs. Hassan, who was the director of the Baghdad office of the relief organization Care International, was kidnapped on October 19 in Baghdad. She was born in Ireland, but moved to Iraq over 30 years ago after marrying an Iraqi citizen. No group has claimed responsibility for the act and the killers never accused her of any crime. Resistance to occupation is legitimate and acceptable according to...

And the latest it would appear is Margaret Hassan, the longtime director of CARE in Iraq. Kidnapped by terrorists October 19, made to beg in videos issued by her captors, and now, according to Al-Jazeera, shown being shot in the head by these same -- well, what should we call them? The media is gradually weaning itself away from describing these wanton acts of cowardice as "executions," discovering belatedly the connotation of legitimacy attached to the word, and now more apt to call them murders. But even "murder" fails to describe the act of slaying a civilian captive, a hostage....

THE mutilated corpse of a Western woman found by US Marines in Fallujah is being DNA tested to see if it is the remains of the murdered aid worker Margaret Hassan, The Times has learnt. The disembowelled body, with hands and lower legs cut off, was found near the bridge over the Euphrates River in west Fallujah on Sunday, wrapped in a white, brown and red striped blanket and a blue robe. The Marines who found it said it was a Western woman. First reports indicated that the victim had been blonde, but photographs seen by The Times yesterday showed...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqis reacted with anger and disbelief Wednesday to news that British-Iraqi aid worker Margaret Hassan, who worked in Iraq (news - web sites) for decades before being kidnapped a month ago, had been killed by her captors. Irish-born Hassan, 59, moved to Iraq more than 30 years ago after marrying an Iraqi engineer. She learned Arabic and became a pillar of support in local communities, often helping the needy in the face of opposition during Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s regime. Those who knew her, worked with her or were helped by her described Hassan as...

ISLAMIC TERRORISTS KILL INNOCENT WOMAN A video has surfaced showing the cold-blooded killing of Margaret Hassan, the woman who headed a humanitarian organization called CARE International. She lived in Iraq for 30 years and dedicated herself to helping Iraqis. The thanks for her tireless efforts came in the form of a bullet to the head. The video shows her blindfolded and wearing an orange jumpsuit. Yet, just as always, the terrorist-appeasing media refuses to acknowledge the following irrefutable facts: Margaret Hassan was executed at point-blank range by terrorists. These terrorists were Muslims, and thus can be accurately described as Islamic...

FALLUJAH, Iraq - On a dusty field outside Fallujah, where wounded American soldiers were rushed off the battlefield, a young Sudanese man lay bleeding and trying to talk his way out of trouble. Mohammed Khalid had a small spot in his left shoulder where an American bullet had entered and a large gaping hole on his biceps where it had exited. The identification number "14-5" was written on his chest in black marker. Khalid, a gaunt 19-year-old with a scraggly beard, screamed as a doctor dressed his wounds. "I came here for the work," he said. "I know nothing about...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Margaret Hassan, the British aid worker kidnapped after decades of helping Iraqis, is believed to have been murdered by her captors, a British government official said Tuesday, based on a video that showed a hooded militant shooting a blindfolded woman in the head. No other female hostage is known to have been killed in the wave of kidnappings that have beset Iraq (news - web sites). More than 170 foreigners have been abducted this year, and at least 34 killed. One woman — a Polish-Iraqi citizen — remains captive. Hassan's family in London said the longtime director...