Posted on 11/16/2004 2:49:06 PM PST by saquin
IT WAS ten days ago that rumours began circulating in Baghdad that Margaret Hassan had been murdered, but it was not until last Thursday that a video of her murder was given to the Arab satellite station al-Jazeera.
The station decided not to broadcast the film. Instead it contacted British diplomats who sent a specialist team to the network’s headquarters in Qatar.
At first the experts could not be sure it was Mrs Hassan who could be seen blindfolded and kneeling on the floor before being shot with a pistol at point blank range.
One official who has seen the tape said: “Mrs Hassan appears to know she was about to die.” She was not allowed to say anything before she was shot in the head with a single bullet fired by a masked man.
Only when the diplomats were sure of the tape’s authenticity did they tell her husband, Tahsin Ali Hassan, that the 59-year-old aid worker was dead.
Last night Mr Hassan made one final, anguished appeal to her captors to return her body so he can bury her.
Nobody yet knows which group kidnapped her, and where it held her, but there was speculation last night that the American and Iraqi operation to crush the insurgency in Fallujah might have preciptated her death. “We feared for Margaret when we had reports a week ago that she was being held in the area around Fallujah,” said a western diplomat involved in the efforts to free her.
Until yesterday her family and colleagues from CARE International, the charity for which she worked, had clung to the knowledge that none of the eight foreign women hostages taken in Iraq had been harmed.
That belief was shaken on Sunday night when US Marines in Fallujah found the remains of what they believe was a Polish woman hostage. Her body had been dismembered and disembowelled. Mrs Hassan’s family were assured it was not her, but what they did not know was that she too had been killed.
“It is impossible to say if the US-led attack on Fallujah was the reason for her murder, because her executioners make no speeches, nor give any reasons for killing her,” said the diplomat.
“Whether they were trying to escape the fighting and decided to get rid of their hostage or this was their wicked vengeance we may never know.”
In the first hours after Mrs Hassan was snatched from her car as she drove to her Baghdad office on October 19, colleagues were convinced she would be released once her captors realised who she was.
She was different from the other foreign hostages. She was a Muslim woman who described herself as an Iraqi. Although she had British, Irish and Iraqi citizenship she had lived in Baghdad for more than 30 years with her husband and was working for an aid agency which had a proven record of helping Iraqi families.
Shortly after her capture, more than 200 Iraqis, many of them in wheelchairs, gathered outside CARE’s office carrying pictures of Mrs Hassan and giving their own emotive accounts of how she had helped them. Behind the scenes influential figures swiftly offered to act as intermediaries. Senior clerics and tribal sheikhs made their revulsion plain as they used local contacts to try to reach her captors. Diplomats in Baghdad and the Foreign Office agreed they should say as little as possible in public.
A Scotland Yard team was sent to Baghdad while British diplomats stayed in close touch with her husband and her family in Britain and Ireland — her brothers and sisters, Michael, Dierdre, Geraldine and Kathryn Fitzsimons, pleading with them not to say anything provocative. Go-betweens made it clear they were willing to pay.
Within hours of her capture a video was released of Mrs Hassan with her hands bound behind her back. She said nothing. CARE’S response was to halt all its operations and send its staff home while her husband made the first of his dignified appeals. Colleagues stressed how she had condemned the UN sanctions regime and the US government.
On October 22 a second video showed her weeping and pleading for her life. On October 27, she is seen on film pleading for British troops to be withdrawn and for aid workers to leave. Within hours CARE said it had pulled out of Iraq.
Her sisters broke their silence after her captors threatened to hand her over to the notorious Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who has never freed a hostage. Then al-Zarqawi made an unprecedented call for her to be freed which raised the hopes of her family and friends.
Their optimism was finally extinguished by the three-minute video of her murder.
"but there was speculation last night that the American and Iraqi operation to crush the insurgency in Fallujah might have preciptated her death"
The TERRORISTS preciptated her death!! Come on, MSM. Give it a rest. That's like blaming the cops when some bozo rapes some teenager. "Oh, it was because the police were trying to stop him from raping. He was mad! oh woe is us. If only the cops had stopped chasing him all would be well!!! He never would have raped those last 756 women..."
/rant over
*leaves to go find a nice bottle of bourbon and watch mighty mouse cartoons for the rest of the day*
What kind of animal harms an innocent woman?<--Muslims
Again the US is to blame. /sarcasm
You think the alphabets will show this tape???
It is a horrid, insane, ancient hatred for what is good.
I've even seen it up close more than a couple of times from Americans who acted like rabid dogs when talking about America or anyone good. They actually almost foam at the mouth, spit when they talk, and the look of madness is in their eyes.
I ,personally, have only seen it from one Arab that I knew, surnamed Jibreen in Riyadh.
Oh Yeah they will be all over it. Right! Expect replay after replay of the Marine shooting the terrorist.
Notice that CARE had even left Iraq! And they killed her anyway. It just shows that they don't really want any of their demands. They just like killing innocent people, including MUSLIM WOMEN. So there, do we understand that yet?
Thing is, we don't even have to screw the Geneva Convention. In order to have the provisions of that agreement apply, you have to do certain things as a soldier of an army. The terrorists neglect this duty, and therefore can find no refuge in it.
These Mad Mo Murdering Muslims are not people we should give quarter. Every last one of them should be hunted and killed like the pigs they are.
The terrorists have to kill all the moderates, including people trying to help the Iraqis, strange as that seems. That will polarize the population and leave only people who hate the US or people who love the US. Then the US lovers will be the only targets and the US retribution following attacks on the US lovers will harden the resolve of the US haters.
This was the successful strategy used by the Algerians to drive the French out of Algiers in the 50s.
I am slightly annoyed with people who act VERY shocked by this. Who did you THINK we've been fighting all this time? How is this ONE BIT worse than slicing a flight attendant's throat and then flying a plane full of people into a crowded building?
If some people are finally woken up by this- CONGRADULATIONS. Welcome to 3 years ago.
Despicable. If you try to be humane to these scum, they slaughter you, but if a Marine shoots a terrorist, our side looks to see if he should be charged with homicide.
but there is no way, NO WAY a truly religious person can saw off the head of an innocent victim, plan the murder of thousands and think that the reward will be such a carnal "pleasure" as having relations with 72 virgins.
and all you have to do is watch and listen to one of these people spit the word JEW and you can sense that something is terribly terribly wrong....i have seen the IT peeping out of the eyes on only a few occasions.
it was enough to make the hair on the back of my neck literally stand up.
This snip proves your point and yet the progressive's will still say it is Bush's fault!
It damned sure is possible, and the answer is no. The reason for her murder was animals inculcated with Islam.
Evil is not a sickness.
Bullsh*t!
We have physical proof that she dead and rotting and gone for all eternity.
You have only "faith" that miraculously she is "in a better place".
Prove to me that she's in a better place.
Religion is truly the opiate of the masses. You prove that.
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