Havana paddy ... cigar-loving Galloway
ignored Sun at hideaway yesterday
Posted on 04/22/2003 8:43:48 PM PDT by Pokey78
THE Sun yesterday tracked down traitor MP George Galloway to his £250,000 hideaway in Portugal.
The scandal-hit Saddam supporter was holed up in the hillside bungalow at Burgau as a storm raged over claims he took cash handouts from the tyrant.
But Galloway refused to talk to The Sun — even after we offered him a tempting wad of 50,000 Iraqi dinars.
We rapped on the heavy wooden doors of the luxury bungalow clutching the bundle of notes.
Each one carried the smirking face of Galloway’s good mate, fallen Iraqi tyrant Saddam Hussein.
He’s in a hideaway right now, too. When there was no reply from Galloway — there without Palestinian wife Dr Amineh Abu-Zayyadwe, 35 — we also rapped on the back door.
The 48-year-old Glasgow Kelvin MP, known as the Member for Baghdad Central, was heard shuffling round inside as we persisted for half-an-hour. We even heard a heated telephone call.
But despite the offer of those good old Iraqi dinars, (actually only worth £15 these days because the currency collapsed), Galloway still refused to come to the door and accept a bung.
He bought the villa in the Algarve fishing village of Burgau
three years ago, around the time he is accused of pocketing money from Iraqi oil deals.
It is seven miles from the town of Lagos with breathtaking views of the Atlantic — and a haven for people who want to get away from it all. It took The Sun a full day to find it.
Despite a population of 2,000, nobody in the village seemed to have heard of Galloway.
One local said: “For someone wanting to escape the pressure of life, he couldn’t have chosen a better retreat. Osama Bin Laden could live here and nobody would know about it.”
Chez Galloway is reached by a quarter-mile rock and mud path with a one-in-three gradient. It is passable only by a sturdy 4x4.
And it really is the perfect place to disappear — the white-walled single-storey house cannot even be seen from the road.
When we did finally find the red-tiled, shuttered villa, Galloway’s N-reg Range Rover was parked outside. Nearby was the swimming pool, with inflatable toys bobbing in the water.
Around the pool was a patio and a built-in barbecue. But much of the villa’s worth is in its land, ten acres of unspoiled scrubland speckled with fig trees beyond which rolling fields stretch as far as the eye can see.
As Galloway tried lying low, back in Britain the furore over accusations he was paid at least £375,000-a-year by Saddam continued to grow.
The payments are said to have been mentioned in intelligence documents found by a Daily Telegraph reporter in the ruined Foreign Ministry in Baghdad. Galloway is said to have received the money from Iraq’s oil-for-food programme.
The latest allegations also come on top of fury at his position during the conflict with Iraq. Galloway urged Arab leaders to “rise up” and kill British troops.
Labour Party officials have been swamped by phone calls and emails from members furious at Galloway. They even outnumber the calls they got from members protesting about the war itself.
The Party’s national executive will now gather evidence which could result in the MP being kicked out of Labour.
It could happen at its next meeting in June. But general-secretary David Triesman last night said he is ready to act sooner by suspending Galloway before the inquiry reaches its verdict.
He said: “I have received hundreds of complaints from members. “They are particularly upset about his suggestion that other Arab nations should send their troops to fight our forces in Iraq.
“That is in addition to the calls we have received today about allegations of financial links.”
Mr Galloway’s activities will also be probed by Labour’s Disputes Panel and by its National Constitutional Committee.
Labour chairman Ian McCartney described the new allegations as “extremely serious”. And Labour MP Hugh Bayley said: “The oil-for-food programme is meant to feed destitute Iraqis.
If he has taken any of this money he should resign and repay it.” Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said: “If these allegations are true, and I have no idea whether they are, then they would be very, very serious crimes indeed.”
But Galloway, whose Glasgow Kelvin seat disappears in boundary changes at the next election, denies he stitched up the cash-for-oil deal.
He has threatened to sue the Telegraph. In a statement, he said: “I have never solicited, nor would I have accepted had I been offered, any financial assistance of any kind from the Iraqi regime.”
It was also revealed yesterday that Galloway has made 12 separate trips to Iraq over the past three years, but never met the costs himself.
Eight of the visits, entered in the MP’s register of interests, were funded by the Mariam Appeal, which was set up to save the life of four-year-old Iraqi leukaemia girl Mariam Hamza.
The Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, QC, has been told Galloway used funds from the appeal to pay his travel expenses. He could launch civil action to recover the funds if they were found to be misused.
Link to yesterday's Daily Telegraph article, in case you missed it: THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Saddam's little helper
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