British officials on Tuesday said they believe Margaret Hassan, a British-Irish aid worker kidnapped in Iraq last month, has been killed by her captors after a video was issued apparently showing her murder.
If her death is confirmed, Hassan will be the first foreign female hostage to have been murdered in Iraq, amid a recent wave of hostage-taking.
Doha-based Al-Jazeera television said it has received a video showing “an armed man shooting at a blindfolded woman, who appears to be Margaret Hassan”.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said it is believed the woman killed in the video was Hassan, the 59-year-old head of Care International’s Iraq operations who was seized in Baghdad on October 19.
“Our experts have been examining a video which appeared to show that Margaret Hassan has been murdered, to establish whether it is genuine,” he said in a brief statement.
“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.”
British Prime Minister Tony Blair expressed his condolences to Hassan’s family.
“The prime minister sends his sympathy to the family of Margaret Hassan and shares their abhorrence at the cruel treatment of someone who devoted so many years of their life to helping the people of Iraq,” a spokesperson for Blair said.
Hassan’s Iraqi husband, Tahseen Hassan, said he was aware of the video and begged the kidnappers to let him know where he could recover her body.
“Margaret lived with me in Iraq for 30 years. She dedicated her life to serving the Iraqi people. Please, now, please return her to me,” he said in an emotional statement broadcast by Britain’s Sky News television.
Hassan was one of the highest-profile victims in a scourge of kidnappings that has plagued Iraq in recent months, but was markedly different to the foreign journalists and engineers more commonly targeted.
She had been an aid worker in the country for more than 25 years, and was a vehement and vocal opponent of last year’s United States-led war to topple Saddam Hussein and the crippling sanctions that preceded it for more than a decade.
A fluent Arabic speaker, in January 2003 Hassan had travelled to New York to warn members of the United Nations Security Council of the “humanitarian catastrophe” that she feared could follow a war.
Her kidnapping sparked an outpouring of sympathy from Iraqi civilians, who called for her release and held a rally in Baghdad with banners referring to her as “Mama Margaret”.
It was not known who had seized her, although her captors released a series of videos showing the evidently distressed aid worker pleading for her life.
The hostage-takers also threatened to hand her over to a group led by Islamic militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi unless British troops left Iraq.
Zarqawi’s al-Qaeda-linked group beheaded another British hostage, Kenneth Bigley, last month after he was abducted in Baghdad in September with two US contractors. They were also murdered.
A statement by Hassan’s brothers and sisters, following reports of the video of her murder, said their “hearts are broken”.
“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,” Michael, Dierdre, Geraldine and Kathryn Fitzsimons said.
Care International, which halted its work in Iraq following Hassan’s kidnapping, said it was “shocked and appalled” at the news.
“It is with profound sadness that we have learnt of the existence of a video in which it appears that our colleague, Margaret Hassan, has been killed,” the organisation said in a statement.
“We are shocked and appalled that this has been the apparent outcome of her abduction,” it said, calling her “an extraordinary woman who dedicated her life to the poor and disadvantaged in Iraq”.
Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern sent a message appealing to her abductors to confirm her fate, and warned that they stand “condemned by everyone throughout the entire international community”. — AFP
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