It would appear some people have legitimate doubts.
Rory McCarthy in Baghdad
Thursday November 18, 2004
The Guardian
Iraqi authorities yesterday admitted they still had no clear idea about who killed the aid worker Margaret Hassan. Investigators are being hindered by the uniqueness of the case, and the complexity of the insurgency.
In previous kidnappings, Iraq's several insurgent groups have been quick to identify themselves and claim responsibility, using videos to make their demands. From the moment Mrs Hassan was seized her case was different.
Mrs Hassan, who had Iraqi nationality and spoke fluent Arabic, was taken from her car as she drove to work at the Care offices in Baghdad on October 19. Two videos emerged, showing her in an increasingly desperate state pleading for her life and asking for the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq.
Unlike previous incidents her kidnappers gave themselves no specific name and used no banners or flags to identify themselves....
:
Robert Fisk has his doubts too:
See his story here.
Perhaps Australian PM John Howard knows---see below. Did he unwittingly let a dirty little secret escape? Something not right, in my mind, about all this.
Al Jazeera says they got the tape several days ago. Then British officials viewed it before it was made public. Then a body carefully noted to be 'mutilated' and 'of a Western woman' just happens to turn up in the path of US troops rampaging through Falluja. What a lucky coincidence. The execution video made days earlier supposedly shows a non-standard MO. Margaret Hassan spoke fluent Arabic, one presumes. She had no problem calling for an end to the withdrawal of UK troops. But the insurgents shoot her anyway, scoring what they would have to have known would be a massive own goal. Just at a time when the US needed to show how barbaric their opponents were.
It wouldn't surprise me if Hassan was kidnapped by insurgents, was then released, but was then held in the custody of Special Forces, and having called for an end to the occupation, was deemed an 'enemy sympathizer', thus 'justifying' her killing and the use of her body as a psyops prop.
This from AP
Australian Prime Minister John Howard said Thursday a body found in the strife-torn Iraqi city of Fallujah was likely that of Hassan -- repeating the belief of British officials and Hassan's family.
"The body found in Fallujah appears to have been Margaret's and the video of the execution of a Western woman appears on all the available
information to have been genuine," Howard told Parliament.
Howard did not say which body he was referring to but on Sunday, Marines found the mutilated body of what they believe was a Western woman on a street in Fallujah during the U.S. assault on the insurgent stronghold.
Hassan, 59, director of CARE International's operations in Iraq, was a British citizen born in Ireland and married to an Iraqi man.
The body, clothed in what appeared to be a purple, velour dress, was wrapped in a blanket, with a blood-soaked black cloth nearby. As of Thursday, the U.S. command said the body had not been identified.
When questioned outside Parliament about his comments, Howard did not confirm which body he was talking about and said no remains had been
yet returned to authorities.
"This latest example of cruelty and brutality reminds us that there can be only one answer to terrorism and that is the completely uncompromising and unconditional one," he said.
The Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera said early this week it had received a videotape showing the murder of a woman believed to be Hassan, a British-Irish national who had lived in Iraq for three decades.
Something very sinister and strange is going on in this case.