Three held over murder of Margaret Hassan

Three Iraqis are in custody in connection with the murder of Irish aid worker Margaret Hassan after raids against insurgents, Baghdad Embassy officials confirmed tonight.

The men were held after Iraqi forces – supported by the US military - conducted a sweep of a criminal stronghold south of Baghdad early this morning.

During the raids, items with a “direct link” to the director of CARE international were discovered, a spokesman at the British Embassy in Baghdad said.

An intelligence officer at the Interior Ministry was reported to have earlier said five suspects had confessed to a role in killing Mrs Hassan, and that the items found included a purse, a woman’s shirts and trousers, and documents containing the CARE logo signed by Mrs Hassan.

But, while not detailing the items recovered, the British official said: “Articles were found which established a direct connection to Margaret Hassan, including documentary evidence.

“We are not going into specific details of all the articles recovered as the investigation is ongoing and there could be further arrests, and putting material out about what’s in the possession of the authorities could be harmful to the investigation.”

Officials and British police attached to the Iraqi force for training and monitoring were supporting the investigation, he said.

He confirmed that three men had been arrested in the planned raids in the area which lies on the southern outskirts of Baghdad: “It was part of a US and Iraqi sweep of an area of insurgent and criminal activity.

“It was targeted in the sense it was an area of known militancy, but it wasn’t specifically targeted to recover these items.

“But when US forces came across them they immediately alerted British authorities who got involved in the investigation.”

The news came amid a continuing wave of violence in Iraq, including the kidnapping of an Australian by Iraqi militants, several explosions and a shooting in Baghdad, which killed at least one civilian, and a suicide car bombing which killed at least 15 people at a funeral procession in northern Iraq.

Irish-born Mrs Hassan, 59, spent nearly half her life delivering food and medicine in Iraq, where she had lived for 30 years.

Married to an Iraqi, her dedication to the country was such that she became a Muslim and took on dual British and Iraqi citizenship.

She was kidnapped in Baghdad in October last year, and hours after her abduction, footage of her with her hands bound behind her back and looking “very distressed” was shown on Al-Jazeera.

In increasingly desperate videos, she was seen pleading for British Prime Minister Tony Blair to withdraw troops from Iraq and for the release of female Iraqi prisoners.

Just under a month after the October 19 kidnapping a video of her apparent murder was released, although her body was never found.

After the release of the video, her four brothers and sisters said in a statement: “Our 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.”

CARE International said tonight it had no comment to make in the wake of the arrests.

Mrs Hassan’s kidnapping and savage murder caused outrage across the world, and more than 1,000 mourners attended a memorial service for the aid worker in Co Kerry in November, and the following month, some 2,000 people paid their respects in a moving memorial service at Westminster Cathedral.

Earlier this year, she was posthumously awarded the Tipperary International Peace Prize, to salute “the extraordinary life of a Dublin-born aid worker”.

Previous recipients of the award include Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Bill Clinton and Bob Geldof.

The Tipperary Peace Convention said it had decided to honour the CARE International official “who paid the ultimate price for her dedication to the poor and vulnerable in Iraq”.

More than 200 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq since Saddam Hussein’s regime collapsed in April 2003.