[casi] The palpable relief of Galloway; Mariam Hamza update

[info@DELETETHISuncoverIraq.com]

The following on the Galloway controversy acknowledges both sides of the MP's
media image ... the humanitarian whose rhetoric can be genuinely thrilling, and
the high-living, vainglorious MP.  Galloway's reactions in the report mirror my
own.

This report notes Galloway himself found the narrative of the Telegraph's
documents somewhat believable (despite their miraculous discovery), leading him
to speculate that he'd been betrayed by intermediaries.  But the ludicrous
details of the second discovery (by the respected Christian Science Monitor) are
certainly the effort of a forger, according to Galloway and, I suspect, to most
dispassionate observers.

The contents of the second discovery undercut the credibility of the first.

Of intense interest to many is an update concerning Mariam Hamza (referred to as
"Mariam Hussein").  Reading between the lines below, it appears that she and her
family survived the war.  Quoted in the article, "Galloway says Mariam is still
being supported. 'She still gets all her medicine, her house, her clothes, her
education, her special blind needs [she recovered from the leukaemia, but it
left her without sight] her family get fed and clothed, and in addition to all
of that she gets $100 a month -- which is three times the average Iraqi wage.'"

It would be interesting to hear further updates, however ...

Regards,
Drew Hamre
Golden Valley, MN USA

===
http://www.sundayherald.com/33356

'Now I'm certain ... all these documents are forged'
Allegations that George Galloway received $10m from Saddam have convinced the
Glasgow MP that he's the victim of a conspiracy. He explains why to Westminster
Editor James Cusick


Accused of pocketing $10 million over 10 years in the payroll of one of
history's most hated dictators, most politicians would be on the verge of a
breakdown. But for George Galloway the allegations published in a Boston
newspaper at the end of a momentous week 'came as a slight relief', ending, he
claimed, the lingering doubts that 'maybe someone inside the Iraqi regime itself
was pretending to be doing things in support of me and making off with the
cash'.
In a script worthy of John le Carrˇ or Len Deighton, reports last week suggested
Iraqi spy masters, the Iraqi president, senior Iraqi politicians, an Iraqi
general, the president's son and Middle East businessmen had all created a mesh
of covert financial intrigue which, if true, will destroy Galloway.

Documents found in Baghdad's bombed foreign ministry and published last Tuesday
by The Daily Telegraph claimed the Glasgow MP had effectively been on Saddam
Hussein's payroll for a decade and had been given a slice of oil-for-food
earnings totalling £375,000.

Days later a Boston newspaper, The Christian Science Monitor (CSM), dwarfed the
Telegraph's 'scoop' by claiming documents found in a house belonging to Saddam's
son Qusay, showed payments totalling $10m paid to Galloway from 1992 to this
year. In the CSM report, Qusay's accounts department is told by him to 'issue
the check and deliver to Mr George Galloway -- do this fast and inform me'.

Learning the full content of the CSM report, Galloway says this has moved the
case against him 'from tragedy to farce', adding: 'I'm now clear. I am the
target of a systematic campaign of forgery.'

Before the arrival of the $10m allegations, Galloway's initial belief that all
the Telegraph's documents were forgeries was beginning to slip. He was coming
round to the idea that he may have been set up from the inside, and had begun
backtracking, considering that the Telegraph's material may have been genuine.

No longer. The CSM account puts Galloway in Iraq in 1992, lists meetings with
Qusay Hussein, and talks of issued cheques. Claiming the report is a farce, he
adds : 'It talks of cheques. But the whole point of sanctions is that Iraq has
no banking facilities. The only way of cashing a cheque is to go to a bank in
one of the presidential palaces, so why bother with the cheque? And I never set
foot in Iraq till 1993. No-one had heard of me in Iraq in 1992.'

Should it come to court, Galloway's libel action may become one of the most
high-profile cases in legal history. If his holiday home in Portugal feels like
'a besieged fortress', as he said, he better get used to the idea. In a
telephone interview lasting almost an hour and a half , Galloway reveals that he
understands his personal future, his political career, every aspect of his life,
public and private -- will be laid bare. All his energy and all his campaigning
will go on hold. The bottom line? If he doesn't tell it straight from now, he'll
be destroyed.

He says: 'I now face a long and tedious process of putting together my case [he
intends to sue The Daily Telegraph and will seek leave in the High Court in
London to pursue the CSM outside the jurisdiction of British courts]. And will
that hamstring me politically? Of course it will.'

His case preparations, he adds, are not going to begin in Iraq. ' All the people
I knew in government in Iraq are either dead or under American custody or
missing.'

Galloway -- often referred to as the MP for Baghdad Central -- had, he admits,
access to core figures in Saddam's government. He now admits he may have been in
Iraq on Boxing Day in 1999.

The Telegraph's document-based account highlights a memorandum from the chief of
Iraqi intelligence, the Mukhabarat. It outlines a meeting between Galloway and
an Iraqi spy. Galloway 'detailed his campaign plans for the year ahead',
according to the account. The contact then wrote to his superior that Galloway
'needs continuous financial support from Iraq.'

Galloway's old passport is at his home in Streatham. It won't be hard for him to
verify, but he believes he 'spent Christmas day with Tariq Aziz', the former
Iraqi foreign minister who last week surrendered himself to US authorities in
Baghdad. The two men attended mass in the capital's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Christmas lunch at Aziz's home followed, and a party was held that night.


The implication? If Galloway wanted more cash, he could go straight to the top
-- Aziz, even Saddam himself, and not bother with intelligence minions.

Galloway says the British government was aware of where he spent that Christmas
and with whom. He says he privately told Peter Hain, the then minister at the
Foreign Office for Middle East affairs, and suggested opening a channel of
dialogue as a means of resolving the Iraqi crisis. 'Hain agreed we should start
such a dialogue.' A month later, according to Galloway, Hain had begun briefing
journalists that Galloway was 'close' to Tariq Aziz.

In another of the Telegraph's documents found in the foreign ministry, a letter
has Galloway identifying his 'representative in Baghdad on all matters
concerning my work with the Mariam Appeal or the Emergency Committee in Iraq'.
Galloway's intermediary was Fawaz Zureikat. In the Telegraph letter Zureikat is
quoted as effectively pleading for a Galloway pay rise.

So was Zureikat using Galloway's name for financial gain for himself? 'No, I
never for a minute suspected he would have. [Zureikat] was a very prominent
person in Iraq long before he met me. He'd been doing business in Iraq since
1986. He had no need of me to make him a bigger man.'

Galloway recalls that Zureikat had once shared a prison cell in Syria with Tariq
Aziz, the implication being that the two men share a common bond and that
Zureikat 'does not need George Galloway'. But Galloway did use the financial
help of Zureikat, a man he met through his Jerusalem-born wife, Dr Amineh
Abu-Sayyad, a relative of the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat. Galloway
separated from his first wife in 1987, and divorced 12 years later. He married
Sayyad in 2000 .

The two years before his second marriage will be central to the dissection of
Galloway's financial affairs. The investigation that promises to be a key part
of the libel case concerns a child lying in a Baghdad hospital suffering
leukaemia. In 1998 Galloway launched a public appeal to bring the child, Mariam
Hussein, to Britain for specialist treatment. He claimed uranium-tipped weapons
used during the Gulf war in 1991 had been a contributory cause to her illness.
The high- profile campaign promised to first save Mariam then with residual
funds help others in the same situation.

However, from an initial humani tarian appeal Galloway appeared to change its
nature into a highly politicised anti-sanctions campaign. And because Galloway
had never registered it formally as a charity, there was no public scrutiny of
its books.

Now both the attorney-general's office and the Charity Commission have Mariam
under the microscope.

The questions are clear enough: did Galloway steer it well clear of formal
charitable status to avoid financial scrutiny? And was it used to deliver money
from Zureikat that came directly from the Iraqi regime?

Galloway is adamant: 'It was always a political campaign from the very
beginning. It was not charitable, it was humanitarian.' He says it was
'preposterous' to claim he never wanted the accounts made public. 'Look at the
press treatment when we brought Mariam back. Everyone was accusing me of
politically campaigning. No-one was saying, 'Look there's George Galloway
bringing this girl back for charitable purposes.''

Zureikat also claims he never traded in oil and never received any Iraqi money
that was supposed to be channelled to Galloway.

But openness there will be, especially during the dissections that will legally
accompany the libel case. Galloway seems prepared. 'Every single journey [to
Middle East countries and beyond made in connection with the Mariam
anti-sanctions campaign] now being referred to as a revelation, has been
systematically registered in the House of Commons register year after year. And
there had not been a whisper of complaint.'

So where did the money inside the campaign come from? Galloway admits that 'not
many people gave money' and the 'vast bulk' came from only three sources, one
being Zureikat.

He delivers the arithmetic: 'Around £500,000 came from the United Arab Emirates.
Saudi Arabia gave £100,000 and, of the total, £900,000 -- the bulk -- came from
Zureikat.'

Zureikat, based in Jordan, was recently arrested along with other prominent
businessmen who had financial links with Saddam Hussein's regime. He has since
been released.

The traditional paranoia of the left emerges when Galloway tries to explain why
he didn't want the Mariam accounts out in public display. 'Just like the
Socialist Worker Party would not publish its accounts to the Institute of
Directors, or open its books to the Daily Mail, neither would we, we are not
obliged to.' That privacy will now go. 'In the libel case,' he promises, 'every
jot and tittle will be in front of the judge.'

Despite some reports to the contrary, Galloway says Mariam is still being
supported. 'She still gets all her medicine, her house, her clothes, her
education, her special blind needs [she recovered from the leukaemia, but it
left her without sight] her family get fed and clothed, and in addition to all
of that she gets $100 a month -- which is three times the average Iraqi wage.'

Asked if there was anyone involved in the running of the appeal who received
money from the Iraqi government, Galloway is clear: 'No, never.'

Privacy for Galloway's own finances will also soon go. Asked if he would open
all his accounts, he says: 'Don't accentuate the 'all'. I've only got one
account in Britain [held at the Co-operative Bank in Glasgow] and one holiday
account in Portugal which contains Ū500. There are no hidden accounts in
Switzerland, Liechtenstein, the Bahamas or the Virgin Islands.'

On his own assets, he admits only two properties. A house in Streatham in London
bought in 1996 for £220,000, with a mortgage of £290,000 (recently valued at
£500,000). His home in Burgau on the Algarve cost £82,000 when bought in 1998.
It has a mortgage of £76,000 (recently valued at £125,000). 'I have no other
houses.'


He drives an N-registration Mercedes (bought from MP Jimmy Wray) and has an
N-registration Range Rover kept in Portugal.

He admits to owning one share in a company called AVL Media, described in the
Companies House register as a 'motion picture and video production/radio and
television activities/news agency activities'.

AVL's director is Ron McKay, a journalist (and occasional Sunday Herald
contributor) and long-term friend of Galloway's. McKay's other broadcasting
venture is ATV (Arab Television), a London-based satellite channel that filmed
and distributed the worldwide rights to the pre-war interview conducted in
Baghdad between Tony Benn and Saddam Hussein.

Profit ATV made from that interview has been kept private. Industry sources say
that global media interest could have delivered a multi-million pound profit.
McKay in a newspaper interview says the figure is below £500,000.

AVL Media is listed with a book value of £35,320. Galloway says: 'I've never
made a penny from AVL.' He admits to two salaries: one from being an MP (£50,000
a year) and another from a weekly column in the Mail on Sunday, 'which last year
gave me £82,000'. He adds: 'I don't own anything else. There is no cafˇ in Cuba
or anywhere else.'

On the Pakistan-sponsored London-based newspaper, East, which Galloway helped
set up and staff, he claimed to have 'never received a penny'. An extensive
investigation by BBC Newsnight into East -- focusing on 'lobbying' money
totalling £360,00 -- eventually determined that despite suspect judgement by
Galloway, he received no money for his own benefit.

Similarly, an investigation into the charity War on Want by the Charity
Commission in 1991 found 'mis management' during the period when Galloway was
general secretary. The report said Galloway lacked 'expertise in crucial areas',
had mingled his own funds with the charity funds, and had failed to keep
separate accounts. But the charity's own investigation cleared Galloway, saying
he had repaid the money spent on his own, rather than the charity's business.

These two episodes highlight Galloway's ability to both get into deep water and
to get out of it unscathed.

This time, the allegations against him are on a different scale. He says:
'Michael Foot [the former Labour leader] called me, offering his full support.
He said he cannot remember, and he is an old man, any politician who has ever
been more gravely libelled.

'Foot was smeared by Sunday Times as a Soviet agent,' recalls Galloway. 'And
going back to the Zinoviev letter [a 1924 British intelligence forgery that
destroyed the re-election chances for Ramsay MacDonald's Labour-led government],
people on the left have been smeared in this way.'

Galloway adds: 'Forgery is salient to the entire Iraq issue, everything from the
so-called dossier, to fake invoices for uranium from Niger, now discredited and
under investigation by the UN.'

If so, is there more to come? 'Frankly,' shrugs Galloway. 'I don't know what
will come next -- illicitly marrying a camel ... who knows?'

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