Margaret Hassan

Margaret Hassan (18 April 1945 – 8 November 2004), also known as "Madam Margaret", was an Irish-born aid worker who had worked in Iraq for many years until she was abducted and murdered by unidentified kidnappers in Iraq in 2004, at the age of 59. Her remains have never been recovered.

She was born Margaret Fitzsimons in Dalkey, County Dublin, Ireland, to parents Peter and Mary Fitzsimons. However, soon after the end of World War II her family moved to London, England, where she spent most of her early life and where her younger siblings were born. At the age of twenty seven, she married Tahseen Ali Hassan, a twenty-nine-year-old Iraqi studying engineering in the United Kingdom. She moved to Iraq with him in 1972, when she began work with the British Council of Baghdad, teaching English. Eventually she learned Arabic and became an Iraqi citizen, as was required of foreigners under Saddam Hussein's government.

She remained a Roman Catholic throughout her life and never converted to Islam as was widely reported after her death. A requiem Mass was held for her, after her death was confirmed, at Westminster Cathedral by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor.

During the early 1980s, Hassan became the assistant director of studies at the British Council; later in the decade she became director. Meanwhile, Tahseen worked as an economist. She remained in Baghdad during the 1991 Gulf War, although the British Council suspended operations in Iraq, and she was left jobless at the end of it.

Hassan joined humanitarian relief organisation CARE International in 1991, the aid group having established itself in Iraq during that year. Sanitation, health, and nutrition became major concerns in the sanctioned Iraq; she became a vocal critic of the United Nations restrictions. She was opposed to the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003, arguing before it that the Iraqis were already "living through a terrible emergency. They do not have the resources to withstand an additional crisis brought about by military action". Margaret was crucially involved in bringing leukaemia medicine to child cancer victims in Iraq in 1998.

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