Tributes to Iraq's 'mama Margaret'
Woman with 'spine of steel' was devoted to Iraq
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 CARE official Margaret Hassan lived a life of generosity.
 Pleas for mercy again go unheard as another hostage is brutally executed.
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LONDON, England -- Dublin-born and raised in Britain, Margaret Hassan dedicated much of her life to improving the lives of ordinary people of Iraq.
The Daily Telegraph described her as "Iraq's Mother Teresa" and said the "slender woman with a spine of steel" was a tireless advocate on behalf of Iraqis.
The woman, now believed to have been shot dead by Muslim kidnappers, married an Iraqi and her devotion to the country and its culture was such that she converted to Islam and took on dual British and Iraqi citizenship.
Hassan, 59, worked in the Middle Eastern country for 30 years and for the last 12 years she worked for CARE International as Iraq country director.
She was described by those who knew her as outspoken, tough and fearless.
"Despite her slim frame she could intimidate a large American soldier as easily as a petty Iraqi bureaucrat," London's Times newspaper reported Wednesday.
Hassan's friend, freelance journalist Felicity Arbuthnot, described her as "a very tough lady frightened of nothing."
"To do something like this to a woman who has given all her adult life to Iraq and to a woman is incomprehensible," she told BBC radio Wednesday. "It reflects the distortion that has happened to the country as a result of the invasion."
Asked whether Hassan had felt angry with Britain for backing the invasion, Arbuthnot said: "She was absolutely incandescent."
In two wars, Hassan remained in Baghdad when the bombs fell. She was a vocal opponent of the international sanctions imposed on Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and she traveled widely before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 to warn that such a conflict would bring a "humanitarian catastrophe" on the country.
Hassan declined to leave her post 12 months previously when car bomb attacks began to strike humanitarian organizations, leading most aid groups to abandon Baghdad.
When abductions became widespread in and around the city, she continued to rise early each morning to go to the west Baghdad office of CARE, where her abductors found her at 7:30 a.m. one morning.
After she was kidnapped, her husband Ashen Ali Hassan pleaded with her kidnappers to let her go, saying: "They should know that my wife has worked almost all her life for the Iraqi people and considers herself an Iraqi.
"My wife is apolitical, she is a humanitarian worker and I ask you to release her."
Hassan came to Iraq in the 1970s after meeting her husband, an employee of Iraqi Airways, in London. She joked about marrying into a strict Muslim family, friends told The Washington Post, but was especially close to her father-in-law, a doctor.
One Iraqi friend told the Post that her first job in Iraq was reading the news in English on state television. She then spent a number of years working at the Baghdad office of the British Council, a cultural center attached to the British Embassy.
Hassan began working for CARE soon after it began operations in Iraq in 1991.
At the time she was taken hostage she was in charge of a staff of 60 Iraqis running nutrition, health and water programs throughout the country. But her kidnapping led the aid operation to withdraw from the country, considering it had become too dangerous.
When war broke out, she was determined to stay in Iraq to continue her work despite the danger. As the conflict engulfed the country, she led a team working to provide essential aid to hospitals and help restore vital power and water supplies.
Her team coped with the problem of looters and chaos in the streets and fought for a return to food rationing.
After she was taken hostage on October 19, protesters gathered outside CARE's Baghdad headquarters, carrying pictures of her and banners which called for the release of "Mama Margaret."
Nasrat al-Asadi, a teacher at an Iraqi school for the deaf, brought about 30 pupils to the demonstration and told the UK's Press Association: "They all love her. She helped them with hearing aids besides reconstructing the institute."
Hassan's abduction resulted in a wave of sympathy across the Islamic world, with many Web sites filled with messages deploring her kidnapping.
Her courageous leadership through such troubled times was "remarkable," one colleague told PA.
Following a meeting in Jordan in March last year, William Deane, chairman of CARE Australia, said: "Margaret's decision -- indeed her determination -- to remain in Iraq and carry out emergency work throughout the conflict was typical of a truly remarkable woman."
The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, said: "Margaret is a martyr for goodness, truth and generosity. She dedicated her life to others. She will always be remembered for this."
CARE International is one of the world's largest independent global relief and development organizations. The non-political aid organization has its headquarters in Belgium and operates in more than 72 countries across Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and eastern Europe.
It has 11 offices in Europe, Australia, North America, and Japan and supports projects that benefit about 30 million people a year. Ninety per cent of CARE's 10,000 staff worldwide work in their home countries. Its programs receive support from many governments and institutions including the United Nations, the World Bank, the European Union and the British government.
The charity said that its emergency relief work in Iraq during and after the war benefited more than 12 million Iraqi citizens.
It said that more than 21 million Iraqis -- the majority of the population -- are served by water systems funded by CARE International and over two million people directly benefit from water plants and pumping stations refurbished with the charity's help.
