By Lutfi Abu Oun - Reuters, May 1, 2005
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. and Iraqi forces raided a town south of Baghdad Sunday and detained several men believed linked to the death of British aid worker Margaret Hassan, who was kidnapped and killed late last year.
Iraqi police said the early morning raids happened near Madaen, a town just south of Baghdad where insurgents have been active in recent weeks. They said 11 people were seized, five of whom had admitted complicity in Hassan's murder.
The arrests, which may mark a small breakthrough in the effort to bring insurgents to justice in Iraq, came amid a surge in guerrilla activity in the past three days -- since Iraq formed its first democratically elected government in 50 years.
Some of the violence has been focused in Madaen, where three car bombs exploded Friday. At least nine people were killed in car bombings and shootings in Baghdad Sunday.
Hassan, a British national who headed CARE International in Iraq, was kidnapped last October. She was killed about a month later after appealing on video tapes made by her abductors for British forces to withdraw from Iraq.
"We are aware that a raid was conducted and that items were recovered that we believe may belong to Margaret Hassan," a spokesman for the British embassy in Baghdad said.
"There is reasonable evidence to believe that the items were Hassan's ... it seems likely. But until our police have finished their investigation we cannot say definitively."
He said British police, many of whom are based in Iraq and assist training Iraqi security forces, were investigating but could not say when their probe would end.
Iraqi authorities said clothing and identification documents belonging to Hassan had been found at the scene, but the embassy official declined to say what evidence had been discovered.
Hassan's kidnapping came at the height of a wave of abductions in Iraq, but it was never clear who seized her and her body has never been found.
rest of the story at Reuters