By David Blair in Baghdad
(Filed: 23/04/2003)
Saddam Hussein
rejected a request from George Galloway for more
money, saying that the Labour backbencher's
"exceptional" demands were not affordable,
according to an official document found by The Daily
Telegraph in Baghdad.
The letter from
Saddam's most senior aide was sent in response to Mr
Galloway's reported demand for additional funds. This
was outlined in a memorandum from the Iraqi
intelligence chief disclosed yesterday in The Daily Telegraph.
Mr Galloway denies
receiving any money from the regime. He claims that
any documents purporting to show this are forgeries
planted by western intelligence agencies to try to
discredit him.
The latest document
purported to convey a personal decision from Saddam
and was circulated to four of the most senior figures
in the former regime, including Tariq Aziz, the
deputy prime minister. It indicates that Mr
Galloway's affairs were discussed at the highest
level.
Its disclosure, if
accurate, shows that there were limits to Mr
Galloway's success in wresting commercial
opportunities from Iraq. But it adds to the
impression that he was working closely with the most
senior apparatchiks of a regime that he repeatedly
professed to oppose.
The letter, which was
found in the files of the foreign ministry, was dated
May 2, 2000, and marked "Confidential and
Personal". It refers to the date and reference
number of the intelligence chief's memo, which
specifically asked for Saddam's decision on Mr
Galloway's alleged requests.
The letter opens by
saying that "Mr President, our leader, God bless
him", was ordering a committee to look into the
matter. The committee's members were the recipients
of the letter and read like a who's who of the elite
of the Saddam regime.
Taha Yassin Ramadan,
the vice-president, Izzat Ibrahim, Saddam's deputy on
the Ba'ath Party's Revolutionary Command Council, Ali
Hassan al-Majid, a senior general who ordered gas
attacks on Kurdish villages, and Mr Aziz were all
included.
So was Mohammed Said
al-Sahaf, then foreign minister, who was later
nicknamed "Comical Ali" when he served as
the ever-optimistic information minister.
But Saddam pre-empted any conclusions that
the committee might have reached. Referring to Mr
Galloway in the dictator's familiar idiom as the man
"promoting the right path", the letter
says: "The belief is that . . . even using
western methods [he] needs exceptional support which
we cannot afford and I do not think we can promise to
do that if we consider it according to our policy.
Please act and let us be informed."
The letter is signed
by Gen Abid Hamid al-Khattab, of the president's
secretariat. Gen al-Khattab ran Saddam's private
office and was included in the handful of officials
who had constant access to him.
He was widely viewed
as one of themost powerful figures in Iraq. A copy of
the letter was sent to the foreign minister, Mr
Sahaf, hence its presence in the foreign ministry
files. It was found in the same pale blue folder,
stamped with the Iraqi eagle, as the intelligence
chief's memorandum.
Saddam was rejecting
two specific requests allegedly made by Mr Galloway,
as recorded in the intelligence chief's memorandum.
The first was for a greater share of the profits from
oil exports.
The memorandum said
that Mr Galloway was already receiving between 10 and
15 cents per barrel of three million barrels exported
every six months: an annual sum of at least
£375,000.
Mr Galloway's second
reported request was for "exceptional commercial
and contractual" opportunities with three
ministries and the state electricity commission.
These requests for more sources of income fell on
deaf ears, but Saddam's decision not to allow them
did not apply to Mr Galloway's existing deals.
Before Saddam issued
his rejection, Mr Galloway sent his "work
programme" for 2000 to Mr Aziz. Saddam's office
had approved it and Mr Aziz passed the document to
four cabinet ministers and the intelligence chief.
• George
Galloway was in Baghdad in the weeks before Iraqi
foreign ministry papers say he met one of Saddam
Hussein's representatives and discussed money.
Mr Galloway arrived
in Baghdad in November 1999 with a red London double-
decker bus on a high-profile visit to deliver medical
supplies for those suffering in Iraq under sanctions.
Among documents found
in Iraq's foreign ministry this week was a memo from
the country's secret service to Saddam's office
outlining talks between the MP and an agent on Boxing
Day 1999, during which Mr Galloway is alleged to have
said he needed "continuous support from
Iraq".
The MP has told this
newspaper that the meeting did not take place but
said he did spend one Christmas in Iraq, but could
not be sure which one.
Copyright
of Telegraph Group Limited
Paid
to be a traitor
By TREVOR KAVANAGH
Political Editor
THE world has produced some evil,
twisted men throughout history. Saddam Hussein is one
of them.
Treacherous Labour MP George
Galloway is another.
The so-called Honourable Member for
Glasgow Kelvin emerged last night as the paid
mouthpiece for one of the most despicable regimes of
torture and mass murder in modern times.
Papers found in the Iraqi capital
— but never expected to see the light of day
— prove Galloway was an employee of
Saddam’s sadistic state machine.
In return for a gigantic
£375,000-a-year, stolen from the impoverished Iraqi
people, this
traitor toured the world’s media
proclaiming the Butcher of Baghdad a kind and decent
human being.
As an honoured guest, he visited
Saddam last year in his bomb-proof shelter far below
the surface of the Iraqi desert.
Along with offers of Quality Street
chocolates, laid on to prove his love of all things
British, Galloway swallowed Saddam’s claim to be
the equal of wartime hero Winston Churchill.
Yet when British troops went into battle to remove
this despot from power, Galloway despicably urged the
Arab world to rise up and kill them.
There have long been questions over the way a
nonentity backbencher like Galloway could afford his
lavish lifestyle of fast cars and fast women.
His constant travel, always first
class, could never be funded by an MP’s pay or
from proceeds of his litigious pursuit of so-called
defamation claims.
Galloway is a silver-tongued bully
who has always been surrounded by a cloud of
suspicion over his shifty activities, his
manipulation of other people’s cash and his
readiness to punch anyone he could not sue.
He left a slippery trail of scandal
wherever he went, from the finances of the once
mighty charity War on Want to the funding of his
local constituency Labour Party.
Once, while quizzed too closely for
comfort on his dodgy dealings, he amazed journalists
by admitting extra-marital “carnal”
relations to put them off the money trail.
A congenital liar, his favourite
defence trick was total denial. If that failed, he
would claim he had been misquoted.
So when he was overheard publicly
praising Saddam Hussein’s leadership in standing
up to the West, he claimed he was talking about the
Iraqi people.
A vicious anti-Israeli ranter, he
boasted that he sometimes dreamed he was part of an
army wading ashore waving a Kalashnikov and driving
the Jewish nation into the sea.
When this remark became known, he
claimed he had been quoted out of context.
But nothing could distort the clear message he
delivered in his interview last year with Saddam
Hussein for a national Sunday newspaper.
The stomach-churning article made
no reference to the callous acts of dismemberment and
routine execution carried out under Saddam’s
personal orders.
At no point did Galloway ask the
tyrant about the torture chambers in the dungeons of
Saddam’s palaces.
Or the systematic slaughter, rape
and pillaging by his two psychotic sons, Uday and
Qusay.
Instead, he remarked about the shy,
gentle way Saddam greeted him, eyes downcast in his
desert bunker.
“There, in a corner of the
room, glancing shyly downwards briefly as I strode
towards him, was the most demonised man on the
planet,” he wrote.
“He has a gentle handshake and
is surprisingly diffident.”
Galloway remarks on the way nervous
servants were sweating despite the air-conditioning.
But he fails to point out they
would have been in perpetual fear for their lives.
Tony Blair will be delighted that
there is now hard evidence that Galloway was
complicit with Saddam’s regime.
Asked about the troublemaker’s
call for Arabs to rise up against British troops, the
PM told The Sun last week: “His comments were
wrong and disgraceful.”
The Prime Minister insisted he
would not be party to any move which made Galloway a
martyr.
But he made it clear he expected
the Labour Party’s national executive committee
to take action to expel him.
With the evidence now available,
surely it must be time to call in the police.
Life of
outrage
By DAVID WOODING
Whitehall Editor
GALLOWAY’S treachery has often
been exposed by The Sun — but he sunk to his
lowest depths when Gulf War II began.
We revealed this month how the
traitor urged the Arab world to rise up and KILL
British troops in Iraq.
He branded Blair and Bush
“wolves” and Our Boys war criminals.
And he called on Gulf states to
cripple the West by cutting off oil supplies.
Mr Blair branded his comments
“disgraceful” in an exclusive interview
with The Sun last week.
Galloway, 48, first entered
politics aged 26 in his home town of Dundee —
where he flew the PLO flag over the town hall and
withdraw the city’s hospitality to visiting NATO
warships.
Even in his early career as a
charity boss, controversy was never far away.
He was criticised for drawing
lavish expenses as general secretary of War on Want
between 1983 and 1987.
An inquiry cleared him of alleged
fraud. In 1987 he defeated Roy Jenkins to become
MP for Glasgow Hillhead, now Glasgow Kelvin.
Galloway made an instant impact in
the Commons by talking openly about his sexual antics
on working trips.
In his first Press conference as an
MP he admitted: “I spent lots of time with
people in Greece, many of whom were women, some of
whom were known carnally to me.”
He also branded Scottish Tories
“drunk, stupid and unemployable”.
Galloway shares a
Glasgow flat with wife Aminah Abu-Zayyhad, a niece of
PLO chief Yasser Arafat.
But it was his links with Saddam
Hussein that really made him hated.
The tyrant always rolled out the
red carpet whenever Galloway — dubbed the
Honourable Member for Baghdad Central — dropped
in.
In a 1994 speech he addressed
Saddam as “Your Excellency, Mr President.”
He also appeared to say: “Sir,
allow me to salute your courage, your strength and
your indefatigability.”
Galloway later insisted the tribute
was aimed at Iraqi people — and that he uttered
the word “so” not “sir”.
But a former pal said: “George
has become an apologist for a grotesque regime
© 2003 News Group Newspapers Ltd
Newly found Iraqi files raise
heat on British MP
Documents
indicate payments of more than $10 million for
support of Labour Party official.
By
Philip Smucker | Special to The Christian Science
Monitor
BAGHDAD
- A fresh set of documents uncovered in a Baghdad
house used by Saddam Hussein's son Qusay to hide
top-secret files detail multimillion dollar payments
to an outspoken British member of parliament, George
Galloway.
Evidence
of Mr. Galloway's dealings with the regime were first
revealed earlier this week by David Blair, a reporter
for the Daily Telegraph in London, who discovered
documents in Iraq's Foreign Ministry.
The
Labour Party MP, who lambasted his party's prime
minister, Tony Blair, in parliamentary debates on the
war earlier this year, has denied the allegations. He
is now the focus of a preliminary investigation by
British law-enforcement officials and is under
intense scrutiny in the British press, where the
story has been splashed across the front pages.
The
most recent - and possibly most revealing - documents
were obtained earlier this week by the Monitor. The
papers include direct orders from the Hussein regime
to issue Mr. Galloway six individual payments,
starting in July 1992 and ending in January 2003.
The
payments point to a concerted effort by the regime to
use its oil wealth to win friends in the Western
world who could promote Iraqi interests first by
lifting sanctions against Iraq and later in blocking
war plans.
The
leadership of Hussein's special security section and
accountants of the President's secretive Republican
Guard signed the papers and authorized payments
totaling more than $10 million.
The
three most recent payment authorizations, beginning
on April 4, 2000, and ending on January 14, 2003 are
for $3 million each. All three authorizations include
statements that show the Iraqi leadership's strong
political motivation in paying Galloway for his
vociferous opposition to US and British plans to
invade Iraq.
The
Jan. 14, 2003, document, written on Republican Guard
stationary with its Iraqi eagle and "Trust in
Allah," calls for the "Manager of the
security department, in the name of President Saddam
Hussein, to order a gratuity to be issued to Mr.
George Galloway of British nationality in the amount
of three million dollars only."
The
document states that the money is in return for
"his courageous and daring stands against the
enemies of Iraq, like Blair, the British Prime
Minister, and for his opposition in the House of
Commons and Lords against all outrageous lies against
our patient people...."
The
document is signed left to right by four people,
including Gen. Saif Adeen Flaya al-Hassan, Col.
Shawki Abed Ahmed, and what the Iraqi general who
first discovered the documents says is the signature
of Qusay. The same exact signatures are also found on
a vast array of documents from the offices of the
president's youngest son. The final authorization
appears to be that of Qusay, who notes the accounting
department should "issue the check and deliver
to Mr. George Galloway," adding, "Do this
fast and inform me."
An
Iraqi general attached to Hussein's Republican Guard
discovered the documents in a house in the Baghdad
suburbs used by Qusay, who is chief of Iraq's elite
Guard units.
The
general, whose initials are "S.A.R.," asked
not to be named for fear of retribution from
Hussein's assassins. He said he raided the suburban
home on April 8 with armed fighters in an effort to
secure deeds to property that the regime had
confiscated from him years ago. He said he found the
new Galloway papers amid documents discussing Kuwaiti
prisoners and Hussein's chemical warfare experts, and
information about the president's most trusted
Republican Guard commanders.
The
documents appear to be authentic and signed by senior
members within Saddam Hussein's most trusted security
circle, but their authenticity could not be verified
by the Monitor.
The
British newspaper The Guardian raised possible
questions about the first round of documents,
including the possibility that while the documents
could be real, they might include false allegations
from which Iraqi agents could profit internally.
Galloway
- a colorful Scot who is sharp of suit and even
sharper of tongue - made regular visits to Iraq, and
was dubbed by conservatives in Britain as an
"apologist for Saddam Hussein." He once
told the dictator, "Sir, I salute your courage,
your strength, your indefatigability."
In
Parliament, Galloway, an MP since 1987 and a
controversial figure, has championed the plight of
Iraq, and blasted Blair for going to war in league
with President Bush in his "crusade"
against the Muslim world. He labeled Blair and Bush
"wolves" for attacking Iraq, sparking a
firm rebuttal from Blair, who called the remarks
"disgraceful."
Galloway
has vehemently denied he accepted any cash payments
from the regime, initially, suggesting the documents
may have been forged. The outspoken Labour Party
member called earlier Daily Telegraph stories about
his dealings a "smear campaign" against war
opponents, and his lawyers have initiated legal
proceedings against the newspaper.
Repeated
efforts to contact Galloway, who is currently
traveling in Portugal, were unsuccessful. No one
answered at his House of Commons office, and his
mobile phone was switched off.
David
Blair, the British reporter who first broke the
story, told the BBC: "I think it would require
an enormous amount of imagination to believe that
someone went to the trouble of composing a forged
document in Arabic and then planting it in a file of
patently authentic documents and burying it in a
darkened room on the off-chance that a British
journalist might happen upon it and might bother to
translate it. That strikes me as so wildly improbable
as to be virtually inconceivable."
According
to the documents Blair found in the Iraqi Foreign
Ministry, Galloway received money from Hussein's
regime, taking a slice of oil earnings worth at least
$600,000 a year. A top-secret memo sent by Hussein's
spy chief requested that Galloway get an even-greater
cut of Iraq's exports under the UN-sponsored oil for
food program.
The
document said that Galloway was profiting from food
contracts, and sought "exceptional"
business deals.
The
most recent documents obtained by the Monitor suggest
that payoffs may well have been made by checks in
lump sums. The Iraqi general, who is familiar with
financial dealings of Hussein's inner circle, said
that checks of several million dollars could have
easily been cashed in a bank on the ground floor of
one of the President's most important palaces in
Baghdad.
In
a more recent Telegraph report based on a memorandum
from May 2, 2000, Hussein is said to have rejected a
request from Galloway for more money, saying his
"exceptional" demands were not affordable.
The
letter, found in the foreign ministry files, refers
to the date and reference number of the intelligence
chief's memo, which asked for Hussein's decision on
Galloway's alleged requests.
That
memo would have come nearly a month after one of the
six letters - obtained by the Monitor - from Qusay's
cabinet detailing a payment on April 4, 2000. That
payment also references Galloway's "courageous
and daring stands towards the oppressive blockade and
in support of our courageous and patient people who
violently oppose all enemies of Iraq and its
leaders..."
Another
payment authorization on July 27, 1999, states the
money is being given upon "agreement of Sayid
Qusay Saddam Hussein (the president's son) who has
supervision over the Republican Guard." It calls
the $1 million payment a reward for Galloway's
support in trying to repeal the "unjust blockade
on our beloved country and for his firm stand against
the prime minister of Britain, the criminal
Blair."
The
two earliest payments, in July of 1992 and October of
1993, are noted down on green stationary as having
already been delivered. For example, the October
payment states, "kindly be informed of the
issuing of a gratuity by the esteemed leader
President Saddam Hussein (may Allah protect and guide
him) to Mr. George Galloway in the amount of
$600,000." It says the money was handed over to
him by the representative of the directorate of the
Special Security Organization, Colonel Shawki.
Thursday, the US Marines had surrounded the house of
Colonel Shawki. His neighbors said he might have
already fled to Syria.
The
general who gave access to the documents - General
"S" - was until a decade ago a general in
the regular Iraqi army but was attached to the
Republican Guard. He was subsequently jailed on three
occasions. He claims the government punished him
because he is a Shiite, by assassinating his wife,
three daughters, and one brother.
General
"S" was determined to make up for his
losses. What he really wanted back, however, was the
deeds to the three homes taken from him. He planted
his own driver as a spy in the guards of Qusay and
followed the presidential paper trail when it moved
to the suburbs in March.
On
April 8, when US forces prepared to storm the
capital, he rounded up six men who had served in
prison with him and set out for the house.
He
took possession of items including computer printouts
that give the names, biographies, and residences of
Hussein's most trusted Republican Guard officers.
Also in the files is information on chemists who
worked in the Iraqi biological-weapons program.
He
also, unexpectedly, found documents discussing
Kuwaiti prisoners still in Iraq and the ones that
noted specific payments of money to Galloway. There
was also a document detailing the biographies of
Qusay's most trusted assassins.
One
of The Monitor's interpreters was a fellow inmate of
the general in Hussein's political prison. When the
interpreter visited him several days ago, the general
mentioned the documents he held.
The
general had been most interested in discussing the
Kuwaiti file. When the Monitor's reporter and the
interpreter arrived to speak with him, he mentioned
the Galloway material in passing.
•
Mark Rice-Oxley contributed to this report from
London.
www.csmonitor.com
Copyright © 2003 The Christian Science Monitor. All
rights reserved.
from the April 25, 2003 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0425/p01s04-woiq.html
GALLOWAY'S WIFE
TALKS TO THE MIRROR
Apr 25 2003
EXCLUSIVE
By Ruki Sayid
FOR 12 years the wife of MP George Galloway
has refused to talk publicly about her husband.
But yesterday Dr Amineh Abu-Zayyad told the
Daily Mirror: "He has done nothing wrong. He is
a hero to me."
As the media besieged their home, following
the "cash for oil" allegations, the
renowned biologist - a
close relative of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat - went on: "I have always admired him
and I continue to do so. I am fully behind him. I
have always believed in him 100 per cent."
Speaking publicly for the first time since
they were linked, 41-year-old Amineh refuted
allegations that George, 48, received illegal
payments from Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime.
She said: "Any idiot can see this is a
disgraceful smear campaign and we will fight it. My
husband is an honourable man, which is why I married
him."
Amineh is in constant contact with "the
love of my life", who was in their villa in
Portugal - working on a book about Iraq - when the
allegations broke over Easter.
Since then they have found themselves under
attack - he in the Algarve and she at home in
Streatham, South London.
But if George was worried about how his
Palestinian-born wife would cope with the glare of
adverse publicity, he can rest assured she is up to
the task.
Amineh, who has done considerable work in
cancer research, said: "I believe in him and
nobody on this earth can make me think otherwise.
"I keep telling him he must hold his
head up high. He knows his family and friends are
behind him.
"We believe in justice and his
innocence will be proved." Amineh was angry at
suggestions by the Daily Telegraph that the Glasgow
MP received backhanders of £375,000 a year from Iraq
as his share of secret oil deals.
"There is a dirty campaign to discredit
him," she said. "He is passionate about
certain causes, whether they be anti-war, Arab or
Muslim and there are people who don't like that.
"But this will be dealt with by the
courts and his name will be cleared."
She said support for the MP has come from
all over the world. "I have had calls and emails
from so many countries and people are shocked at the
way my husband has been smeared.
"I have some very good friends from my
Glasgow University days who stayed with me over
Easter and have been very supportive of me and
George. I haven't felt alone at all."
Fiery Amineh, born in Jerusalem and a
graduate of Glasgow and Jerusalem Universities, is
used to controversy.
WHEN she became engaged to George, her
relative Arafat invited the couple to marry in
Jericho.
Her family gave the planned wedding their
blessing after George visited them in Jerusalem eight
years ago to ask for Amineh's hand.
George gave his fiancee a three diamond
engagement ring and told friends she was
"incredibly pretty with a lot of brains".
But the couple married modestly at Lambeth
register office, South London, in March 2000 after a
five-year courtship.
Only a handful of their inner circle
witnessed it. Asked why the couple did not pose for
pictures, George said: "I didn't want
photographers there. Quite simply, I made a decision
that I would not discuss my private life again."
Amineh has also lived by that mantra and,
until yesterday, had refused to discuss her husband.
The daughter of a Palestinian businessman,
she completely captivated George when they met in
1991 - but both stress they were friends long before
the relationship blossomed into romance.
Both were passionate about the plight of the
Palestinians. George had been speaking on the subject
at a meeting in Partick, Lanarkshire. Impressed,
Amineh felt compelled to find out more about him.
One cause which drew them together was the
Mariam Appeal, launched in 1998 for eight-year-old
Iraqi Mariam Hamza.
She was suffering from leukaemia and George
blamed uranium-tipped weapons used by the Allies in
the 1991 Gulf War. The fund was used to fly her to
Glasgow for treatment but she went blind.
It was a cause Amineh and George battled
for, but it was criticised for becoming too political
and not seeking full charitable status.
Until now, little has been known of Amineh's
background. But a long- term acquaintance said:
"George is immensely proud of his wife.
"We don't know why he has kept her
under wraps this long, though.
"It could be that he is anxious that
her Middle Eastern roots could cause her problems in
the light of death threats he has received because of
his devotion to that part of the world."
Amineh's family have suffered for their
beliefs - her brothers were jailed and her uncle
killed as they campaigned to reclaim the Occupied
Territories from Israeli control.
Close relative Ziad Abu-Zayyad was a Cabinet
minister under Arafat and his brother Khalil served
17 years in prison for fighting for the Palestinian
cause.
GEORGE - once dubbed the Member for Baghdad
Central because of his close links with Iraq - found
a soulmate in Amineh.
A close friend said: "She understands
him completely and although she believes just as
fervently in all his causes, she has the ability to
calm him too. And she can match him word for word
intellectually."
George said: "The night I saw her
changed my life. I saw this beautiful young woman in
the audience and made sure I was introduced to
her."
His marriage to wife Elaine had hit the
rocks, following his affair with a civil servant. The
couple, who have a daughter Lucy, 20, separated in
1987 but did not divorce for 12 years.
The flamboyant MP, also nicknamed Gorgeous
George, said that when he met Amineh "I was
pretty miserable and in a turbulent relationship
which was going badly.
"But as soon as I met Amineh I knew
things were different. We started to see each other
and fell head over heels."
She was equally smitten with the charming,
knowledgeable MP who felt so strongly about her
people.
Amineh said: "From the day I met him,
he was the most gentle and honest man I have ever
known.
"Once we got serious there were enough
people willing to tell me about his past and other
women.
"I didn't care about that. I see the
side that nobody else sees. I sometimes see him
worried and tired but I also see how committed he is
to his work."
Galloway is suspended by Labour
By George Jones, Political Editor
(Filed: 07/05/2003)
George Galloway was
suspended from the Labour Party last night while a
wide-ranging internal investigation is carried out
into complaints that his opposition to the war
against Iraq brought the
party into disrepute.
The inquiry could end
his career as a front-line Labour politician. Even if
he is cleared, his suspension could prevent his
gaining reselection this year as a Labour candidate
at the next election.
Mr Galloway condemned
his suspension as a "witch hunt" and
"tantamount to political exile". He said he
was being "silenced" for speaking out
against the war.
David Triesman, the
party's general secretary, said the suspension would
take effect immediately.
Mr Galloway, MP for
Glasgow Kelvin, now faces three investigations:
The Labour inquiry into
complaints that he acted contrary to Rule
2A.8, bringing the party "into disrepute
by behaviour that is prejudicial or grossly
detrimental to the party";
An inquiry by Sir Philip
Mawer, the parliamentary commissioner for
standards, into documents
discovered by The Daily Telegraph in Baghdad purporting to show that
Mr Galloway secretly received up to £375,000
a year from Saddam Hussein's regime;
An inquiry by the Charity
Commission into the application of funds raised by
the Mariam appeal
to treat sick Iraqi children. The Labour
inquiry is a serious blow to Mr Galloway, who
has emerged as one of Tony Blair's most
vociferous critics. A Labour MP said the
party seemed to be "throwing the
book" at him.
Mr Galloway,
who had eggs hurled at him at a May Day
rally, said his suspension was prejudicial to
his libel action
against The Daily Telegraph over claims that he took money from
Saddam. No libel proceedings have as yet been
served on the Telegraph.
The trigger
for the Labour Party inquiry was an interview
Mr Galloway gave for Abu Dhabi television on
March 28 in which he accused the Prime
Minister and President George W Bush of
attacking Iraq "like wolves".
Party
officials said he "seemingly invited
other Arab nations to fight against the
British Army".
In other
interviews, he accused Britain and America of
waging an "illegal" war. "The
best thing British troops can do is to refuse
illegal orders," he said.
A statement
issued by Labour made clear the leadership's
concern over other investigations into Mr
Galloway's conduct.
It said its
investigation, to be carried out by Chris
Lennie, the deputy general secretary, would
be "thorough". It is likely to take
months. Sanctions available to the national
executive range from a written warning to
expulsion.
Labour will
also investigate interviews in which Mr
Galloway seemed to say that he might stand
against an official Labour candidate.
Last month he
said that, if he were "cheated" out
of standing for the Glasgow Central
constituency, "I will defend that seat
as an independent".
Mr Galloway's
Kelvin seat is disappearing as a result of a
reduction in the number of Scottish MPs.
Labour will choose candidates for Glasgow
seats this autumn. If disciplinary
proceedings are still going on, Mr Galloway
will be ineligible to stand.
The Labour
leadership is also concerned about The Daily
Telegraph's discovery of Iraqi documents
purporting to show that Mr Galloway benefited
financially from Iraqi oil and food
contracts. He could face further action if he
fails to clear his name.
Mr Galloway
said his suspension and the investigations by
the Charity Commission and the parliamentary
standards commissioner were
"extraordinarily carefully co-ordinated
moves".
"No less
than three processes controlled by the Labour
leadership have been unleashed against me on
the same day," he said.
The
investigations threatened to prevent him
"proceeding down the proper legal
channels to clear my name".
"It is
completely unjust. In fact, it offends all
principles of natural justice. I have
embarked upon a considerable legal
undertaking to prove in court the falseness
of the allegations against me.
"But
this case will now run in parallel with a
kind of kangaroo court."
Mr Galloway
said: "Suspension from the party after
35 years of membership is particularly hard
to bear. It is tantamount to political
exile."
He suggested
that he was being vilified for his opposition
to war in Iraq.
"I have
been suspended for the words that I speak,
for the things that I believe in.
"It
really is grotesque that someone can be
suspended from the party for speaking against
a war."
Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited
A confidential memorandum sent to Saddam by his spy chief said that Mr Galloway asked an agent of the Mukhabarat secret service for a greater cut of Iraq's exports under the oil for food programme.
He led the Mariam Appeal, named after an Iraqi child he flew to Britain for leukaemia treatment. The campaign was the supposed beneficiary of his fund-raising.
recommends acceptance of the proposals.