Examination of Witness (Questions 300-319)
Mr George Galloway
24 February 2005
Q300 Sir Philip Mawer:
Can you tell me when that letter to Mr Zureikat was written?
Mr Galloway:
Is there a date on it?
Q301 Sir Philip Mawer:
No, there is not a date on it. Do you know when it might be?
Do you recall when it might be?
Mr Galloway:
I would not like to take a guess. I could go back and try and
put it together in my mind.
Q302 Sir Philip Mawer:
Would it have been in 1999? When in relation to your setting
up of that campaign might it have been?
Mr Galloway:
It might have been in 1999. I would need to think about that.
Q303 Sir Philip Mawer:
Okay, if you could confirm that one way or the other.
Mr Galloway:
Short of a date being on it, it is a little hazardous to guess.
Q304 Sir Philip Mawer:
I understand. If you could give us your best estimate—
Mr Galloway:
stab at it—
Q305 Sir Philip Mawer:—that
would be helpful. Why did you feel that you needed Mr Zureikat
as your representative in relation to the campaign?
Mr Galloway:
Because the Iraqi forest of bureaucracy is a very thick one and
because we had a lot of need to negotiate our way through that
forest. We had all sorts of issues relating to the child, where
she was going to be allowed to live, where she was going to go
to hospital, whether she was going to receive medicine from us
or through them. They were very tricky and difficult about that.
They had a position at that time that they did not allow medical
aid to come in because they felt that this was allowing people
to salve their consciences whilst the bigger issues of the sanctions
were not resolved and also because I was aware of the danger of
people—it is a very vulgar word to use in front of ladies—poncing
on my name.
Q306 Sir Philip Mawer:
Misusing your name?
Mr Galloway:
Worse than that. There were people in hotel lobbies claiming
lifelong friendships with me when talking to Iraqi officials and
so on whom I had never met or heard of and I was conscious of
the need to avoid anyone, as it were, profiting from a supposed
and false association with me. So for a whole variety of reasons
I thought it was important to have one person who would, as it
were, speak for the Mariam Appeal and the campaign that we were
running to the exclusion of any others so that there would be
no confusion about that.
Q307 Sir Philip Mawer:
The letter also mentions his role as your representative in relation
to the Emergency Committee in Iraq. Can you just tell me what
that was?
Mr Galloway:
In fact, he had no role in that because the Emergency Committee
effectively was superseded by the work of the Mariam Appeal but
the Emergency Committee was an older committee campaigning around
the issues of war and sanctions in Iraq.
Q308 Sir Philip Mawer:
UKbased?
Mr Galloway:
Yes.
Q309 Sir Philip Mawer:
The next document,[20]
and maybe in a sense the main document which the Daily Telegraph
reported that it had unearthed, was a letter from allegedly the
head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service to the President's Office,
the socalled "Mariam campaign memo", I think
is the best way of describing it, and it makes a number of allegations.
It suggests, as you will recall, that Mr Zureikat had conveyed
your desire to the Iraqi regime for more financial support and
that in that context he had arranged a meeting between you, Zureikat
and a member of the Iraqi Intelligence Service on Boxing Day 1999.
The memo, which is dated 3 January 2000, results from, it is
said, those approaches by Mr Zureikat at that meeting and suggests
that you had asked for more support and goes on to make the proposal
that you ought to receive more support to assist you in your activities.
My next set of questions relates to that essentially. I think
you were in Baghdad on 26 December 1999 and you have accepted
that?
Mr Galloway:
Yes.
Q310 Sir Philip Mawer:
Whom did you meet on that day in Baghdad?
Mr Galloway:
May I before answering that just remind you that this memo that
you call the "main" memo is an unsigned memo to an unnamed
head of intelligence referring to a meeting with an unnamed intelligence
officer. I should have thought that these three omissions were
worthy of note. In other words, nobody involved in the supposed
conversations can be traced or identified because they are not
named and they are not signed.
Q311 Ms Barry:
Is it not signed but illegibly so?
Mr Galloway:
Signed illegibly and to an unnamed head of intelligence. I do
not know who the head of intelligence of the Iraqi regime was
but I assume he would have been on the "Pack of Cards"
of people to be captured. I presume therefore that he is in the
hands of the occupiers of Iraq. I have no doubt that if he has
been questioned he might have been asked whether he did receive
such a memo. I am unaware of any evidence which has flowed from
that direction supporting the authenticity of this memorandum.
So that is my first response. My second response is that I have
never to my knowledge—and one can never be sure either in
this country or any other who is working for the intelligence
services and I have sat on parliamentary benches with colleagues
who turn out to have been working for the intelligence services
so you can never say with certainty that you have never met someone
from the intelligence services in any country—but to the
best of my knowledge, I have never met anyone from Iraqi intelligence.
If someone had said to me, "We would like you to meet someone
from Iraqi intelligence," I would have given it a very wide
berth. I have reached the age of 50 without having anything to
do with any intelligence services and I would have preferred to
keep it that way. So the best of my knowledge is that I never
met any Iraqi intelligence officer at any time and I certainly
had no meeting with one on Boxing Day of 1999. Obviously I cannot
prove that. It is one of these proving of innocence issues.
I cannot prove that I never met anybody from Iraqi intelligence
on that day or any other but I put this to you—and it seems
to me a matter of logic—I had unlimited access to the very
top leadership of the Iraqi regime. In August of 2002 I asked
to meet Saddam Hussein and I met him the next day. I could have
asked any of the top leaders of the Iraqi regime for financial
support if I had wanted to. I did not want to and I did not ask
them, so why on earth would I sit down for a meeting on Boxing
Day with someone in the intelligence services sufficiently lowly
that he has to write a memo to the head of intelligence and where
the head of intelligence then has to write a memo to the head
of the Iraqi political leadership about me creating a paper trail
about me? Why would I do that when the very previous day, Christmas
Day, I had spent many hours in the presence of and the company
of the very top leaders of the Iraqi state? If I had wanted to
raise money for our campaign from the Iraqi regime I would have
raised it then, not asked for a meeting with a presumably relatively
junior intelligence officer the next day.
Q312 Sir Philip Mawer:
Did you discuss the question of support for the campaign at any
meetings you had in Baghdad on either the 25 or 26 December?
Mr Galloway:
No, I was very, very careful never to compromise our work by discussing
that sort of issue. Our financial supporters were much safer from
my point of view. It was a matter of deliberate policy on my
part because I am not a fool that I sought financial support from
allies of Great Britain and the United States for our campaign
and I got it in large amounts. I raised more than half a million
pounds from the President of the United Arab Emirates and a substantial
amount of money from the Crown Prince, effectively the ruler,
of Saudi Arabia. I did that precisely because it would be more
difficult to be attacked by the British and American establishments.
It has got me attacked on the Left quite robustly but it would
be very difficult for ministers to complain about financial support
for our campaign being given by people who were conservative,
royal allies of theirs. I knew that asking for money from the
Iraqi regime would be fatal to our campaign and fatal to my credibility
and therefore I never did it, not on Boxing Day, not to an intelligence
officer, not to a political leader, not to anyone; I never did
it.
Q313 Sir Philip Mawer:
So you had no conversation on 26 December 1999 about the funding
of the Mariam campaign?
Mr Galloway:
Absolutely none.
Q314 Sir Philip Mawer:
You mentioned a number of supporters of the Mariam campaign in
what you have just said.
Mr Galloway:
Two.
Q315 Sir Philip Mawer:
Two of them. A third major supporter was Mr Zureikat.
Mr Galloway:
Yes.
Q316 Sir Philip Mawer:
He was I think possibly the second largest donor to the campaign?
Mr Galloway:
He was.
Q317 Sir Philip Mawer:
Some hundreds of thousands of pounds?
Mr Galloway:
He was.
Q318 Sir Philip Mawer:
Is it possible that Mr Zureikat may have acted on your behalf
in seeking support?
Mr Galloway:
He certainly did not act on my behalf. I do not believe that
he did so at all on anybody's behalf, but he certainly did not
do it on my behalf.
Q319 Sir Philip Mawer:
Did you have any conversations with him about that?
Mr Galloway:
Since the Telegraph story of course I have. He denies
absolutely any such meeting with an intelligence officer or conveying
any such request as referred to in those documents, and I believe
him.
20 Volume II, WE 4. Back
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