[CPProt.net] German hostage devoted life to Iraq archaeology

[MSN CPPnet (Ton Cremers)]

German hostage devoted life to Iraq archaeology
29 Nov 2005 17:49:38 GMT

Source: Reuters
 
By Louis Charbonneau

BERLIN, Nov 29 (Reuters) - A German woman who has been abducted by gunmen in
Iraq has devoted her life to uncovering Iraq's cultural treasures and
fiercely criticised Washington for not preventing the looting of its
archaeological sites.

The hostage is Susanne Osthoff, a Bavarian archaeologist who spent decades
studying and excavating sites in Iraq to uncover the mysteries of ancient
Mesopotamia, often referred to as the "cradle of civilisation".

In May 2003, two months after the United States and Britain invaded Iraq to
oust Saddam Hussein, Osthoff brought reporters to the site of the ancient
city of Isin to show them how Iraq's most important sites were being
stripped clean by looters.

Osthoff had worked on a German excavation of the 4,000-year-old Isin from
the mid 1970s until the late 1980s, when U.N. sanctions forced most foreign
experts out of Iraq.

"In two weeks, they have ruined all the work that was done over 15 years,"
Osthoff was quoted by the New York Times as saying at the time.

In other media, she voiced disbelief that the U.S. and British invaders had
virtually ignored the sites.

A search on the online auction portal eBay shows it's not difficult to find
what could be looted Iraqi artefacts up for sale. At 1600 GMT, three
different cuneiform clay tablets purported to be from Mesopotamia or Sumer
were being auctioned.

Osthoff's mother, in an interview with Reuters Television, said Susanne gave
Iraq and its culture her "body and soul".

"She helped show the Americans what was happening to Iraq's cultural sites,"
Ingrid Hala said.

Shortly after midnight, Hala received terrible news from Germany's Foreign
Ministry -- her daughter had been kidnapped in Iraq and was being held by
gunmen who were threatening to kill her if Germany did not end cooperation
with Iraq's government.

An image from a tape brought to German state broadcaster ARD showed two
blindfolded people sitting on the ground surrounded by three armed, masked
men, one holding a rocket propelled grenade launcher, another reading from a
piece of paper.

PARALELLS WITH MARGARET HASSAN?

Germany's new Chancellor Angela Merkel has vowed to everything within her
power to save Osthoff and her driver. 

One German official told Reuters that they did not want her to end up like
Margaret Hassan, a British aid worker who was kidnapped and killed last year
by militants in Iraq.

Like Osthoff, Hassan spoke Arabic, had spent decades in Iraq and had devoted
her life to the country. Hassan had also criticised both the pre-war U.N.
sanctions and the invasion.

Osthoff witnessed Iraqis suffering during and after the war, which prompted
her to turn to relief work. A converted Muslim, she began working as
volunteer in Iraqi hospitals.

"She personally helped take care of the sick in the hospitals, day and
night, work that she had never actually learned how to do," Susanne
Osthoff's sister Anja told Germany's N24 news television.

But like many foreigners in Iraq, where bomb attacks and kidnappings are
commonplace, Osthoff lived in fear for her life and often travelled with
armed guards.

Germany's Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung daily said in a press release that
Osthoff told the paper in October she had been threatened by people close to
the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has claimed
responsibility for the murder of numerous hostages in Iraq.

"Of course she was afraid," Stephan Kroll, a professor of archaeology at the
Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich and a colleague of Osthoff's, told
Reuters Television. 

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