THE demand for the release of women prisoners from Iraqi jails in exchange for the lives of Ken Bigley and his fellow hostages is one of the most baffling elements of the hostage drama.
The United States and Iraqi government forces insist there are only two women remaining in custody, both “high value” detainees and neither being held at Abu Ghraib or Umm Qasr.
They are Dr Rihab Taha, a British-educated microbiologist nicknamed “Dr Germ” who was in charge of Iraq’s biological weapons programme in the late 1980s.
She studied at the University of East Anglia and was married to Amir Rashid Muhammad al-Ubaydi, who headed Iraq’s missile development programme and eventually became Oil Minister.
The other is Dr Huda Ammash, another scientist involved in Iraq’s weapons programme known to US Intelligence as “Mrs Anthrax”.
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She received much of her early training in the US. She obtained an MSc in microbiology from Texas Women’s University in Denton and later spent four years at the University of Missouri—Columbia.
The US authorities have refused to release Dr Ammash, even though she suffers from breast cancer. But what interest Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his supporters would have in their release is difficult to discern.
On the face of it his Tawhid and Jihad group would have little concern for the freedom of those who loyally served Saddam Hussein.
The suspicion — or at least that of al-Zarqawi — must therefore be that there are other women prisoners who have not been disclosed by the authorities.
Another theory is that the fugitive Jordanian, hearing daily rumours and conspiracy theories from his cohorts, simply did not know how few women were still in captivity.
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It is however, possible, that with recent reports of divisions between Iraqi insurgents and al-Zarqawi’s foreign fighters in Fallujah, the shrewd and media-savvy al-Zarqawi may simply have calculated that the release of women detainees would be a popular demand among Muslims generally, and Iraqis in particular.
Lieutenant-Colonel Barry Johnson, a spokesman for the US military, insisted that apart from the two high-profile scientists, there were no other women in Baghdad or Umm Qasr prisons. He said “about five” of the last remaining women were released from Abu Ghraib on July 15-16. Amnesty International last night said it was not aware of any women detainees still held in Abu Ghraib in connection with the insurgency.
Christian Peacemaker Teams, an American human rights group working with detainees in Iraq, said it had received reports from released male prisoners that they saw women in custody. But a CPT activist said the most recent of these reports dated from June.