21 January 2005	Friday	10 Zilhaj 1425

WASHINGTON, Jan 20: The Washington Post on Thursday retracted a 2003 story about an Iraqi woman who claimed to have been arrested, sexually assaulted and made to watch soldiers of the Saddam regime mutilating her husband's body.

"Fresh examination of her statement," shows that Jumana Michael Hanna, had "made false claims about her past," the Post said. Hanna's story was used, among others, by US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz in congressional testimony to justify the invasion of Iraq.

In the July 2003 story, Hanna was quoted as saying that she was imprisoned after she had eloped with her husband, Haitam Jamil Anwar, whom she said was of Indian origin. The marriage, she said, was not valid under Iraqi law because she had not received the proper permission to marry a foreign national.

She said she had gone to the Iraqi Olympic Committee building in Baghdad, hoping that Saddam Hussein's son, Uday, would help. Instead, she said, she was arrested, and between November 1993 and early 1996, was held in cells at the adjoining police academy where she said she and other female prisoners were beaten and raped.

Soon after the Post published the story, other US newspapers blew it out of proportion and turned Hanna into an Iraqi heroin who somehow managed to escape to the US from the clutches of the Saddam regime.

Her testimony led to the arrest of several Iraqi security officials for torturing her and killing her husband. Based on her testimony, US officials took her into protective custody in Baghdad, and then brought to the US where she received political asylum and financial support.

The reporter, Peter Finn, who wrote the July 2003 story, said in his article on Thursday that recent interviews in Baghdad showed that her husband was alive and had left Iraq several months ago. They also said that while Hanna was imprisoned in Baghdad in the 1990s, it was not for the reason she told The Post.

Toma Kalabat, a cousin of Hanna's husband, offered a different account in an interview with The Post. He said Hanna had been imprisoned, but said he believed she was jailed for cheating people out of money on the promise that she could get them visas to emigrate to Western Europe.