Britain Recalls Iraq Envoy After Reporter Is Executed

Britain recalled its ambassador to Iraq today after the government of President Saddam Hussein ignored international appeals and hanged a London-based journalist accused of espionage.

Britain also suspended all ministerial visits and military training programs.

The decision to recall London’s ambassador to Iraq, Harold Walker, came after British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd said he was “shocked and repelled” by the execution, and he could not remember any other recent case of such disregard for united world opinion.

Farzad Bazoft, 31, was sentenced to death on Saturday by a military court that accused him of spying for Israel when he entered an unauthorized military complex north of Baghdad last September. He was investigating for the Observer newspaper an explosion reported to have killed hundreds of people.

Officials said a British nurse, Daphne Parish, 52, who was accused of driving Bazoft to the restricted zone, had been shifted to a central jail to begin her 15-year sentence also passed by the revolutionary tribunal.

Robin Kealy, the British consul general who witnessed the execution inside a Baghdad prison, told the BBC that Bazoft looked “hollow-eyed and subdued” as he was led to the gallows.

“He passed on a written message and a number of oral messages to friends and colleagues . . . and he repeated that he had been a journalist going after a scoop,” Kealy said.

British diplomats said Iraqi Information Minister Latif Nassif Jassim delivered the body to the British Embassy and said: “Mrs. Thatcher wanted him alive. We are giving you his body. . . . Iraq will not be affected by Britain’s anger.”