Days later a Boston newspaper, The Christian Science Monitor (CSM), dwarfed the Telegraph's 'scoop' by claiming documents found in a house belonging to Saddam's son Qusay, showed payments totalling $10m paid to Galloway from 1992 to this year. In the CSM report, Qusay's accounts department is told by him to 'issue the check and deliver to Mr George Galloway -- do this fast and inform me'.
Learning the full content of the CSM report, Galloway says this has moved the case against him 'from tragedy to farce', adding: 'I'm now clear. I am the target of a systematic campaign of forgery.'
Before the arrival of the $10m allegations, Galloway's initial belief that all the Telegraph's documents were forgeries was beginning to slip. He was coming round to the idea that he may have been set up from the inside, and had begun backtracking, considering that the Telegraph's material may have been genuine.
No longer. The CSM account puts Galloway in Iraq in 1992, lists meetings with Qusay Hussein, and talks of issued cheques. Claiming the report is a farce, he adds : 'It talks of cheques. But the whole point of sanctions is that Iraq has no banking facilities. The only way of cashing a cheque is to go to a bank in one of the presidential palaces, so why bother with the cheque? And I never set foot in Iraq till 1993. No-one had heard of me in Iraq in 1992.'
article by James Cusick
_______________
George Galloway claims he has been set up by the British and US governments to 'exact revenge' for his high-profile anti-war campaigning over the invasion of Iraq.
In an exclusive interview yesterday with the Sunday Herald, Galloway said: 'What is clear is that the war party, meaning both the US and UK, are determined to exact revenge and to silence the remaining opponents they have for what they have done.'
As evidence of their desire to punish their political opponents, Galloway cited US Secretary of State Colin Powell's statement last week that France would face 'consequences' because of its opposition to the US-led war in Iraq.
Galloway believes his leadership role in both the mass demonstrations that saw two million protesters take to the streets and the largest parliamentary revolt in Commons history left him a clear target.
_______________
Galloway said that smear tactics had been used against outspoken critics before: 'Arthur Scargill was systematically smeared for years over a story that his mortgage had been paid by Libya during the time his members [of the NUM] were out on strike. The story later turned out to be false.'
He added that forged documents had also been used to justify the war against Iraq, most notably the publication of false invoices said to be part of a plan to import uranium from Niger into Iraq. The UN is currently investigating the now discredited claims.
Galloway said the origin of the documents that refer to him was so far impossible to verify and that it was unlikely British intelligence agencies had any direct involvement, instead pointing the finger at the US, the Iraqi National Congress and uhohIsraeli intelligence.
James Cusick Sunday Herald (Glasgow) April 27, 2003____________________________________________________________________
In addition to his aggressive debating style, he has the reputation of a man who likes money and foreign travel. He enjoys fast cars, expensive suits and top-of-the-range cigars, and revealed during the week that he has mortgages totalling around �366,000 on two properties in London and Portugal, suggesting he faces monthly repayments that would make an appreciable dent in a backbench MP's salary of �56,000. However, Mr Galloway supplements his MP's income with at least �70,000 a year from journalism.
In 2000-01 he made 11 trips which were paid for by the Mariam Appeal, a trust he founded to help a young Iraqi girl receive treatment for leukaemia, which is now being investigated by the Charity Commission. These were only some of his trips, almost all paid for from Arab sources.
When he was a young secretary of the Dundee Labour Party, his early career was dogged by allegations of financial irregularities in the running of a drinking club. More allegations cropped up when he was general secretary of War on Want. An auditor cleared him of misuse of funds. He repaid �1,720 in contested expenses.
Soon after his arrival in the Commons in 1987, after he had unseated Roy Jenkins in Glasgow Hillhead, Mr Galloway admitted to having conducted two extramarital affairs while he was a charity worker, helping earn him the nickname Gorgeous George. His first marriage ended that year, and he later married a Palestinian biologist, Dr Amineh Abu-Zayyad, who is assumed to provide much of the inspiration for his fierce support of the Arabs.
Independent Uk 27 April 2003
