Margaret Hassan was an Irish aid worker who had worked in Iraq for many years until she was abducted by unidentified assailants in Baghdad during the Iraqi insurgency. Her captors subsequently filmed and released a video of her stating that she was living her "last hours" before she pleaded for the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq; she has not been seen since, and her remains were never recovered.
Hassan was born in Dublin, Ireland, in the final months of World War II. Her family soon immigrated to the United Kingdom, where she ended up marrying an Iraqi man who had been studying in London. She relocated to Iraq with him in the 1970s, eventually learning Arabic and becoming an Iraqi citizen. Hassan remained in Baghdad during the Iran–Iraq War and the Gulf War.