SPECIAL REPORT. UN representative in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, assassinated in 2003 by U.S. operatives

SPECIAL REPORT. UN representative in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, assassinated in 2003 by U.S. operatives

On August 19, 2003, at 5:37 pm, a van exploded at the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, the headquarters for the UN Peace Mission for Iraq. The blast ripped through a wall of the building causing a side of the building to collapse. Twenty-two UN employees were killed in the blast, blamed by the U.S. occupation forces and echoed by the corporate media on a suicide bombing. An additional 100 people inside the building, including U.S. military personnel, were injured. Trapped under the rubble but alive for a number of hours before he died of his injuries was Sergio Vieira de Mello, a Brazilian diplomat who was the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Other UN staff members killed in the blast included nationals of Egypt, Britain, Italy, United States, Spain, Canada, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, and the Philippines.

In an exclusive to WMR, a senior U.S. flag rank officer in Baghdad at the time of the bombing of the UN mission has revealed that the bomb blast that killed de Mello and his colleagues was not a suicide attack but the result of a remote-controlled bomb placed in the van that was parked directly next to de Mello's office inside the U.S. military-controlled access zone. U.S. rescue teams were under orders not to excavate de Mello from the rubble of the Canal Hotel until after it was determined that he was dead.
The U.S. flag rank officer had met with de Mello on August 18. During the meeting, de Mello told the high-ranking U.S. Army officer that he was compiling evidence of U.S. troops in Iraq torturing Iraqi detainees. The Army officer relayed de Mello's concern up the chain-of-command. The next day, de Mello was dead, along with 21 members of his UN mission. A second bombing of the UN mission the following month resulted in the UN withdrawing its 600 member mission from Iraq. The authorization for the twin bombings of the UN mission came from the highest levels of the Bush White House, according to our source. However, in typical fashion, responsibility for the bombings came from "Al Qaeda's" chief in Iraq, Abu Musab Zarqawi.

Zarqawi was said to have been killed in a targeted precision-guided bombing of his safe house in Iraq by U.S. Air Force F-16s.

De Mello also expressed concern to the U.S. officer about outside actors involved in torture in Iraq, elements later identified as Israelis. The torture by U.S. forces of Iraqi detainees was not reported by the media until April 2004.

De Mello was the highest-ranking victim of a terrorist assassination since Count Folke Bernadotte, the UN mediator in Palestine, was killed by Zionist terrorists in 1948 and UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold's plane was shot down over Northern Rhodesia by Belgian mercenaries from Katanga that were linked to the CIA.

In 2008, the UN General Assembly voted to designate August 19 as World Humanitarian Day in honor of those UN workers who were killed in Baghdad. In light of the revelation that the Bush White House ordered the assassination of de Mello and members of his staff, the day should be known as World Humanitarian and Awareness of U.S. Sponsored Terrorism Day.