In 1990, Farzad Bazoft was hanged by Saddam Hussein on false charges of espionage. Now files have revealed why the state was so reluctant to intervene

‘It would be bad for our interests’: why Thatcher ignored the murder of an Observer journalist

The execution of the Observer journalist Farzad Bazoft on 15 March 1990, ordered by Saddam Hussein, provoked outrage around the world. Yet later that same day Margaret Thatcher and her government decided not to take any action, against what ministers admitted was a “ruthless” regime, for fear of jeopardising lucrative exports to Iraq.

In memos written two years after Saddam used mustard gas to slaughter more than 3,000 Kurds and only months before he marched into Kuwait, sparking war, newly released cabinet documents reveal that trade was still the uppermost concern for ministers.

Even as the news of the hanging of the 31-year-old reporter was coming in, and despite public promises of firm action against what was clearly an increasingly dangerous dictator, cabinet ministers decided not to impose any sanctions.

Trade or credit restrictions on Iraq would be “ineffective in influencing the attitude of the Iraqi government” and would inflict “disproportionate damage on UK industry”, Norman Lamont, a future chancellor but at that time the chief secretary to the Treasury, noted in a memo to foreign secretary Douglas Hurd, the files disclose.

“Opinion here has been deeply shocked by Iraq’s behaviour,” Hurd conceded in reply, before making clear he shared Lamont’s concerns. “We have a considerable commercial presence to protect in Iraq,” he wrote.

Lamont, now Lord Lamont of Lerwick, told the Observer that he had little memory of events from 27 years ago and thought it unlikely he would have had much input into any action taken by Britain against Saddam’s government.

“I have no recollection of being involved in this sad story, although I remember vividly being shocked by the tragic death of the young man,” he said. “There was some argument about how British was he – he did have an Iranian passport and that was the decisive thing: he wasn’t a British citizen.”

Bazoft, an Iranian-born freelance reporter who held British residency, had been invited by Saddam’s government to visit Iraq with other journalists on a group trip to report on elections planned for the country’s Kurdish areas. It was his sixth visit to the country and he was keen to get a story that the Observer could use. The day he left, in September 1989, the Independent published a report about an explosion in August at the al-Hillah military complex south of Baghdad, suspected of modifying ballistic missiles and secretly manufacturing chemical weapons. There were rumours of hundreds of deaths. Bazoft asked a British nurse, Daphne Parish, to drive him out there: he took photographs and collected soil samples.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Protests outside the Iraqi embassy in London in 1990 after the announcement of Bazoft’s death. Photograph: Bill Cross/Daily Mail / Rex

He was arrested at Baghdad airport while waiting for his flight back to London. He was incarcerated at Abu Ghraib prison where he was kept in solitary confinement, starved and beaten. On 1 November he was placed in front of television cameras and confessed to being an Israeli agent.

In 2003, the Observer tracked down Kadem Askar, the colonel in the Iraqi intelligence service who interrogated Bazoft. He admitted that he knew Bazoft was innocent, but that he was powerless to obstruct Saddam’s personal orders to have him convicted and executed.

Within months of Bazoft’s death – his body was unceremoniously returned to his parents in the UK, turning up at Heathrow unannounced in a rough box – Saddam had sent his troops over the British-drawn border between Iraq and Kuwait in the invasion that sparked the Gulf war of 1990-91.

The files from March 1990 were released as part of an initiative to gradually reduce the embargo on official government files from 30 years to 20, and are among Cabinet Office papers from 1989 and 1990 that are now available to the public at the National Archives in Kew, west London.

They reveal that Charles Powell, Margaret Thatcher’s foreign affairs adviser, told the prime minister that there was little doubt there would be calls to suspend credit or impose trade restrictions on Saddam’s Iraq. He added: “But we would not get international support for this and it would not actually achieve anything.” Lamont agreed.

Five days after Bazoft was hanged, Hurd warned: “In the atmosphere brought about by our present difficulties, Iraq would see any action against credit as a further political response to Bazoft and would hit back hard. That would be bad for our wider commercial interests where our competitors would happily step in to take up our share of the market.”

The only action the Thatcher government took was not to subsidise a planned Birmingham trade mission to Iraq and avoid giving publicity to it, the hitherto classified documents show.

During Bazoft and Parish’s six-month imprisonment, smear stories and allegations against him appeared in several newspapers. Saddam said the two were British or Israeli spies. There has never been any evidence to support the allegation and, indeed, records uncovered in Baghdad in 2003 showed Saddam was well aware of this and simply wanted a “punishment for Margaret Thatcher” and to humiliate Britain. A one-day trial of the two was held in secret – in Arabic, which neither defendant understood – and without any defence.

Parish was sentenced to 15 years in jail. Ten months after Bazoft’s death, she was allowed to return to the UK.

Two backbench Tory MPs at the time repeated the notion that Bazoft was a spy, something picked up by newspapers, and there had long been suspicion that another story, revealing Bazoft had acquired a criminal record as a young man, had been leaked to discredit him.

Certainly the government was aware of his past. The files at Kew contain a note sent by Sara Dent, private secretary to David Waddington, then home secretary, to Powell before Bazoft’s execution. “You might wish to know,” she said, “that from our inquiries on his immigration files, Mr Bazoft, the Observer journalist who has been sentenced to death for spying in Iraq, has a criminal record in this country.”

Dent added: “Although this has no bearing on his sentence in Iraq, it may be raised by the Iraqis or by the press.”

She noted that Bazoft had arrived in 1975 as a student. Four years later, he was in financial difficulties and his application for an extension to his stay was refused. He went into a building society, threatened to blow it up and demanded money from a cashier. He obtained £475 – the amount he was in debt – and was arrested later that day. There was no bomb but he was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

His deportation order was revoked after evidence emerged that Iran had issued a warrant for his arrest as an “anti-revolutionary”. His family were critics of Ayatollah Khomeini and he had been allowed to stay in the UK on an “exceptional basis”, Dent wrote.

She ended her note to Powell by saying that the Home Office “proposed not to volunteer this information but not deny it if it is raised with us”.

Tabloid newspapers gave prominent front-page coverage to Bazoft’s previous criminal conviction, while MPs Rupert Allason and Terry Dicks slated his character. Lord (Woodrow) Wyatt told his News of the World readers that Britain should “start maximising trade and stop talking about Farzad Bazoft”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Saddam Hussein with his sons Uday (left) and Qusay. Photograph: Faleh Kheiber/Reuters

Donald Trelford, then editor of the Observer, described the coverage of Bazoft’s imprisonment and execution by some editors on Fleet Street as “persistently hostile”. He said that, even 20 years on, it remained hard to “contain one’s anger – not just at the insane barbarity of Saddam, but at some Tory MPs and the parts of the British press that tried to pin the blame for his murder on poor Farzad himself”.

That the government of the day had consistently turned a blind eye to atrocities committed by Saddam became clear at the Scott arms-to-Iraq inquiry set up by John Major after the collapse of a trial of the directors of a Coventry-based machine tools firm, Matrix Churchill. It emerged during the trial that the directors were encouraged by MI5 and MI6 to spy on Saddam’s weapons programme when they visited Iraqi factories.

Chemical weapons were known to have been used by Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war and, in March 1988, Iraqi warplanes attacked the Kurdish town of Halabja with chemical weapons, gassing between 3,000 and 5,000 men, women and children. At that time, the government had decided to relax controls on arms exports to Iraq.

The files, released last week, include a document from 1989 in which the private secretary of the former Tory chancellor and foreign secretary, Geoffrey Howe, notes that Tariq Aziz, Saddam’s foreign minister, had promised that Iraq would not use chemical weapons in future. At the time ministers were planning to increase export credit guarantees for Iraq in the hope that British companies would win further contracts.

Later that year, Hurd told Thatcher: “The Iraqi regime is ruthless and disagreeable but its influence is growing following the Iran/Iraq conflict [which ended in 1988].” He warned of the dangers of taking measures that would damage “British business”.

Also in the National Archives is a copy of a letter Thatcher sent to Saddam after the decision to release Parish. Dated 16 July 1990, it reads: “I was very pleased to hear of your Excellency’s decision to release Mrs Daphne Parish on humanitarian grounds … We have long-standing ties and there are many positive aspects to our relations on which we can build.”

A plaque and photograph remembering Farzad Bazoft remain in place in the Observer newsroom

Iraq and Britain: a short history

1941 Iraq is reoccupied by Britain, less than a decade after gaining independence from British mandate.

1975 Iranian-born Farzad Bazoft, aged 16, comes to live in the UK with his parents.

1979 Saddam Hussein, of Iraq’s Arab nationalist Ba’ath party, becomes leader.

1980 Iran-Iraq war begins, ending in stalemate eight years later.

1981 Israeli air raid destroys nuclear reactor near Baghdad.

1988 Saddam attacks Kurdish town with poison gas. Thousands die.

1989 An explosion at al-Hillah, 60 miles from Baghdad, sparks rumours of secret military operations. In September, Iraq invites western journalists to cover elections in Kurdistan. Bazoft accepts, and enlists help from British nurse Daphne Parish to drive him to al-Hillah to investigate. They are both later arrested.

1990 Newspapers run stories based on a Tory MP’s false claim that Bazoft was a spy. His criminal record is leaked to the press. On 15 March Bazoft is executed. Margaret Thatcher writes to Saddam saying she is “horrified”. On 2 August Iraq invades Kuwait, starting the first Gulf war.

1991 Iraq withdraws from Kuwait and is subjected to weapons inspections. A brutal crackdown on Kurdish and southern Shia rebellions begins. Parish is released and allowed to return to the UK.

2002 Tony Blair publishes “dodgy dossier” into Iraq’s military capability.

2003 US-led invasion topples Saddam’s regime. Documents found in Baghdad show Saddam knew Bazoft was not a spy but killed him to humiliate Britain.