WA: Perth peace campaigner to return home from Iraq
By Selina Day
PERTH, April 15 AAP - A Perth church minister and peace campaigner who comforted Iraqisduring the height of the war will return home tomorrow.
Uniting Church clergyman Neville Watson left Baghdad, his home for the past three months,at the weekend, and has been in Jordan preparing his passage home.
His son Mike said Mr Watson, 73, would return to Perth overnight and host a media conferencemid-morning tomorrow.
Mr Watson left the Iraqi capital believing he had finished his pastoral work there,and fearing that anarchy would lead to the outbreak of civil war.
During his three months in Baghdad, in which buildings surrounding his hotel were bombed,Mr Watson visited casualties in hospitals and gave support to locals devastated by thewar.
In emails to his family - some of which were smuggled out on disc after Iraqi authoritiesrestricted foreigners' communications - he spoke of a six-year-old girl who had becomeparaplegic from shrapnel embedded in her back.
He said the image of the wounded and frail girl named Zaha would remain etched in his memory.
Mr Watson had refused to take precautions during the war, such as donning a gas maskor going to bomb shelters, saying he wanted to express solidarity with local people, whowere unable to take such measures.
The humanitarian, who has been to other war zones including Bosnia and the Gulf duringthe 1991 conflict, told his family the bombing was the worst he had seen.
Mike Watson said the family was relieved his father was returning home safely, buttheir feelings were tempered by his horrible first-hand stories of what the Iraqi peoplehad gone through in the US-led war.
AAP sd/gl/jlw
KEYWORD: IRAQ AUST WATSON
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