Charity was formed to help young girl with leukaemia - and highlight effect of sanctions

The Mariam Appeal was established in a blaze of publicity to pay to bring a girl suffering from leukaemia to Britain for the treatment she was unable to receive in Iraq.

Mariam Hamza, four, had been selected to highlight the plight of sick children through the UN trade embargo, which denied Iraq drug imports. The image of the girl gazing up trustingly towards the camera from her Baghdad hospital bed ensured that she and her 88-year-old grandmother were greeted by phalanxes of cameras when they stepped off their flight from Baghdad at Heathrow airport in April 1998.

By the time she flew back home, she had become either a symbol of the iniquity of Iraqi sanctions or the unwitting subject of a dramatic political stunt by Mr Galloway, who had first met the sick girl in a Baghdad hospital.

The MP had asked Robin Cook, then the Foreign Secretary, for help and after representations to the sanctions committee of the United Nations she was allowed to travel to Britain for treatment. Ann Clwyd, a long-term campaigner against the regime, said it was unfair to give one child special treatment. "Why one child? This happens to be a very pretty, very winsome-looking child. I think it's a huge propaganda coup."

The origin of the majority of the money was never made clear. The appeal was never granted charitable status, so there was no need for its accounts to be made public.

Mr Galloway refused to tell where the money had come from because it was a political struggle. After the Daily Telegraph's discovery of documents, he said that Fawaz Zureikat, a Jordanian businessman, and the governments of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia were the main backers.

At the opening of the appeal, Mr Galloway said the treatment would cost as much as £50,0000 with money also donated for drugs and equipment to be sent to Iraq. Mr Galloway said that about £1m was eventually raised, but insisted that he had never received any money from the appeal. He said that the appeal paid for his campaigning work only after the girl's needs were taken care of. The appeal has now been closed down.

Mariam Hamza spent six months in Britain and received treatment at hospitals in Glasgow before returning home to Iraq. She took with her drugs costing £3,000 for treatment for another two years.

The girl, now aged eight, is clear of leukaemia but was left blind after a medical error in Iraq. She receives a small stipend from the fund. She was believed to be in Baghdad with her family at the start of the American-led invasion.