Michael Jansen

Ahead of the war, the president's adviser on weaponry, Lt. General Amer Al Saadi, flatly denied the accusation. The chief of the UN inspection team seeking to prove or disprove the allegation, Hans Blix, said that Iraq may not have the weapons Bush and Blair still claim it possessed. A former UN inspector, Scott Ritter, said that 95 per cent of Iraq's banned weapons had been destroyed by the mid-1990s. Nevertheless, Bush and Blair persisted with this charge. But no banned weapons have been found, although US teams of experts have been combing the country in a desperate search for these non-existent weapons.

Meanwhile, Saadi, the man who told the truth (unlike Bush and Blair) resides in solitary confinement in a small cell at Camp Cropper, the US prison for ³high value² detainees at Baghdad International Airport. Saadi, number 55 on the US list of most wanted Iraqis, surrendered to the US military on April 11, 2003, believing he would be interrogated and set free.

His interrogators, from the US Central Intelligence Agency and the department of defence, say that they have finished the debriefing and his release has been promised. But Saadi remains, day after day, in his small cell going about his daily routine. An active man who was always well dressed and enjoyed good food and drink, he now wears a yellow jumpsuit and dines off military rations. He is allowed out of his cell for one hour for exercise in a yard, but spends the rest of the time locked up with a cot, mattress and plastic chair. He has a Koran and one recreational book at a time, but no pen, paper, radio or television.

He plays solitaire on a battery-powered toy whenever he is allowed batteries. He also composes and solves crossword puzzles in his head. Recently, he began doing the same with poetry. Once a week he is permitted to write a single page letter to his German wife, Helma, who waits impatiently for him to come home to their elegant home in Baghdad. She has seen him only three times since his detention and spoken to him several times on the phone. But visits and telephone calls are now banned.

Last weekend, two of Saadi's brothers, Abdullah and Nuri (a well known dermatologist), died. But he remained incommunicado. He could not sit with the family in mourning or accompany their bodies to the Shiite holy city of Najaf for burial. The Bush administration is not made up of ³compassionate Republicans², but of hard-hearted, vengeful men who cannot afford to forgive Saadi for being right.

Dr Radwan Al Saadi, a British-trained geologist who is director of finance and accounting at the Ministry of Oil, told The Jordan Times: ³They [the Bush administration] are afraid to admit even to themselves that they have lied. They are keeping him to make sure he is silent. Amer is simply telling the truth to people who are lying, they cannot keep on blaming others for what they have done [waging a war which has been disastrous for both the US and Iraq]. The more powerful you are, the more able you should be to admit mistakes. The opposite is true.²
Radwan continued: ³I keep asking, `Please tell me what he has done'.² He is told that Amer has not given them all the information they seek, suggesting that he is being punished for refusing to tell them that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Radwan said that his brother, a scientist who won a military scholarship to specialise in rocketry in Britain, made his contribution to his country's weapons programmes in the 1970s and 1980s when the government had good relations with the Western powers. ³They don't like to be reminded that they were the best allies of Saddam and Iraq [at the time]. We saw the big policy makers of the world supporting his government so [we thought] it must have its positive sides. Indeed, it was not a bad government in the seventies and eighties. [The invasion of Kuwait in] 1990 changed their minds but we did not have the luxury of changing our opinion.² Radwan stated: ³In 1991, Amer's relationship [with the government] changed. He was no longer in military industry. He became minister of industry and a member of the committee dealing with armaments, but he was not its head. In 1993, he retired. He became adviser to the president, but did not see him after 1995. He [was always] a professional² serving his country.

Although he was under great pressure to do so, he never joined the Baath party. When the government ordered Iraqis in sensitive official positions to divorce foreign wives, Amer refused. Consequently, he became a hero to the Iraqis who dared not resist the political pressures exerted on them by the regime. Helma also refused to give up her German nationality. The Saadis were rewarded for this show of strength with a certificate from the president saying that she was exempt from this requirement. She has both German and Iraqi nationalities.

Some of Amer's admirers have formed a committee to press the US to release him and half a dozen of the other Camp Cropper detainees who are innocent of the alleged crimes of the president and his clique.
Amer Saadi is classified variously as ³enemy combatant², ³high value prisoner² and ³security prisoner², not ³prisoner of war [PoW]². If he had been a PoW, he should have been charged before the US formally ended its occupation on June 28, as was the case with Saddam Hussein and the top 11 detainees. The Bush administration has shown typical insensitivity by putting General Jeffrey Miller, deputy commanding officer of detainees, in charge of Camp Cropper. A year ago, Miller was dispatched from the US prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad to improve interrogation techniques with the objective of extracting information from Iraqi security detainees suspected of involvement in resistance activities. He recommended specific abusive and illegal methods of interrogation, including placing prisoners in uncomfortable positions for long periods and reversing night and day. The introduction of these techniques coincided with the first reports of the mistreatment of Iraqis held at US detention centres.

At the end of June, Radwan and Helma Saadi received news from friends in Washington that Amer would be freed soon after the US hand-over to the interim Iraqi government. But this did not happen. Initially, US officials claimed the file had been given to the Iraqis. But when a search was made, the Iraqis said they had received nothing. No one had transferred the file. Radhwan learnt that US officials are still ³studying² the case and ³looking at procedures². He said that there are now 94 ³high value² detainees, instead of 55. Therefore, US officials say it could ³take time² to review all the cases, formulate procedures and decide how to handle each case so the prisoners would be given equal treatment. No exceptions can be made unless Iraqi Premier Iyad Allawi personally intervenes.

Ahead of the war, US Secretary of State Colin Powell warned Bush that if he ³broke² Iraq, he would have to ³fix it². Bush did not heed the warning. He broke Iraq and has not been able to fix it. Amer Saadi, appointed minister of industry in the aftermath of the 1991 war, ³fixed² his country after its infrastructure had been heavily bombed. Three months after the end of that one-sided onslaught on Iraq, Iraqis ‹ working on their own without outside help and financial resources ‹ had restored stability and security and made great strides in fixing the electricity, water and other utilities. The effort gave full employment to millions of Iraqis. By 1992, electricity had been restored to pre-war levels in the capital and the country was recovering from the devastation wreaked by US bombs.

Today Iraq is an unstable, dangerous country. Iraqis fortunate enough to have employment leave their homes every morning not knowing whether or not they will return in the evening. They fear kidnapping or death in roadside bombings or shoot-outs between US troops and insurgents. Electricity is erratic. Water is in short supply. Unemployment is said to be at the 40 per cent level, but is certainly much higher. Iraqi engineers and technicians drive taxis because US companies with reconstruction contracts import US and other foreign staff. Amer Saadi has offered his services, but the Bush administration is not listening. It has put out a sign reading: Experienced Iraqis not wanted.

Thursday, August 5, 2004

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