Red Cross urges US to clarify status of three dozen prisoners held in unknown conditions near Baghdad
Jonathan Steele in Baghdad
Sunday July 20, 2003
The Observer
American efforts at finding top Iraqi scientists who can attest to Saddam Hussein hiding weapons of mass destruction have turned out to be as fruitless as the search for the weapons themselves.
The continued detention of leading Iraqi scientists and other officials by US forces is swiftly turning into a major human rights row.
Washington officials hoped that, with Saddam's removal, the people who had intimate knowledge of Iraq's secret arms industry would give a different story from the denials given while he still held sway.
But as pressure intensifies on President George Bush and Tony Blair to prove Iraq had WMD, the inability to produce a single scientist from the former regime to confirm the assertions about an alleged threat is becoming an embarrassment.
Helma al-Saadi, a German who cuts an elegant figure sitting in her Baghdad home, last saw her husband Amer more than three months ago. She has written two letters to Paul Bremer, Iraq's US administrator, but her pleas for a visit have been ignored and she has been given no official word of his whereabouts or condition.
Under Saddam, Iraqi wives all too often saw husbands taken to unknown detention centres and held indefinitely and without visiting rights. While secret detentions are not so frequent under US rule, the anxious wait is no less grim. 'I don't want to aggravate the Americans or make them feel provoked, but I've had no official notification of why he is being held or what charges he's facing,' Helma al-Saadi said.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, with an internationally recognised mandate to inspect detention centres around the world, has been urging the US to clarify the status of the three dozen Iraqi scientists and officials it holds. The authorities have given no details of their whereabouts and, unlike Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay, the place where they are held has not been shown to journalists.
Some detainees are believed to be imprisoned in solitary cells or in swelteringly hot tents near the vast US base at Baghdad airport.
With a British PhD under his belt, Amer al-Saadi took training courses at British weapons factories before returning to Baghdad in the1970s and becoming one of Iraq's top military scientists. A Shia, he never joined the Sunni-led Baath Party and last met Saddam in 1995.
When the UN sent its inspectors back to Iraq last year, he was nominated by Saddam as main liaison.
A handsome, silver-haired man with fluent English, he appeared at press conferences in the weeks before the war, arguing, as he had with the UN inspection team, that Iraq had destroyed all its remaining WMDs after the 1991 Gulf War but acknowledging proper documentation had not been kept.
Al-Saadi was the first scientist to surrender to the US, on 12 April. 'He wanted to make himself available to the coalition forces for questioning and co-operation,' his wife said.
'He thought he would be interrogated for three hours, but it became three days, three weeks, and now more than three months.
'I am sure he is continuing to say what he always said, which is that the weapons were destroyed years ago,' she told The Observer. Many believe al-Saadi has not been released because it would be an admission that claims of a secret weapons programme amounted to nothing.
Others call it a 'vendetta by Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell' because al-Saadi had criticised them, describing the Secretary of State's testimony to the UN Security Council as a 'typical American show, full of stunts and special effects'.
Helma says their life under Saddam was always difficult despite a pleasant home and a good salary. Al-Saadi stopped travelling abroad in 1987 after three approaches by American and one by British intelligence to switch sides.
'This complicated his life, but he was always a patriot,' she said. The couple's three children live in Germany 'because he wanted a better life for them, in liberty and free of coercion'.
Al-Saadi became a national hero during the war with Iran for developing long-range missiles which turned the tide and forced a ceasefire in 1988. His scholarship to Britain came from the Iraqi Defence Ministry and he had been obliged to make his career in it on his return.
As acting Minister of Oil he played a large part in getting the country's power and electricity up and running again after the Gulf War, in contrast to the inefficiency of the US now, his wife said.
Around 30 other Iraqis in the 'pack of cards' are being held in similarly secret conditions. Like al-Saadi and the former Deputy Prime Minister, Tariq Aziz, many were professionals with no connection to the torture machine of the Interior Ministry or the state security organisation.
Jonathan Steele in Baghdad
Sunday July 20, 2003
The Observer
American efforts at finding top Iraqi scientists who can attest to Saddam Hussein hiding weapons of mass destruction have turned out to be as fruitless as the search for the weapons themselves.
The continued detention of leading Iraqi scientists and other officials by US forces is swiftly turning into a major human rights row.
Washington officials hoped that, with Saddam's removal, the people who had intimate knowledge of Iraq's secret arms industry would give a different story from the denials given while he still held sway.
But as pressure intensifies on President George Bush and Tony Blair to prove Iraq had WMD, the inability to produce a single scientist from the former regime to confirm the assertions about an alleged threat is becoming an embarrassment.
Helma al-Saadi, a German who cuts an elegant figure sitting in her Baghdad home, last saw her husband Amer more than three months ago. She has written two letters to Paul Bremer, Iraq's US administrator, but her pleas for a visit have been ignored and she has been given no official word of his whereabouts or condition.
Under Saddam, Iraqi wives all too often saw husbands taken to unknown detention centres and held indefinitely and without visiting rights. While secret detentions are not so frequent under US rule, the anxious wait is no less grim. 'I don't want to aggravate the Americans or make them feel provoked, but I've had no official notification of why he is being held or what charges he's facing,' Helma al-Saadi said.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, with an internationally recognised mandate to inspect detention centres around the world, has been urging the US to clarify the status of the three dozen Iraqi scientists and officials it holds. The authorities have given no details of their whereabouts and, unlike Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay, the place where they are held has not been shown to journalists.
Some detainees are believed to be imprisoned in solitary cells or in swelteringly hot tents near the vast US base at Baghdad airport.
With a British PhD under his belt, Amer al-Saadi took training courses at British weapons factories before returning to Baghdad in the1970s and becoming one of Iraq's top military scientists. A Shia, he never joined the Sunni-led Baath Party and last met Saddam in 1995.
When the UN sent its inspectors back to Iraq last year, he was nominated by Saddam as main liaison.
A handsome, silver-haired man with fluent English, he appeared at press conferences in the weeks before the war, arguing, as he had with the UN inspection team, that Iraq had destroyed all its remaining WMDs after the 1991 Gulf War but acknowledging proper documentation had not been kept.
Al-Saadi was the first scientist to surrender to the US, on 12 April. 'He wanted to make himself available to the coalition forces for questioning and co-operation,' his wife said.
'He thought he would be interrogated for three hours, but it became three days, three weeks, and now more than three months.
'I am sure he is continuing to say what he always said, which is that the weapons were destroyed years ago,' she told The Observer. Many believe al-Saadi has not been released because it would be an admission that claims of a secret weapons programme amounted to nothing.
Others call it a 'vendetta by Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell' because al-Saadi had criticised them, describing the Secretary of State's testimony to the UN Security Council as a 'typical American show, full of stunts and special effects'.
Helma says their life under Saddam was always difficult despite a pleasant home and a good salary. Al-Saadi stopped travelling abroad in 1987 after three approaches by American and one by British intelligence to switch sides.
'This complicated his life, but he was always a patriot,' she said. The couple's three children live in Germany 'because he wanted a better life for them, in liberty and free of coercion'.
Al-Saadi became a national hero during the war with Iran for developing long-range missiles which turned the tide and forced a ceasefire in 1988. His scholarship to Britain came from the Iraqi Defence Ministry and he had been obliged to make his career in it on his return.
As acting Minister of Oil he played a large part in getting the country's power and electricity up and running again after the Gulf War, in contrast to the inefficiency of the US now, his wife said.
Around 30 other Iraqis in the 'pack of cards' are being held in similarly secret conditions. Like al-Saadi and the former Deputy Prime Minister, Tariq Aziz, many were professionals with no connection to the torture machine of the Interior Ministry or the state security organisation.
