hist2004
07-19-2004, 11:05 AM
When Saddam ruled the day
Twenty-five years ago, he showed his secrets for survival: Be crafty--and be ruthless
By Bay Fang
BAGHDAD--It was almost exactly 25 years ago, but Mohammed Dabdab remembers it with searing clarity. Sitting in a crowded auditorium. Listening to the names of "traitors" being called out, and watching his friends led away, one by one, to face execution. Then he heard his own name. Slowly, he rose, glancing about for the Mukhabarat secret policeman who would take him away and noticing that a colleague next to him was crying. Today, he still remembers the eternity that seemed to pass before Saddam Hussein's voice boomed out: "We know Mohammed Dabdab well, and he is not a traitor. Sit down."
The date was July 22, 1979, and that meeting would come to be seen as a seminal moment in Saddam's bloody, ruthless rule over the Baath Party and Iraq. Having pushed aside Iraq's president, Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr (his own cousin), just days earlier, Saddam was intent on consolidating his power and crushing his foes, real or imagined. To that end, he called some 400 senior party officials to a meeting in a Baghdad auditorium, where he claimed discovery of a Syrian-aided plot against the party.
Saddam--who recently called his own court appearance a piece of "theater" orchestrated by President Bush--played the moment for maximum impact. He sat on stage smoking a cigar while directing the denunciations of over 60 top Baath leaders as traitors. Biology professor Khalil Mustafa, 61, then a regional Baath Party member, said at no other time in his life has he been so frightened. "What separated life from death?" He points his finger, an imitation of Saddam, "One finger."
Saddam had the entire assembly videotaped and distributed throughout the country to ensure that everyone knew the way things would work from that moment on. The film is grainy, black and white. You see names being called, the look of confusion on people's faces as they stand and are hauled away. You see Saddam wipe away tears as he repeats the names of those who betrayed him. You see people in the audience crying, either out of fear or to mimic their leader, whose power grows moment by moment. You see, toward the end, someone standing up, pumping his fist in the air and shouting, "Long live the Baath Party! Long live Saddam!"
Enemies. " They were good actors," says one of those present, Muaz al-Khatib. "Very few people actually believed there had been a betrayal. Most knew, deep down, that the whole thing was a play." He remembers arriving at the conference center next to the presidential palace and seeing an unusual sight. Tanks surrounded the entire area. Party members had to walk through a metal detector, and those with guns had to surrender them. Once inside the hall, they saw the exits blocked by members of the Mukhabarat force. "That was when we realized there was something seriously wrong," he says. He found out afterward that the Mukhabarat agents already had a list of names that would be called out and positioned themselves to take these people away immediately.
Today, Dabdab nervously fingers a strand of turquoise prayer beads as he talks about that event. "In the morning, I had breakfast with two of my best friends, friends I grew up with. We drove together in my car to the meeting," he says. "But when I left, I left alone." He went to his office at the Iraqi Students' Union, asked not to be disturbed, closed the door, and slept for three hours on his couch. Then he went home, arranged for his wife and children to leave Baghdad, and moved out of his house. Saddam spared him, Dabdab believes, because as director of the Iraqi Students' Union, he represented a constituency that, along with workers, were Saddam's two most important bases of power. (Later, in private, Saddam also pardoned the director and secretary general of the Workers' Union.)
Khatib also escaped execution, but barely. Today, he sits in his little pharmacy on a busy Baghdad street, surrounded by neat rows of bottles in glass cases. As the power cuts on and off he walks painfully through an elaborate routine--adjusting the door, the generator, the air conditioner, the fan--then sits back down in his chair, breathing heavily. He pulls up his sleeve and displays a strangely twisted arm. "They broke this one twice, and the other once." The 63-year-old man with the thinning white hair, who was ambassador to Kenya back then, has three other broken bones in his body.
He now knows that Saddam waited until nine days after the meeting to arrest him because he did not want to alert the seven other ambassadors on the list who were still out of the country at the time. As Khatib left the hall that day, he met the Mukhabarat agent in charge of securing the conference, who was a friend. "He said, 'I thought your name was on the list!' and laughed," says Khatib. "I saw him later, after I had been arrested and was being led to my cell, and he looked away."
Khatib was arrested on August 1, and put in a cell that smelled of new cement. He learned later that the entire block of cells had been built on July 31. He spent 1,333 days in jail. It was a cellmate of his who told him about the meeting of the most senior leadership on July 9. It was then that they discussed whether Bakr, who had been president since the Baath Party took power in a 1968 coup, should resign as president. Saddam, vice president at the time, thought Bakr should go. Muhyi Abdel Hussein Mashhadi, secretary general of the Baath Party's powerful Revolutionary Command Council, disagreed. Saddam kicked Mashhadi out of the meeting, then had him arrested. When Mashhadi was interrogated, he was told that all the senior party members had agreed to execute him but that he would be spared if he revealed the names of the other Baathists who shared his views. Two weeks later, Mashhadi was standing on stage with Saddam, fingering his colleagues. At the trial that followed, when he nevertheless was sentenced to death, Mashhadi turned to the prisoner next to him--who later became Khatib's cellmate--and said, "So this is the word of honor they gave me."
All 68 of the senior Baathists arrested on July 22 and after were tried together, in a court presided over by Saddam allies, including Barzan al-Tikriti, who was head of the Mukhabarat and one of Saddam's three half brothers. (Like Saddam, he is now imprisoned in Iraq, awaiting trial.) The court was headed by senior Baathist Naim Haddad, who said, according to Khatib: "I have permission to judge by the name of the Iraqi people. I am accusing you of treason. For this, under Iraqi law No. 214, you will face the death penalty." It took two minutes for the court to hand down the sentences--22 to death and the rest to years in prison.
Today, as they watch Saddam face a judge for his crimes, those who witnessed the horrible day a quarter century ago have mixed feelings. "He made a giant mistake," says Dabdab, "But it is illegal that they put the president in jail." He admits, though, that he does not want to talk more openly, because he may want to rebuild the party and stand for election next year.
But Khatib thinks differently. He just returned to the country last November, after 10 years in hiding overseas. And while he dislikes the American influence, he says, "There's an Arabic saying: 'If it goes from worse to bad, it's still an improvement.' " Saddam, he says, is getting what he deserves--and perhaps better than he deserves. "When I saw him sitting there, and the judge talking to him nicely," says Khatib, "I couldn't help but think that I didn't have that when I sat in his court."
Regards,
Hist2004
Twenty-five years ago, he showed his secrets for survival: Be crafty--and be ruthless
By Bay Fang
BAGHDAD--It was almost exactly 25 years ago, but Mohammed Dabdab remembers it with searing clarity. Sitting in a crowded auditorium. Listening to the names of "traitors" being called out, and watching his friends led away, one by one, to face execution. Then he heard his own name. Slowly, he rose, glancing about for the Mukhabarat secret policeman who would take him away and noticing that a colleague next to him was crying. Today, he still remembers the eternity that seemed to pass before Saddam Hussein's voice boomed out: "We know Mohammed Dabdab well, and he is not a traitor. Sit down."
The date was July 22, 1979, and that meeting would come to be seen as a seminal moment in Saddam's bloody, ruthless rule over the Baath Party and Iraq. Having pushed aside Iraq's president, Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr (his own cousin), just days earlier, Saddam was intent on consolidating his power and crushing his foes, real or imagined. To that end, he called some 400 senior party officials to a meeting in a Baghdad auditorium, where he claimed discovery of a Syrian-aided plot against the party.
Saddam--who recently called his own court appearance a piece of "theater" orchestrated by President Bush--played the moment for maximum impact. He sat on stage smoking a cigar while directing the denunciations of over 60 top Baath leaders as traitors. Biology professor Khalil Mustafa, 61, then a regional Baath Party member, said at no other time in his life has he been so frightened. "What separated life from death?" He points his finger, an imitation of Saddam, "One finger."
Saddam had the entire assembly videotaped and distributed throughout the country to ensure that everyone knew the way things would work from that moment on. The film is grainy, black and white. You see names being called, the look of confusion on people's faces as they stand and are hauled away. You see Saddam wipe away tears as he repeats the names of those who betrayed him. You see people in the audience crying, either out of fear or to mimic their leader, whose power grows moment by moment. You see, toward the end, someone standing up, pumping his fist in the air and shouting, "Long live the Baath Party! Long live Saddam!"
Enemies. " They were good actors," says one of those present, Muaz al-Khatib. "Very few people actually believed there had been a betrayal. Most knew, deep down, that the whole thing was a play." He remembers arriving at the conference center next to the presidential palace and seeing an unusual sight. Tanks surrounded the entire area. Party members had to walk through a metal detector, and those with guns had to surrender them. Once inside the hall, they saw the exits blocked by members of the Mukhabarat force. "That was when we realized there was something seriously wrong," he says. He found out afterward that the Mukhabarat agents already had a list of names that would be called out and positioned themselves to take these people away immediately.
Today, Dabdab nervously fingers a strand of turquoise prayer beads as he talks about that event. "In the morning, I had breakfast with two of my best friends, friends I grew up with. We drove together in my car to the meeting," he says. "But when I left, I left alone." He went to his office at the Iraqi Students' Union, asked not to be disturbed, closed the door, and slept for three hours on his couch. Then he went home, arranged for his wife and children to leave Baghdad, and moved out of his house. Saddam spared him, Dabdab believes, because as director of the Iraqi Students' Union, he represented a constituency that, along with workers, were Saddam's two most important bases of power. (Later, in private, Saddam also pardoned the director and secretary general of the Workers' Union.)
Khatib also escaped execution, but barely. Today, he sits in his little pharmacy on a busy Baghdad street, surrounded by neat rows of bottles in glass cases. As the power cuts on and off he walks painfully through an elaborate routine--adjusting the door, the generator, the air conditioner, the fan--then sits back down in his chair, breathing heavily. He pulls up his sleeve and displays a strangely twisted arm. "They broke this one twice, and the other once." The 63-year-old man with the thinning white hair, who was ambassador to Kenya back then, has three other broken bones in his body.
He now knows that Saddam waited until nine days after the meeting to arrest him because he did not want to alert the seven other ambassadors on the list who were still out of the country at the time. As Khatib left the hall that day, he met the Mukhabarat agent in charge of securing the conference, who was a friend. "He said, 'I thought your name was on the list!' and laughed," says Khatib. "I saw him later, after I had been arrested and was being led to my cell, and he looked away."
Khatib was arrested on August 1, and put in a cell that smelled of new cement. He learned later that the entire block of cells had been built on July 31. He spent 1,333 days in jail. It was a cellmate of his who told him about the meeting of the most senior leadership on July 9. It was then that they discussed whether Bakr, who had been president since the Baath Party took power in a 1968 coup, should resign as president. Saddam, vice president at the time, thought Bakr should go. Muhyi Abdel Hussein Mashhadi, secretary general of the Baath Party's powerful Revolutionary Command Council, disagreed. Saddam kicked Mashhadi out of the meeting, then had him arrested. When Mashhadi was interrogated, he was told that all the senior party members had agreed to execute him but that he would be spared if he revealed the names of the other Baathists who shared his views. Two weeks later, Mashhadi was standing on stage with Saddam, fingering his colleagues. At the trial that followed, when he nevertheless was sentenced to death, Mashhadi turned to the prisoner next to him--who later became Khatib's cellmate--and said, "So this is the word of honor they gave me."
All 68 of the senior Baathists arrested on July 22 and after were tried together, in a court presided over by Saddam allies, including Barzan al-Tikriti, who was head of the Mukhabarat and one of Saddam's three half brothers. (Like Saddam, he is now imprisoned in Iraq, awaiting trial.) The court was headed by senior Baathist Naim Haddad, who said, according to Khatib: "I have permission to judge by the name of the Iraqi people. I am accusing you of treason. For this, under Iraqi law No. 214, you will face the death penalty." It took two minutes for the court to hand down the sentences--22 to death and the rest to years in prison.
Today, as they watch Saddam face a judge for his crimes, those who witnessed the horrible day a quarter century ago have mixed feelings. "He made a giant mistake," says Dabdab, "But it is illegal that they put the president in jail." He admits, though, that he does not want to talk more openly, because he may want to rebuild the party and stand for election next year.
But Khatib thinks differently. He just returned to the country last November, after 10 years in hiding overseas. And while he dislikes the American influence, he says, "There's an Arabic saying: 'If it goes from worse to bad, it's still an improvement.' " Saddam, he says, is getting what he deserves--and perhaps better than he deserves. "When I saw him sitting there, and the judge talking to him nicely," says Khatib, "I couldn't help but think that I didn't have that when I sat in his court."
Regards,
Hist2004