washingtonpost.com
A Knock on the Door Leads to Nightmare
Iraqi Man Provided Shelter for Hussein's Sons
By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, July 23, 2003; 12:05 PM
MOSUL, Iraq, July 23--Nawaf Zaidan Nasiri answered the front door of his elegant mansion 24 days ago, and greeted a nightmare.
Standing there, he told his neighbors Tuesday, were the two sons of Saddam Hussein, Qusay and Uday, Iraq’s second- and third-most wanted fugitives, asking Zaidan to repay years of privilege and favors they had doled out to him.
"I answered the doorbell and there they were, right in front of my face," Zaidan told his neighbor, Mukhlis Thahir Jubori. "They asked to stay in my house and I could not refuse them. This is a disaster for me."
In an interview today, Thahir said Zaidan told his story yesterday while sitting in a U.S. military Humvee, about two hours after the bodies of the Hussein brothers and two other men were removed from the charred remains of Zaidan’s house.
In one of the fiercest firefights since the end of the Iraq war, nearly 200 soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division blasted the house with missiles and grenades Tuesday morning until Hussein’s two most ruthless enforcers were dead.
The death of the Hussein brothers caused soldiers to break out cigars and caused jubilation from the Iraqi desert to the Oval Office. But the episode posed a difficult dilemma for a 46-year-old man, suddenly in the glare of the global spotlight, who had made a career out of hanging around the Husseins, according to several of Zaidan’s neighbors and long-time friends.
"Nawaf was always bragging that he was a good friend of Saddam’s family, and he was a friend of theirs," said Thahir, a tribal sheik who lives in a house just around the corner from Zaidan’s, and described himself as best friends with him.
Thahir said his friend was typical of the opportunists and mid-level hangers-on who populated the world of Hussein and his sycophantic Baath Party. In a lengthy interview, Jubori and another neighbor, a Muslim cleric who asked not be named, said Zaidan’s comfortable life, including his opulent home, were essentially slop from the Hussein trough.
They said Zaidan was known as a businessman, who specialized in import-export work. But mainly, they said, his business was loyalty to Hussein’s family, whose officials kept him supplied with government contracts and goodies in return.
In Mosul, they said, that turned Zaidan and his brother, Salah Zaidan Nasiri, like others like them across the country, into well-to-do people who could brag about their contacts with Hussein -- and back up those boasts with nice cars and a beautiful house.
"They gave him everything, including that house," the cleric said.
Thahir said he recalled being at Zaidan’s house about two months ago when members of Hussein’s extended family arrived. He said there was talk about them giving 200 million dinars, about $140,000, to Zaidan to oversee construction of a new mosque.
Thahir said that was strange, because the Hussein government had already been vanquished and was hardly in a position to build new mosques. He said the money was more likely payment for some service Zaidan had provided -- or perhaps, he said, it was payment for using his home as a safe house in the future.
About the only time Zaidan’s scheme to associate himself with the regime backfired, the cleric said, was this spring, when Hussein’s family became fed up with Salah Zaidan bragging, falsely, that he was a cousin of Hussein. In Hussein’s dictatorship, such boasting was grounds for prison time, the cleric said. Salah Zaidan was sentenced to seven years, but was freed after less than a month.
"They became a little too powerful," the cleric said. "Saddam doesn’t like it when people start getting too much power."
Zaidan could not be reached for comment today. A woman who answered the door at Salah Zaidan’s palatial home in a neighborhood across the city said neither of the brothers were there and declined further comment.
Around Nawaf Zaidan’s house, which was still surrounded by coils of razor wire and scores of soldiers today, his neighbors said they were surprised, but not shocked, to hear that the Hussein brothers were found in his house.
Nobody recalled seeing anyone suspicious at the house, but they said Zaidan had been acting different lately. Normally, they said, Zaidan would wait until the brutal desert sun had set, then set out plastic chairs on the sidewalk in front of his house every night. Zaidan, Thahir and other men from the neighborhood would drink sweet tea and Pepsi and chew over current events. Then just over three weeks ago, Zaidan stopped putting out the chairs.
"I went over to his house and asked him, is everything okay? Can I come in?’" Thahir said. "And he said no. He said his wife’s relatives were visiting and they were very busy."
About four days ago, Thahir said, a strange BMW showed up at the house; it still sat there yesterday, its tires and windows shot out in the U.S. assault. Thahir speculated that the car belonged to the other two men found dead in the house, who are believed to be one of Hussein’s bodyguards and Qusay’s 14-year-old son, Mustafa.
After Tuesday’s firefight, Thahir said he looked out his window and saw Zaidan and his 19-year-old son sitting in a Humvee parked in front of his house, which is just around the corner and out of sight of the main firefight.
He said he brought out a pitcher of water and the U.S. soldiers allowed him to give it to Zaidan. He said Zaidan seemed calm, in good health and he noticed that he was not wearing any handcuffs.
"I said, ’What did you do? What happened? They took four dead bodies out of your house,’" Thahir said. "And he said, ’Really? They are dead? Uday and Qusay were with me in the house.’"
Thahir said Zaidan told him that he and his family had gone out for breakfast early in the morning to a place called the Casino, a recreational area near the Tigris River filled with picnic tables. He said the U.S. soldiers arrived there and asked him to come back to his house, Thahir said.
At least three other neighbors said they saw Zaidan leave early in the morning and return with his son at about 9 a.m. They said soldiers arrived shortly after that, and took Zaidan away when he refused to let them enter the house. The firefight erupted after he was gone.
U.S. military spokesman said they were acting on a tip. They said a "walk-in" came to them Monday night with information about the Hussein brothers’ location. They have not identified the informant, but they said the $15 million bounty on the Hussein brothers’ heads will be paid.
Thahir and the cleric, who has known Zaidan since he was a boy and was friends with his father, said they strongly suspect that Zaidan was the informant. They said the $15 million temptation was probably too much to resist after the two fugitives had been hiding out in his house for more than three weeks.
"Who else could have done it?" the cleric said. "Why was his family out when they came? Why were there no handcuffs? He had Uday and Qusay in his house -- why is he not arrested or dead?"
Military officials said they didn’t take anyone into custody in the raid. They had no comment on whether Zaidan was the informant.
Thahir said that most people here would probably applaud Zaidan if he were the informer. He and the cleric said they were sick of Hussein and his "cruel" sons, and that they didn’t begrudge anyone the reward.
They said they weren’t even sure anyone would claim the brothers’ bodies for a funeral. Their mother, Sajida, lives in Iraq and is not a fugitive. But they said she might be too afraid because a funeral for the two men could spark deep emotions in an already tense nation.
They said there could be some revenge from Hussein loyalists. And among the hundreds of people gathered on the sidewalk in front of the still-smoking hulk of Zaidan’s house could be heard muttering anti-American threats and vowing that Saddam would return to avenge his sons.
"You will see," one hissed.
Nashwan Khazraji, 39, who has been living for four months across the street from Zaidan, who he said "was always pretending he’s the cousin of Saddam Hussein." Even though everyone was sick of the boasting, he said, the deaths of the Hussein brothers in Zaidan’s house was "a painful situation."
"As a Muslim, I can’t accept the killing of another Muslim in front of me," he said. "At the same time, Uday and Qusay gave us nothing. We have been saying they should get rid of them so things can get better in Iraq. But not this way."
Special correspondents Souad Mekhennet and Naseer Mehdawi in Mosul contributed to this story. |
