Saboteurs have upper hand in an endless war, says Iraq's Oil Minister

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Source: The Independent

Saboteurs have upper hand in an endless war, says Iraq's Oil Minister
By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad
Published: 18 May 2007

Iraq's Oil Minister has unequalled experience of adversity. As a leading Iraqi nuclear scientist, Dr Hussain al-Shahristani was summoned to see Saddam Hussein in 1979 and asked to assist in a project to make a nuclear weapon.

He flatly refused to help and was immediately thrown into jail and savagely tortured by being beaten for 22 days as he was hung in the air by his wrists that were tied behind his back. Adamant in his determination not to assist Saddam in developing a nuclear device Dr Shahristani spent 10 years in solitary confinement in a small windowless cell in Abu Ghraib prison.

During the chaos of the Gulf War he succeeded in escaping with the help of a "trusty" who delivered his meals. The man, a Palestinian jailed by Saddam as a favour to Yasser Arafat, agreed to help him get out of the dreaded Abu Ghraib.

Stealing a Mukhabarat (secret police) car, the scientist made his way to Kurdistan and then to Iran.

Read more: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2556485.ece