The Black Hole
By. Latif Yahia
Chapter 5 – United Kingdoms
Latif Yahia with Marie Colvin of The Sunday Times in Vienna 1994.
I had no visa to work in London and my immigration was not authorised, so I thought it best to tell my inquisitors at the airport that we had come to the city for a holiday – and for all I knew, that might have turned out to be the truth. The only official identification I had with me was my Austrian travel documentation, and I was relying on a little leniency, gullibility or indifference on the part of the inspectors. National security back then was a little less tight than it was later to become, but it was still necessary to stick to one’s story and avoid doing or saying anything that might arouse suspicion. The chief concern alluded to at customs was that I might be a benefit tourist; this was the time when illegal immigration, asylum seekers and benefit “scroungers” were dominating the moribund Conservative government’s agenda, shadowed (or more likely led) by the country’s influential right-wing press.
“Do you have any money with you?” asked the immigration official. When I opened up my bag, which contained about £55,000, the official smiled, said “Welcome”, stamped my documents and concluded the encounter with the statement that I could stay for “Three months.” That sounded long enough for me to get settled and attempt to gain asylum.
Straight away I rented an apartment in the leafy, affluent district of Kensington. My next call was to my solicitor, Mr Silviti, a Lebanese Arab. He would be my vital means of applying for and hopefully gaining asylum in the United Kingdom; this time my refuge was from persecution not from Iraq, but from Austria, and we both thought I had a good case, considering all that had happened to me. I was warned by Mr Silviti that my application could take some time. In the meantime, I had to send all my identification and travel documents to the Home Office. Instead of procrastinating on arrival in this enormous, lively city, I made sure I kept going by setting up a business buying and selling property. This usually involved converting houses into flats and studio apartments and selling them individually – a lucrative operation when done correctly. The business proved successful.
Before long I realised that London, which is a great, cosmopolitan city and a magnet for would-be immigrants from all over the world, was reasonably welcoming and easy to settle in. Compared to Austria, my prevailing sense was of being ignored, which is far preferable to being openly harassed. I soon started to make connections with members of the business community. Practically everyone I dealt with in London spoke glowingly of America. It was a place I had never visited, and before long I got itchy feet and wanted to head west to sample the fabled lifestyle for myself. There was a problem, though – all my travel documents were in the possession of the Home Office. Unless I was specifically invited to the United States, I would not get through their immigration checks and would be put on the next plane back to Heathrow. There was another way, however.
The land of the free welcomed my family and me onto their soil with a customs officer’s cursory glance at my forged Dutch passport. It was a good copy and would have survived more intense scrutiny, but I was still relieved when it was not queried, as it was now my only means of getting from place to place around the world.
I had no particular business in mind. It really was a holiday, and my two goals were to experience Hollywood and Las Vegas, those two archetypal American locations famed around the world for excess and chasing the dream that seems to keep the country going. Hollywood proved to be a place of fun and merriment – pretty much as I had expected. Poverty and lavish riches were on display in equal measure; after all, the fabulously wealthy need people to clean their homes, nanny their children, park their cars and serve them in restaurants. My stay in Las Vegas was a sumptuous experience. I swanked between my luxury hotel and the casinos with Babylonian abandon, gambling, eating and drinking as much as my heart would take. I did not care how much money I lost – I was enjoying it all too much. The kids loved Disneyland, but I decided not to go there; they enthused about the place all the way home.
After two weeks’ vacation I returned to my London home and resumed my life as though I had never been away. I had not been missed, which pleased me.
It was at this time that Nusa and I had another split of sorts. I received concrete proof that Nusa had indeed been sleeping with another man while I was in the Austrian prison. The “other man” also happened to be William, the photographer who had introduced me to Senta, and who had been (and for all I knew still was) his own girlfriend. It turns out he did not just go for the older woman after all; and that the Austrian prison guards’ stories and pictures of Nusa’s infidelity had in fact been true – but still devious, nevertheless. Nusa was apologetic, although I doubted her sincerity. Her desire for us to get back together seemed to be real, but I felt a betrayal that I would not easily be able to shake off. The fact that I had at the time been in captivity and utterly powerless made it seem all the more acute. I blamed myself for getting involved too deeply with Nusa in the first place. An institutionalised prostitute like her will not turn into an angel overnight, no matter how much money you give her, I thought. It was true of all the ones I had met in Baghdad, too. Life is not like Pretty Woman.
I suppose I did not have strong feelings for Nusa anyway, and the fact that the split was relatively civil proved it; we shared a house but slept in separate beds, this of course for the benefit of our children who had put up with enough heartache in their young lives. I never felt any yearnings to tiptoe into her bedroom at night. As long as our children did not question whether mummy and daddy were an item, we were content, and they were too young to notice any subtleties or even know anything about parental relationships. Another illustration of the civility of our split was that we could agree on keeping a joint bank account. My life could have been cut short at any corner, and without any form of income Nusa would have been dependent on charity – or a return to her old career. Our children would have suffered terribly, and that is something I would not stand for. They were not to blame for my errors of judgement.
Edgware Road, London, was the scene of the third attempt on my life. It was halfway through the May of 1995. I was walking along the pavement when five men with knives, and speaking Arabic, leapt out from somewhere and started thrusting their weapons at me. I am convinced that they were attempting to kill me rather than scare me, because several of the lunges would have landed had I not managed to evade them. Fortunately for me, the assailants were unprofessional and uncoordinated, and I still had my martial arts training alive in my mind; I made an escape on foot. Again I was lucky to get away with minor injuries. I had no doubts about who was behind the attack. I had not long before done interviews for Channel Four television and the Guardian newspaper, in which the blame for the previous assassination attempts and for my ill treatment in Austria was laid squarely with the Iraqi government. I see this as a grave mistake on my part as I had failed to investigate my own allegations more thoroughly. It turned out that I was blaming the wrong side.
I had been introduced to Ahmed al-Chalabi in 1992 at the conference of Iraqi opposition in Vienna. Although I had a vague knowledge of who he was, he did not strike me as being important or powerful. In 1995 I met King Hussein of Jordan, and we discussed the situation in Iraq. When I spoke about the conference and the self-promotion of al-Chalabi, the king stopped in his tracks and began to tell me something about al-Chalabi’s history. He had been the head of a major Jordanian bank, and was found to be embezzling staggering amounts of money from it. He was promptly sacked, but it was too late for the bank itself, which collapsed soon after. Al-Chalabi himself fled to America, where he somehow gained the trust of the administration, who favoured and funded him as a possible successor to Saddam Hussein in an interim administration should the latter be deposed or defeated militarily. There was no reason for me to suppose the king was lying.
The story of the assassination attempt against Latif in London as published in the Guardian 25/05/1995
I wrote an article which was published in several Arabic newspapers, damning al-Chalabi and the dishonesty which seemed to be being rewarded across the Atlantic. This was the first time he had been openly criticised; he was being groomed for far greater things, and nobody was prepared to suggest that America’s favourite was a criminal. When the Iraqi National Congress was formed, he became the natural choice to be its leader. He was to be unquestioningly believed. The support he was receiving from America was, it was generally accepted, worth ignoring for the prize of US-backed democracy and, perhaps, the overthrow of Saddam. I had made a powerful and politically omnipotent enemy.
Al-Chalabi wasted no time in trying to undermine me. He used his close association with the British intelligence services, MI5 and MI6, to attempt to discredit and silence me. According to him, I was an agent of Saddam and Uday Hussein – how else could I account for my millions of dollars? He said that my open criticism of the regime was merely a smokescreen and that people in the West were apparently unable to penetrate it. My refusal to work with any of the opposition groups was, he reasoned, proof of my true adherence. In his version of events (which I believe he knew to be false), my failure to use my position and my inside knowledge of the regime to foment activity aimed at Saddam’s overthrow was merely extra evidence of my support for Saddam.
(In 2004, after Saddam was finally overthrown and discovered in his infamous spider-hole, al-Chalabi’s home was raided by the occupying American forces. They suspected him of passing secret information to Iran. Indeed, al-Chalabi is believed to be one of the sources responsible for providing the US with false information about Saddam’s invisible weapons of mass destruction, which in turn led the US and their “coalition of the willing” to break from the UN and remove Saddam militarily, claiming a WMD-inspired sense of urgency. However, having his house raided by the US had the effect of endearing al-Chalabi to many Iraqis who were sick of the occupation – he was somehow seen as “one of them”, as many Iraqi families had suffered midnight raids by US forces to round up terrorists and criminals. His party had a strong showing as part of the Shia bloc in the January 2005 elections, proving at least that US backing is not always necessary for electoral success in Iraq; although who would ever have heard of al-Chalabi were it not for US funding is debatable.)
As I have described, the truth about al-Chalabi’s allegations was very different. I would not be paid to oppose my country. I would oppose the regime holding a noose around my country’s neck, but it would be on my own terms and for free. Perhaps people could not understand my reluctance to capitalise on my situation.
Still, it was MI5 who informed me that the May assassination attempt had been the work of al-Chalabi, not the Iraqis.
Both MI5 and MI6 had, like all the world’s other intelligence agencies, approached me with offers of employment, but by this time I was used to turning down intelligence work and treated the British with the same courteous knock-back as I gave to all the others. Britain was, in fact, one of the few countries never to have approached me during my time in Vienna. They ended up urging me to open up a business in the United Kingdom, for example a solicitor’s or a shop, and they would grant me immigrant status – and a passport – on the understanding that I devoted time to organising an anti-Saddam movement.
None of the intelligence agencies chose to understand my core belief – that overthrowing Saddam would be a good thing only if it did not harm the Iraqi people, which is exactly what their proposed insurgency or a foreign-led invasion would inevitably lead to. I was anti-Saddam, and that was the end of it. (And I was as bored of repeating it as you must be of reading it.) If I could come up with a peaceful means of deposing the regime, I would probably have put it into action by then. I was confronted with a situation that was later typified by George W Bush’s notorious post-9/11 statement that nations were either with the coalition (that is, the US), or with the terrorists. There was no way in his view that a person could be opposed both to American military aggression and to terrorism – as though one of them was good and the other bad. People could not see how someone who strongly opposed, and had suffered under, the regime could fail to support aggressive action in his homeland.
It was inevitable that my presence in London would before long arouse the inquisitions of the countries that had been directly involved in the Gulf War, and so it did not come as a surprise when both the Saudi Arabian and the Kuwaiti embassies invited me to meet with them – this time officially rather than informally, or as a seditious networking opportunity. Visiting embassies was quite normal; I had visited both countries’ embassies in Vienna on several occasions, such as the time I met Kurt Waldheim. The Kuwaiti embassy was particularly anxious to talk to me. I met the ambassador at one of his social events; he was characteristically cordial and respectful to me, congratulating me on my escape and on the work I had done since. I wondered what he was after. It was then that he asked if I could meet him a few days later to discuss some important issues; we made an appointment.
I was taken to the ambassador’s personal residence, where various Kuwaiti dignitaries – some secretaries, the minister of justice, the foreign minister, the ambassador himself – were gathered. There was also the minister of a newly-created government department that dealt solely with the prisoners and hostages still missing four years after the end of the Gulf War of 1990–91. A perfect meal had been laid on and we ate together.
After the meal we sat down in a comfortable sitting room and I discovered why they had been invited to this meeting – I was asked about the 650 prisoners and hostages, their whereabouts and their wellbeing. They had been assured by members of the Iraqi opposition that they were alive. I knew that they had rewarded the messengers of good news financially.
“So, if you have any information on the prisoners, we would be more than grateful if you could share it with us. The families back home are awfully distressed. If at least we know where they are being held, it could be of enormous benefit to all of us.”
“Do you want the truth, or do you want more lies?” I solemnly replied.
“The truth. It has been several years since we had confirmation that they were alive.”
“Okay,” I sighed. “They are dead. All of them.”
One of the ministers leapt from his seat and started to gesticulate, shouting, “This is not true! We have had assurances!” (The assurances had come from al-Chalabi, al-Talabani and al-Allawi, but they were not to know that their veracity should have been checked.) “We’ve had letters and all sorts of proof.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but I witnessed many of the murders myself. I can draw you a map. I can tell you how they were killed. I can point you to their graves. The orders came from Uday and Qusay themselves.”
The air hung heavy with shock and despair. The gathered dignitaries had no doubt expected that I would be able to give them some news that would at the very least point them in the right direction, give them some hope. Maybe there had been plans to rescue them, or to tell the Americans to avoid bombing the area. But their silent, grave faces spoke volumes. This was not the news they had come to receive, or to take back with them to Kuwait. That was obvious by the light-heartedness on display earlier.
I dipped my head and rubbed my face, then looked up at them. “Look,” I began, “if you don’t find the graves, then I am a liar. If you do find them, stop supporting these criminals that go under the name of the Iraqi opposition.”
I asked for a sheet of paper, and began to draw a map with a road leading out of Baghdad and with a marker showing where one of the mass graves was situated, then proceeded, to their dread, to add more and more locations, with estimates of the numbers of victims at each site.
The Kuwaitis had been paying the opposition substantial sums of money for false information, this I knew. They had not being drawn maps detailing the settings of atrocities; they were causing the hopes of families to be raised and keeping employed a purpose-installed minister on the basis of misinformation from people denying that they lacked the requisite insider knowledge and motivated by their seedy financial gains. I knew I was right, but it would take longer for the truth to sink into the minds of these representatives and the prisoners’ friends and families back in Kuwait. How I would have loved to have been proved wrong, to find out that what the opposition had been comforting the Kuwaitis with was in fact true. But my own eyes do not lie to me.
* * *
London is a teeming city, with a population of over seven million and an area of over 600 square miles. Every race, religion and nationality is represented within its growing boundaries, and it utterly dominates the south of England culturally, commercially and historically. What is less known is that it is also the capital city of the world’s intelligence. Arabic, Israeli and American intelligence services work the streets and the telephones, gathering information and, sometimes unwittingly, sharing it with other agencies. Because of the enormous racial and religious mix in the city, a spy from practically any culture can blend into a given community and start work.
Saudi Arabia is particularly well represented. It is a country where the rights of the individual barely exist – and if you happen to be a woman, a life of servitude (whether voluntary or not) is the height of your ambitions. The ban on alcohol is non-negotiable, and anyone caught in possession of, or trading in, the substance can expect a harsh punishment. Suspicion is often enough evidence for a lengthy spell in prison. The official reason for Saudi Arabia’s harsh, prohibitive legal situation is that it is a Muslim state, indeed it was the first Muslim state, and shari’ah law must be the basis on which all other laws are founded. This would be acceptable enough, were it not for the fact that the Saudi royal family and government take advantage of their stays in London to break every ancient Islamic code there is, as though Islam is practised on a jurisdictional basis. Hotels will stock up on champagne when they know a Saudi prince is on his way. Not that staying in a hotel is a necessity – they all have expensive apartments in London’s most desirable districts, where they can pamper themselves without care and without fear of being spotted. Nightclubs, wine, prostitutes, casinos and other indulgences that would be unthinkable back home are common among the visiting Arabic ruling classes. To them, the Islam to which they ostensibly adhere is seemingly little more than a convenient way to control their population.
The end of the first Gulf War in the early 1990s, and all the upheaval it caused, was the precursor of a huge exodus of Arabs from Baghdad to London, some to escape harm, others to escape the regime they had become too close to. Many of them started working for the Saudis, as chauffeurs, pimps, spies, and in a variety of other positions. The Saudis also employed other Middle Eastern and north African émigrés, solely to act as eyes and ears in the capital, keeping watch on anyone or any organisation deemed suspicious or dangerous. The right amount of money could buy these Palestinians, Lebanese and Iraqis, and money was an asset the Saudis had effectively unlimited supplies of. If an anti-Saudi publication, news story or broadcast were to be discovered, they would report it to the embassy and action would be taken. If the report was in its preparatory stages, they would pay tempting sums of money to the journalist or newspaper not to run the story, often backed up by the threat of legal action or other more sinister, unspoken threats. Should a book or newspaper make it to print, they would send legions of agents out to buy up every single copy they could find from newsagents and booksellers. The Saudis – and the Kuwaitis – spent many millions of pounds silencing their critics in this way.
The main exiled Saudi opposition parties are also based in London. Opposition is nothing more than a sham in their homeland, so such measures as exiling the dissenters are unavoidable. The opposition consists of educated and intelligent people who can put forward the kinds of questions the Saudi powers can avoid back home owing to a monopoly on all media. (Even the internet in Saudi Arabia must pass through a main filtering server which allows central censorship of information passing both ways. The filter can be circumvented, however, by dialling up a service provider outside the country, which is what most people do, despite the risks. Strangely, countries like North Korea are heavily criticised for such mass censorship, but Saudi Arabia is a special case.) I met al-Misari, one of the most prominent opponents, at a gathering of businesspeople in London. He personified respectability, refinement and intelligence, and I was immediately enthralled by his charm. It was clear why the Saudis would prefer him dead. He was an effective debater, unflappable and reasonable when faced with any challenging questions thrown at him. Should he ever have got the chance to debate face-to-face with the overfed and underchallenged Saudi rulers he would have humiliated them without breaking into a canter. We became instant friends. It did not take the Saudi-sponsored eyes and ears long to sense my new friendship. I knew this because, in their subtle way, they had started to invite me to the kinds of parties and receptions at which my
attendance would hitherto have been deemed inappropriate. I was all of a sudden their most precious friend, supposedly grateful for all the free lunches and fresh connections. That they had ulterior motives was of no surprise to me, but at the time I could not work out what plans they had for me; I was merely following my father’s advice to keep my enemies close to me. But just how much I should have considered them my enemies became clear during a June 1995 appointment at the private residence of a Saudi official.
At the reception I was taken into a side room where I met some members of the Saudi Arabian intelligence services. I was asked about my connections with al-Misari which I refused to answer – my private business was nothing to do with them. They tried to assure me that the people I was dealing with were liars and traitors who were opposing the Saudi regime simply to earn wealth and power.
“These people,” I replied, “are not after money. Most of them are already rich. Tell me the same things about the Iraqi opposition and yes, I’ll agree with you. But these are different.”
In a slow, impatient voice, One of the men then asked me, “So do you know Sahid al-Fahri Hamid al-Misari?”
“No,” I replied.
The man smirked triumphantly and leant down to reach beside the table. He came back up opening an envelope, the contents of which were spread out on the table in front of me. “This is you with al-Misari,” he said. “Why do you tell me you don’t know him?” He leant back to await my reaction.
“Look,” I stormed, “this is a private matter. I don’t have to answer to you. It’s none of your business.” They did not push the issue any further, and we all made our way back to the reception. The arrogance on display was stunning. Why should I have told them anything? I was not in Saudi Arabia, I was not a Saudi and I could make friends with whomever I chose.
Latif Yahia with Sharif Ali bin Hussein and Saddek AL-Mussawy in London 1995, these gentlemen took part in the interim government after the fall of Saddam 2003.Ten days later, I was approached again, this time by a member of the royal family. He said he wanted to talk to me. Characteristically, I agreed. At his house in London he greeted me with all the contemptible, wafer-thin sincerity that I had expected, but he soon got down to business.
“Latif,” he started, “I know you are a wealthy man, and won’t be swayed with petty financial offerings. But we just know that you are mixing with the wrong types, falling for their charms, believing their lies.”
What happened next made my heart race. He produced a small canister, smaller than a thimble, then started talking in a pleasant, businesslike way, as though he were ordering food from his favourite restaurant. “I’d like you to invite al-Misari to your house, and you can offer him a drink, some food, anything. Simply pour a tiny amount of this into whatever you give him.” The canister obviously contained a concentrated or particularly deadly poison. “And here is your prize.” He placed three million pounds on the table, and looked up at me through his dark eyebrows to take in my reaction.
I was in no position to refuse there and then. After what I had just witnessed, that would have assured my death, and since I could not have trusted the British government to pursue the matter, there would be nothing to stop the Saudis from simply rubbing me out of existence. That would not be anything out of the ordinary for this brutal regime. They must have thought that I had nothing to bargain with. After all, I had plenty of enemies for them to blame my murder on. But did they think I would go this far? Did they think they could, at the slightest whiff of three million pounds, change me from being Latif Yahia, well-known opponent of Saddam Hussein, to Latif Yahia, murderer of Saudi opposition campaigners? Murder is not my business. Saudi Arabia is not my country. How could I get out of this situation? Three million ideas ran through my head.
I gave a long, avaricious look at the money. I had to appear tempted. I even allowed myself a shrewd smile; he reacted as I expected.
“Sir,” I said after a minute of silence, “your offer is very interesting. And as a businessman, I feel I must at least consider it.” I paused again, giving the impression of being torn between my greed and my friendship. I knew only too well how the Saudi authorities treated anyone who opposed them. Like all gangsters they would pay someone enough money to see to it that I was silenced, and go on living their luxurious lives untouched by the law or any pangs of guilt. “Allow me to sleep on it. You will appreciate what a big decision this is.” He nodded. “Take your time, my friend. When the job is done, this money is yours. You want an American passport? We’ll get you one. British passport? We’ll get one. Saudi? Easy. Name your country, we’ll make sure you get a passport. Just do this job for us.”
“Don’t worry,” I said, standing to leave, and taking a last, covetous gaze at the money. “I’ll tell you my decision tomorrow.”
Doors were held open for me as I left. Staff bowed to me. I took a headful of London air, not usually such a good idea, but at this moment it was the air of a kind of escape, a sort of freedom. A kind of air I was beginning to get accustomed to. It was not the same as the sweet air of home. Was Baghdad’s breeze as fragrant as I was imagining it? I doubt it. I had almost forgotten. But it was home, the breath of my family, my dear father, whose health or happiness I knew nothing about, but whose presence I felt more sharply than I could have done had he been standing next to me. My father had, through the wisdom he imparted in my formative years, unwittingly saved my life back there in that snake-like tyrant’s office. More than ever I desired a return to Baghdad, even if it meant certain death. And once again I found myself stacking a pile of arguments against such a romantic notion.
The moment I sat down in my car I picked up the phone and called al-Misari. “Look,” I said, “you are my friend, and I have to tell you something. The Saudis want me to kill you. They have just offered me three million pounds for the privilege. I never have been a murderer and I never want to be a murderer, especially not the murderer of my friend. Not someone like you who wants freedom for his country just as I do for my own.”
His gratitude was heartfelt; as he spoke and piled thanks and praise on me , I could sense the gravity of the situation dawning on him, and probably, at last, on myself, too.
The next day, he came to see me. We hugged tightly for several minutes. He kept thanking me for turning down the offer, as though the opposite would have somehow been the normal decision. Maybe he had spent too much time in Saudi Arabia to realise that it was not normal behaviour to offer people money to kill their friends. I would struggle to think of any decent person who would have done it. I tried to accept his thanks graciously but I did not feel like any kind of hero.
“For your safety,” I warned, “please don’t eat – or drink – anywhere.” What the Saudis were cooking for him would not have been on the menu, and it would have been well within their powers to have someone slip a few drops of poison into his order.
Latif Yahia with Abdullah al-Misari 1995 ( wanted by the Saudi government , he is the Saudi opposition in exile in London. He is currently on the UK's list of deportees )
Every day he phoned me, and I have to say that every day I was overwhelmed with joy and relief to hear his voice. After much reflection, he concluded that the Saudis must have wanted more from me than had been stated in the original offer. Out of 50,000 Iraqi exiles in the UK they chose me, obviously because of my position, not necessarily my closeness to al-Misari. It seems likely that in me they saw the opportunity of an Iraqi opposition figure whom they could bankroll, and they would always have had my guilty secret – that I was a murderer – to fall back on if I stepped out of line. In the meantime I would be a spy, gathering information for them from the echelons of society that were inaccessible to most of their bought exiles, pimps and chauffeurs. Had I wanted to be a spy, would I have spent the best part of a year in a filthy Austrian prison when I could have ended it with a defeated, bloody-faced nod to Kessler? Would I have turned down an American passport and been allowed to live half a world away from the Iraq I had fled? Perhaps every man really does have a price, but mine had not even been approached; and it certainly would not have been in sterling. Could I make it any clearer? I was against Saddam Hussein and his family, not my country. And as for the Saudis, I wanted absolutely nothing to do with them.
Thanks to my book’s popularity, my name, and my face, were becoming well known over much of the Arab world as well as in the West. It would not be uncommon for me to be called upon to do a television interview or write a newspaper article. One consequence was that from time to time, somebody would ask me for my autograph. I found this rather funny, as it happens, and I would usually oblige with a chuckle to myself. Because of the reasons for which I had originally published my story – to be given a modicum of security and to protect me from simply “disappearing” – I was not prepared for this kind of attention. Most of the time it was good-natured or curious; other times, I would be subjected to verbal abuse. I used to take my son Omar, then aged about two years, to feed the ducks in Hyde Park. He would love to do this, and there was no such thing as a short trip where Omar and ducks were concerned. Loaves and loaves of bread must have found their way down those avian gullets thanks my little boy. If he was half as happy doing it as I was just spending time with him, he must have been ecstatic.
Tara, Omar and I were on one occasion crouching next to a small pond, trying to distribute our bread evenly between the bullies and the meek among the ducks, when a brown Jaguar limousine purred to a halt behind us. This was nothing too peculiar: the visiting dignitaries would often have a chauffeur-driven “walk” in the park. Saudi princes and princesses in particular would frequent northern cities to escape the searing heat that the oil workers and city dwellers back home could only sweat through. My eye was caught, however, by the people in the Jaguar. And it was not the fact that it was the first stretched Jaguar I had ever seen – even in Uday’s infamously well-stocked garage. What did catch my eye was that the driver was female, as were the three bodyguards. They climbed out of the car in a systematic, rehearsed manner, without any attempt at surreptitiousness. Out stepped a fifth woman, obviously the main passenger, dressed in full black burqa, with only a slit for her eyes, but even they were impossible to make out in the shadows.
She strolled towards the pond, towards us, and stopped next to Omar.
“Is he your son?” she asked, stroking his hair. “He is beautiful, isn’t he?” Then she turned to me. “You are Latif Yahia,” she informed me.
“Yes,” I said, with a small bow. Shaking hands would have been out of the question – that much I knew.
“I have read your book, Latif. It’s very good. I enjoyed it. It’s lovely to meet you … wonderful to talk to you.” Her voice was beautiful, calm and soft.
“Thank you very much,” I replied.
“I’d love you to sign my book for me, but I’ve left it in the hotel. Would you sign it?”
“Of course,” I said. “Next time you are here, bring one with you,” I suggested.
“How long will you be here for today?” she asked.
“I don’t know. An hour, half an hour.” I shrugged and nodded down to Omar. “To be honest, I’ll be here as long as the ducks are hungry.”
“Could I send one of my girls to pick it up?”
“My pleasure,” I said. “No problem.” It seems that her girls did not go to the hotel, as they returned several minutes later with three brand new copies, almost certainly from a bookshop in Edgeware Road, just two minutes from the park. The books were Arabic versions.
“Please sign this one with my name,” she started … “and this one’s for my cousin” … “and this one’s for my friend.”
I put my little messages on the front pages and handed the books back to her with embarrassed gratitude.
“So what brings you to London?” she at last asked.
“I’ve moved to London. I run a business. Every day I come here to enjoy myself with my children and to make sure the ducks are fed.”
We spent about half an hour talking like this.
“Will you be here tomorrow?” she asked.
“I’m here every day,” I laughed. “Omar loves ducks!”
The next day she was there before me. I parked my little Bentley next to her Jaguar limousine. She came trotting towards me, or in actual fact towards Omar, and lifted him up over her head, telling him how beautiful he was. After the introductions, I could tell by what I could make of her body language that she was a little uneasy or self-conscious.
“Latif, would you join me for dinner tonight in my hotel room?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but I don’t know you. And I can’t even see who you are. I can’t see your face.”
“Believe me,” she went on, “you must not feel sorry for me. Where I come from my face is very well known.” It was a strange, defensive thing to say; I had not expressed any pity towards her.
“I can tell from your accent that you are Saudi Arabian,” I said.
“You are right,” she said. “I will tell you who I am if you promise that you tell absolutely no one.”
“No problem,” I replied.
When she told me her identity, I could see why she had imposed this condition: she was a Saudi princess, the fourth wife of a prominent prince who also held a government position.
“I don’t believe you,” I said, even though I probably did.
“Well tonight, Latif, when you come to my hotel, I’ll show you my passport.” She was persistent. I thought she was joking, but she assured me she was not. She gave me another invitation. At 9 p.m. that night I turned up at her suite in the Dorchester Hotel. She dismissed her bodyguards and left herself in this grand, exclusive place with me alone, something I had not been not expecting. She asked me to make myself comfortable and glided into another room.
A short while later she re-emerged, and I was dazzled by what I saw. She was a mirage of desert beauty, her long, flowing hair tumbling over her shoulders, her dusky skin moulded between the contours of her pure face, and those eyes, a lustrous brown but with a damp sparkle that enlivened her every slight movement. Gone completely was the Arabian attire; in its place was a flowing Western dress that cascaded over her shoulders, her hips and her chest. She was twenty-four years old, I soon found out.
I became captivated. My intimate relationship with Nusa was long over, although we remained under the same roof for the sake of the children. She had occasionally tried to rekindle the relationship we had once had, but my feeling that she had betrayed me when I was in prison was overpowering, and besides, our closeness had never in my mind reached any kind of elevated level – even at our best moments it had been a case of mutual support rather than affection.
So here was I, a single man, in a hotel suite with a captivating girl – who happened to be a wife of a Saudi prince. It felt dangerous and exciting. She retrieved a bottle of champagne.
“Where is your Islam now?” I laughed.
“I left it in Saudi Arabia,” she said, “it’s not here.”
I popped open the bottle and we sat down and started to drink and talk. The first glass went down quickly, then the second. By the third glass, we had begun to get a little drunk, and out tongues loosened.
“Tell me, Latif,” she said, slurring ever so slightly, “do you love your wife?”
“I’m not married,” I replied.
“But you have a son,” she gasped her big eyes widening..
“I know, but I’m still not married.”
“But that’s wrong!” she said.
“What is wrong?”
“To have a child out of marriage! It’s wrong!”
“You mean it’s against Islam?” I asked. She must have known where the conversation was leading. “You mean it’s right that we’re drinking champagne now?”
She started to laugh. “You know, this is the system in our head, isn’t it? This set of morals.” I suppose there is a difference, too. Having children outside of a stable relationship can affect several people; not that all marriages are stable or all cohabitations weak. Drinking alcohol against one’s religion, at least in moderation, affects only the drinker.
“Anyway, I’m not married,” I muttered quietly, just in case she had forgotten.
“But do you love her?”
“I’m … not … married,” I repeated, emphasising every word. “And no, I don’t love her. Perhaps if I did I’d have married her by now. But no, I don’t. Yes, we live together, but it’s for the kids. Certainly not for me.” I took a slow sip of champagne. “Anyway, what about you? You’re someone’s fourth wife, are you not? How would your husband feel if he walked in here now?” She snorted bitterly. “We got married last year and only once has he slept with me. Maybe twice. He may have four wives but even that is not the limit of his sexual affairs. I am nothing more than a small adornment for him, a doll, a trinket to inflate his ego. I see him every now and again. He just walks in, says hello; nothing more.” Her voice broke progressively as she talked. Tears began to trickle from her eyes and one splashed onto the back of her hand. “I was forced into this marriage. He threatened my family. He just didn’t want anyone else to have me, that’s all. This is my life.”
I tried to comfort her without crossing any of the makeshift boundaries that I suddenly had to impose on myself. Even though we had shared some closeness, I did not want to take it any further for fear of offending her, although I sensed a feistiness hiding beneath that flawless, obedient exterior. What a waste, I thought, of a woman who seemed faultless but who had been put out to fallow at such a young age, bought and displayed like a carpet that is hung on the wall as decoration.
I went back home that night but felt the stirrings of attachment to this woman. Who would have felt otherwise? She had invited me back the following night.
Our second encounter in her suite became an ecstatic, sensual evening. More champagne was drunk, and any barriers between us faded away and we were sucked into each other’s arms. We made love for the whole night.
The clandestine relationship continued for three weeks, with almost every night spent talking, touching and lovemaking. I would have loved to take her out somewhere, to go visiting places and exploring the city, the country, but it was impossible. But even with this stultifying restriction, our time together was heavenly. At the end of three weeks, she told me that she could not live this life any more.
She was going to go to Saudi Arabia and clear things up, then try and move permanently to the UK. She told me she loved me, that she needed someone like me. And I was beginning to feel the same way about her. We had grown intimate way beyond the physical manifestation. She had opened up to me. I knew everything about her – her childhood, her family, her history, her education. Even she did not know why she had chosen me to be the recipient of the secrets she had carried with her. Nevertheless, I could not have her leaving everything she had for me. Although spending my life with her would have been verging on fantasy, I did not feel I could guarantee her anything. I did not even have a nationality.
Three days after she left, she called me. “Latif, I have a million pounds, and I want you to look after it for me until I come back.”
“Why are you sending a million pounds to me?” I enquired.
“Please, just look after it until I get back to London.”
The money was not transferred electronically – someone simply arrived at my door, knocked, handed me a bag with a million pounds in it and walked away. I had no idea where it was from, whether it had been flown over from Saudi Arabia or despatched from a UK bank. I simply kept it safe in London.
Another ten days passed. She arrived back in London. This time she had £500,000 in cash with her. She planned to stay a week. When we met we held ourselves together and kissed like lovers.
“I don’t know how to tell you this,” she said, looking straight into my eyes.
“What?” I mumbled.
“I’m pregnant.”
I was shocked. “By … by me?” I ventured.
“Yes. It couldn’t possibly be anyone else. My period never came after we spent time together. It can only be yours. I don’t know what I’m going to do.” There was no way she could have pretended it was her husband’s child, and I am not sure if I would have wanted her to.
As far as I was concerned, abortion was not an option. The mere thought of terminating the life of one of my own children made me shudder. “What do you want to do?” I asked.
“I’m going for the last time to Saudi Arabia. I’ve got millions in dollars, riyals and pounds, and I’m going to bring them back. I’ll leave my husband and I want to live here with you.” Her eyes narrowed and her voice went hostile and rasping. “Fuck the prince. He can do what he wants. I don’t want to live under his thumb any more, and nobody’s going to make me. I don’t want that life, not now that I’ve seen what it’s like on the outside.”
Perhaps, I thought, I am going to end up with this beautiful, delightful woman for the rest of my days. And Tara and Omar will have a little half-sibling to play with. I must admit that although everything had just got a thousand times more complicated, I was excited and was planning for the future with a zeal that injected a renewed enthusiasm to my life. I saw her off at the airport with a lingering embrace. I really did not want her to go, but at the same time wanted her to make her own mind up. She told me that she would be back in four or five days. The time elapsed, and when she did not show up I started to worry about her. Who knows about her story? I wondered. She was very close to her sister. Perhaps she had told her. She would have known everything. I do not know. What the Saudi authorities were capable of did not fill me with hope. Surely they would not murder her, but they would almost certainly keep her in virtual captivity until her feelings for me wore off. This was the worst I could imagine happening to her.
The exact details will probably remain unknown; but I was later to find out a few of them. All I know is that the Saudi authorities found out about what had happened between her and me. The prince, her husband, ordered that she be tortured to force out of her the reasons behind her decision to flee the country. She was tortured and mutilated until she admitted what had happened. She gave them my name.
Then they cut off her head.
I found all of this out from her sister. I had at last experienced the ruthlessness of the murderous Saudi regime that had until then only been a hovering presence. I was under no illusions about them; they had nonchalantly attempted to turn me into the murderer of my friend. But this shocked me. This was the prince’s wife. His beautiful, stolen, neglected wife. They murdered her because of me. They murdered her because she refused to be bound by their oppression, because she threatened to have a mind of her own. Perhaps the thought of her having someone closer to her own age threatened the prince. He would not be able to stand the humiliation, and yet he wielded absolute power over ever aspect of her life. Her head was starting to make her body do things he disapproved of, so he had them separated them forever.
This is the Saudi government that I know. It is remote from the appeasing, crawling relationship shared with most of the world’s governments, thanks to its oil and its strategic geographical position. The hands that are shaken warmly by foreign secretaries, presidents and prime ministers are soaked in blood. Will people ever see them for what they are? Will the regime’s critics ever be treated as anything other than cranks and anti-everything activists?
If this all sounds familiar, consider this: Saddam, before he fell out of favour after blithely invading Kuwait, was the darling of the West. He gave women a degree of freedom that existed nowhere else in the region, modernised the country’s agriculture and gave great numbers of his people access to the kind of, modern, progressive education that is unheard of in many Gulf nations and won him an award from UNESCO. But the side of Saddam that was known to Western administrations – the brutal, murderous, barbarous, secretive side – was kept from the world’s media. Saddam was installed with the help and blessing of the West. They could do this because he was a criminal, and if ever he fell out of favour, his crimes could be brought into the open and his removal would be a formality (so the theory went). Saudi Arabia is at a similar stage of development right now. Opposition is crushed, dissent is punished swiftly and irreversibly. And this is true of the entire Gulf – Bahrain, Oman, Yemen, Kuwait. Be a friend of America and nothing will get mentioned. Support the world’s sole superpower, provide it with enough cheap oil to keep its Cadillacs, Boeings and drive-through fast-food joints going, and a blind eye will be turned to your crimes – however heinous.
I was eventually visited by the sister of my murdered lover. She was, not surprisingly, enormously distressed. As the revelations dripped from her mouth they became torrents of tears that gushed from my eyes like I had never experienced before. I had never seen myself as the crying type. I always thought the years of torture and horror had immunised me to human emotions, but I was wrong. I have heard people describe such occasions as the floodgates bursting open, and I cannot put it any better. It was as though something held back for years had finally succumbed to the inevitable effects of pressure and let go without hope of being patched up. It must have been at this moment that I indeed discovered how deeply I had fallen in love with this girl. And now she was gone forever.
Her murderers had also taken with her my unborn child, and therefore a part of me. It was an unforgivable crime and I was powerless to avenge it.
I advised her sister not to return to Saudi Arabia as her safety could not be assured. I told her of the money her sister had left with me, and could see no reason why it should not now pass to her. She needed much persuading. I told her it was not my money, and asked her what else would happen to it. She did have two or three million pounds of her own, so was not in desperate need for it.
The next day I gave her the £1.5 million. “From now on, I am your brother,” I told her. “If ever you need anything, just call.”
“That is exactly what I wanted you to say,” she wept. “I need advice from you. I don’t know what to do next.”
“My advice to you,” I said, “is to leave Britain.”
“I could go to America,” she enthused.
I laughed involuntarily. “If you go there, you’ll just have to put up with the same old shit. Britain and America are friends of Saudi Arabia. They will put you in a box and send you back there, and nobody will know anything about you.”
“So where can I go?”
“Go to France, to Canada. Anywhere that isn’t a close friend of Saudi Arabia. Somewhere where there are human rights. But not America .”
The next day, accompanied by my bodyguards, I drove her to Paris via the Channel Tunnel. We stayed there a week during which time I found her a large villa. Saudi women, especially those of the more genteel classes, are simply unequipped educationally or socially to do such things on their own, thanks to the way information on independent living is kept from them by their society. We have seen what happens to women who start to get ideas of their own.
We remained in contact until a few years ago, when our communications ebbed away, taking with them my last point of contact with probably my first real love. Of course, if her sister should call me today I would jump on a plane and go to see her if she needed me. As far as I know she lives in Canada, but could be somewhere else. I like to think that she has found peace, and started a new life. I simply hope she is safe.
And although I have since found a wife whom I love more than I can express, I shall never forget that lost soul whom I also loved and who was bullied, oppressed and murdered by her husband and sections of her government until she met her ultimate fate at the hands of the same unpunished individuals. Nor will I forget the child I never knew, also murdered by the same smiling, egregious bastards.
As far as the Saudis themselves were concerned, they had made for themselves a story which could not only tarnish their refined image abroad and at home, but could also become another straw on the camel’s failing back. People would only tolerate so much.
Fortunately for them, the Saudi royal family owns seventy five per cent of the world’s Arabic newspapers, and the ones they do not physically own they can exert immense pressure upon to see things their way. More often than not, violence is the dangling last resort; most editors and journalists would accept a large cheque or a bulging envelope instead of running a particularly damaging story.
In my case they saw attack as the best form of defence – that seventy five per cent of the newspapers shouting would drown out any portion of the remainder reduced to whispering as loudly as they could. They started to run disparaging stories about me. According to the reports, I was an agent of Saddam Hussein, and my opposition to him was merely a front. They started to pick holes in my story and made every attempt to discredit me, all no doubt in anticipation of a media assault I was certain to launch, starting with my revelation of their murderous atrocity. Their choice of “sources” was almost embarrassing in its clumsiness. Anyone remotely connected with Uday was considered to have a voice and a story sufficiently valid to add weight to the public denouncement of my character. They dragged to the fore some mechanic or other who had worked in Uday’s garage, who looked after his fleet of cars and who had probably never even dared to speak to him, let alone spy on his fiday. Other palace workers, with similar levels of closeness, also banked their fraudulent Saudi cheques. They appeared on television and did newspaper and magazine interviews, all the time spreading lies about me.
I found the whole thing hopelessly unsophisticated and even amusing. I used to laugh out loud when I heard the testament of one of these ridiculous pawns. I vaguely recognised a few of them from way back. It was one of the few links with Iraq that did not make me homesick.
Al-Misari phoned me one day after seeing one such story in a Saudi newspaper: “It looks like the war against you has started now, Latif,” he said.
I laughed. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I know just how to sort it out.”
The Saudis must have considered their attempts at softening me up a success, and, like a council of generals preparing to deliver the big push after a lengthy pounding of a distant enemy’s positions, they offered me what amounted to a surrender offer. It came in the form of a planned meeting with the son of the prince who had murdered my lover.
He invited me to meet him in Saudi Arabia. This was out of the question. I told him I would meet him on my own territory, which at the time was London.
We met in the Hyde Park Hilton, in a suite chosen by me, and both my bodyguards and his own checked the room thoroughly before our meeting started. Both entourages entered the suite. I dismissed my bodyguards, and he followed suit.
The meeting started as I predicted it would, with him producing a cheque book.
“Any price you want,” he said. “Just say the number.”
“Why do you people think that you can buy anything or anyone with your money?”
“I can see you will not take my money,” he said. “I just have one thing to ask of you. Please, please, do not tell the story to anybody. I will put a cheque on the table and give you a pen. You can write on it any number you want. Just please do not make this story public.” What surprised me more than the sleaziness of the proposition was the fact that he said “please”. In all my encounters with Saudi diplomats and royalty, I had never once heard them use this form of cordiality. To them everyone, national subject or foreigner, was a slave, fit only to be ordered about and told what they were to do. It was an astounding demonstration of arrogance but thanks to their money it did not seem to bother those with whom rudeness and lack of respect was part of the arrangement. He continued, “Any photographs you have – and the negatives, of course, you must give them to me as part of the deal.”
“I don’t want the cheque. I don’t want your money. And I’ll never forget this woman,” I snarled. “She was carrying my child; and your father, the bastard, he cut her head off.”
I did have photographs. She had at first left them with me as proof of her identity, but I kept them to look at when we were apart. I also had pictures of the two of us together. Anyone would have been able to see that it was the same person in both images. Any editor of one of Britain’s national newspapers would possibly have paid a considerable amount for these photographs. They might not have caused the collapse of the Saudi administration, but they would for sure have screwed the prince in question. He was a very well-known, highly-ranked prince. I have no doubt that the Saudi royal family would have distanced themselves from him and publicly treated him as a outcast, forcing him to admit his wrongs. The royal family could even have benefited from such action; it could have made them look a little less barbarous, a little more caring, as though they were putting their house in order. They were untouchable.
“Listen,” I said. “I am not like the Iraqi opposition. I don’t accept money from you people so that you can own a part of me and so that I can grow rich. I won’t be taking this story to the press, and it’s because this woman was carrying my child and because I loved her. This will remain a secret which I shall take to my grave. Just get out of this room, this country, and take your money with you. You cannot buy me.”
He took his message back to Saudi Arabia with him. The fact that the prince did not have the courage to face me personally, but sent his son, is all you need to know about these people.Readers might have noticed that I have gone back on my word. I will not be troubled by such a lapse. The Saudi administration, and this prince in particular, seem to have no scruples and I think that now is the time to give to them a tiny fraction of the pain I have carried with me for a decade.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL 1995
Daily Mail UK 26/10/1995
Latif Yahia in Trinity College Dublin-Irland 
Latif Yahia in Trinity College Dublin-Irland 
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