ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The documentary Hiding Saddam Hussein, telling the story of the man who concealed the former Iraqi dictator following the United States invasion in 2003, will be screened in Erbil, Duhok, and Sulaimani on Saturday.
The film tells the story of Alaa Namiq, who hid Hussein for 235 days in a village south of Tikrit while thousands of American troops searched for him after he was toppled from power in 2003.
Director Halkawt Mustafa said his goal was to explore a different side of Hussein. “We have seen Saddam on television, we have seen Saddam in the process of leading a country, but [not] a Saddam who is hiding alone, a Saddam who could not visit a doctor when his blood pressure rose.”
He said that Namiq learned how to take Hussein’s blood pressure and how to give him the correct medication.
The documentary was 12 years in the making.
“The first reason was for me to understand the story, since I do not know Arabic, and the place where I wanted to do the filming in 2014 was controlled by ISIS, so I waited until 2018,” Mustafa told Rudaw’s Shaho Amin, adding that some of the scenes were shot in the exact location where Hussein hid.
Iraqis are interested in learning about the details of these months Hussein spent in hiding.
“We would really like to know who helped him, who was with him, who committed these crimes with him. Of course, they cannot be done alone. The complacent one is the person who hid him,” Asma Latif, a public servant, told Rudaw in Kirkuk.
“Some people benefited from Saddam Hussein,” said Naji Talib, a former political prisoner under the Baath regime who noted that 20 years after his capture, some people still admire him.
“Indeed, we want to know all the details, how he [Namiq] hid him, how he [Hussein] became wretched, hiding himself in that dirty hole. These delight us,” Rajab Kakayi, a Kakayi Kurd, told Rudaw.
Samira Ahmad, a public servant, said that the news of Hussein's capture brought back memories of the injustices Kurds suffered under his reign, including the genocidal Anfal campaign and the Halabja chemical attack. "It was all like a film playing in our thoughts," she said. "We didn't know whether to shed tears for the bitter memories or laugh and shed tears of joy."
The Anfal campaign, named from a passage in the Quran, was the codename for Saddam Hussein’s genocide when around 182,000 Kurds were killed.
The chemical attack on Halabja took place on March 16, 1988, in the last days of the eight-year-long war between Iran and Iraq when Hussein’s warplanes rained down a lethal cocktail of chemical weapons on the city, killing at least 5,000 people, mostly women and children, and injuring hundreds of others.
On March 20, 2003, the United States and its allies launched an operation in Iraq, ending Hussein’s rule. The dictator disappeared and was found by US forces in a pit near his hometown of Tikrit on December 13, 2003.
He had been sentenced to death for the killing of 148 Shiites and was hanged on December 30, 2006, before the conclusion of his trial on Anfal crimes.
