The man who hid Saddam Hussein.

Did you ever wonder what the story was behind where Saddam was located? I sure did at the time and I'll bet many others as well. I know the information on it was very slim ... until now. It seems the man who owns the house Saddam was taking shelter at decided to speak and share some thoughts. I found this interesting and figured others would as well.

DAWR, Iraq — Alaa Namiq doesn’t want to talk about it. Or he’s dying to. It’s hard to tell. One minute he’s shaking his head, stone silent. Then he starts bragging about it and he won’t stop talking.

“I dug the hole for him,” he says, his eyes burning with pride.

“The hole,” known to the world as the “spider hole,” is the tiny underground bunker on Namiq’s farm where former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was captured by U.S. soldiers on Dec. 13, 2003.

“He came here and he asked us for help and I said yes,” says Namiq, 41, wearing a long, white dishdasha robe. “He said, ‘You might be captured and tortured.’ But in our Arab tribal tradition, and by Islamic law, when someone needs help, we help him.”

Sounds like Saddam was running pretty hard by that point. It sure isn't how I had imagined he'd be while listening to the reports of efforts to find him. I imagined he'd have had some bunker or facility planned for himself well in advance. Odd duck he was, all the way around.

Namiq says he and Qais were arrested along with Hussein, and then spent a miserable six months in Abu Ghraib prison. Once a driver and an aide to the former president, he has spent the last few years driving a taxi, finally saving enough to open his family restaurant a few weeks ago.

Ahh... That would seem to explain not only why there was 0 info from anyone .. even leaks..at the time but why Saddam chose this guy of all the people around. Not a random choice at all.

“Saddam knew there would be a day that he would be captured and executed,” Namiq says. “In his heart, he knew that everything was gone and that he was no longer president. So he started something new — jihad against the occupiers. He sacrificed everything he had, including his two sons, for the sake of the country.”

Namiq says that when he was held at Abu Ghraib, U.S. soldiers — including a female interrogator who told him he looked like actor Tom Selleck — questioned him daily about weapons of mass destruction and the hiding places of top aides to Hussein.

Sourc e
(I'd note this is another LONG article at the source and well worth going back to read. There is much more detail between these quotes.)

It sounds like at the end, he'd realized what was coming and how it had to go. I don't feel sympathy for Saddam and I never will. I never can. I wish he'd made the realization this talks about in his fatalistic attitude much sooner and perhaps ...short circuited so much that came.

Regardless though, this story seemed to fill in a great many blanks I had about that whole segment of the war and what happened. I thought others must be just as curious about the rest of the story.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Hi, OP. The man speaks the opportunistic truth. He really has revealed nothing more than people knew already. I expect he will get an agent and see how he can best roll with this story. And while it may be of interest to some people in his country and some sort of acknowledgement that he was jailed for his efforts and questioned daily by US interrogators, I won't be counted among those adding to his coffers.

I'm not sure what, if anything he is peddling. That story is from Stars & Stripes. Nothing being sold there......?

What I find interesting about this is the same reason I've read so many books about the wars in history.

It is history and in this case, actually hearing the little things and the mood...general tone of events and that sort of thing, it adds depth to the story.

I dunno... It doesn't change anything either way and Saddam is dead. no question there. Historical detail is something I have always found fascinating though.