Jeber was moved around Iraq from US-run prisons at Baghdad airport, to Camp Bucca near the Kuwaiti border, desert tents nearby, Abu Ghraib and a small room in one of Saddam’s palaces. He estimates he was interrogated at least 50 times — always the same questions.
He was blindfolded and sleep-deprived for days then enticed with fruits and family visits. It was a classic counter-espionage routine designed to break defenses that didn’t exist.
SERENDIPITOUS
Jeber was given US$1,000 and released in September 2003. Within eight months Tenet and Powell had resigned. He is, however, satisfied at a serendipitous achievement that he lays at Curveball’s feet.
“It was very important to get rid of Saddam,” he said. “I never expected he would be removed from Iraq.
Should Curveball return, he faces a highly uncertain future in Iraq. Baathist militias still see him as an enemy. His friends seem to have largely disowned him and his family has scattered to the four winds. The wife he abandoned when he fled to Germany will have nothing to do with him.
Tracked down at her home in Baghdad, she sighed and, holding her three-year-old son said: “My life with him was lie after lie after lie.”
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