Actor stars as Iraq’s hangman
BAGHDAD, Iraq – Basam Ridha al-Hussaini, 43 and Hollywood handsome, fled Iraq 25 years ago after Saddam Hussein’s secret police carted off two of his brothers, who were never seen again. He settled in Los Angeles, became a building inspector, then fell into acting, landing a job as the “Black Robe Leader” in “Three Kings,” starring George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg and Ice Cube.
Now he’s back in Iraq, playing a far different role: the adviser who oversees executions for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
On Tuesday, al-Hussaini watched as Taha Yassin Ramadan, Saddam’s vice president, was hanged for the killings of 148 Shiites in the village of Dujail. He was the fourth former Iraqi leader – including Saddam – sent to the gallows for the crimes.
“We learned from the past,” al-Hussaini said afterward. “We’re not accustomed to executing; that’s why we made mistakes, unlike Saddam and his people. They did not care.”
Ramadan’s execution was the first that the government pulled off without controversy. Al-Hussaini said that this time all the procedures were followed: Ramadan was weighed, the rope was measured and the trap door wasn’t triggered until Ramadan had said the Islamic creed twice.
Saddam’s hanging was a squalid affair in a cramped room full of men taunting the deposed dictator. Saddam was dropped in midprayer. The chaos was captured on a guard’s cell-phone camera and made its way around the world on the Internet and satellite TV.
Al-Hussaini blames that on his absence.
The one event he’d always wanted to attend, he missed. He was skiing in the Mall of the Emirates in Dubai with his wife and two children, who still live in Los Angeles, when he got a call that Saddam’s execution would be Dec. 30. He couldn’t make it back in time.
“I almost divorced my wife in Dubai when I learned it was going to happen the next day,” he said jokingly from his high-backed chair, dressed in a dapper suit and red tie. “I planned everything for Saddam to be executed on the 10th of January … . Everything went wrong.”
On Jan. 15 he watched as Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Saddam’s half-brother, and Awad Bandar, the former head of the revolutionary court, were hanged. Barzan’s head popped off. Al-Hussaini later called it an “act of God.”
Throughout his exile, al-Hussaini was a political activist against the regime that had taken his brothers. In 2005, then-Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari invited him to join the government.
Al-Hussaini said he did it for his brothers Bashir and Kadhim, who were taken in 1980 along with tens of other men for refusing to join the Baath party. Al-Hussaini and another brother fled two years later, and his father died in 1984 – of grief, al-Husseini said, calling out his missing sons’ names just before he died.
Eventually, their names were found on an intelligence list of men who’d been killed. Al-Hussaini thinks they were buried with thousands of others in one of Saddam’s mass graves.
“We never found their graves,” he said. “This is the time I come back to get revenge for my brothers … this is the time I come back and rebuild.”
Overseeing the executions is a privilege, al-Hussaini said. He’s angry at the criticism of Saddam’s hanging. “They even stole that joy from us,” he said.
In his office, hours after Ramadan’s death, he scrolled through computer pictures of his Hollywood days. In one, he poses in a black robe, turban and beard with Clooney. In another, his two young children are playing outside his large Los Angeles home.
Then came a picture of the gallows. With pride, he pointed out how they were built to international standards.
He has two business cards, one that identifies him as a member of the Screen Actors Guild, another as al-Maliki’s adviser.
His desk is cluttered with cell phones. He said that they often rang and the person on the other line threatened his life.
“I never fantasized that I would be in charge of the executions,” al-Hussaini said. “I believe the blood of my brothers did not go in vain for this road of democracy. I don’t feel bad, I feel good at the end of the day.”