Screening at the Red Sea Film Festival in Saudi Arabia, the documentary tells the story of how Iraqi farmer Alaa Namiq hid Hussein from U.S. troops for 235 days.
It was one of the biggest manhunts in history. Having been ousted from power after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, the country’ all-powerful and ruthless leader, went into hiding as an estimated 150,000 troops scoured the land for the individual known as “High-Value Target Number One.”
Hussein evaded capture for almost eight months, emerging disheveled and bearded from a tiny purpose-built hole under a flowerbed near the town of Tikrit. Three years later, he was hanged.
But who dug the hole for Hussein?
Who helped keep him hidden from the U.S. army despite a $25 million reward?
In Halkawt Mustafa’s feature documentary Hiding Saddam Hussein, the Kurdish-Norwegian filmmaker lets Alaa Namiq tell his incredible story on camera, explaining how the toppled dictator turned up at his farm unannounced and then spent an incredible 235 days there before he was found.
During that time, this humble Iraqi effectively assumed the role of presidential hairdresser, physician and bodyguard.
Finding the man who kept Hussein hidden?
As soon as they found Hussein in the hole I was really curious. Firstly, was it true, because a lot of people didn’t believe it. And then, how was it possible? He was the all-powerful president, so how did he end up in this hole? But I didn’t know how to find the man who helped him. I searched for two years, and then the Washington Post named him in 2012. And with his name, I was given the opportunity to track him down. It took me one year to sit down with him, but then he didn’t want to talk. He’d just come out of Abu Ghraib prison. He was in one of the famous photos taken [with U.S. soldier Lynndie England]. The only reason he’s alive today is because the Abu Ghraib scandal came out and they closed it.
No, from the beginning I just expected he would have been connected or related. But no, he had no connection. He was just a simple farmer and he was by chance the one chosen to hide Saddam from his family, friends and 150,000 soldiers.
Did you know it was just one guy?
No, and this has been part of the process of making this movie. The most important thing I learned is how patient you need to be to tell your story.
It’s not only telling his story, but humanizing him and seeing the story from his perspective. We’ve always seen Hussein as the dictator, the powerful president. But then you see the king losing his power, and then it’s about balance and Alaa takes over.
To be honest with you, it was hell difficult to make this movie. From my perspective, my mother came from the area which was bombarded by Saddam’s chemical weapons. But I really wanted to give Alaa the chance to tell the story from the Arabic perspective, because almost everything we have seen about the Iraqi invasion has been told from the Western perspective. This is why I decided, almost from the beginning, to let him tell the story in exactly the way he wanted.
After tracking Alaa down, how did you convince him to speak to you?
It must have been fascinating to hear about how and why Iraqi farmer agreed to hide the world’s most wanted man.
I had so many questions. Why didn’t he sell Saddam to claim $25 million.
Why couldn’t he just say, sorry I can’t help you because there are 150,000 U.S. soldiers looking for you? Why are you hiding him, not just from U.S. soldiers but even from his family? No one knew. It was really difficult to understand, from my own Scandinavian perspective, why you can’t just escape with your family and leave him, if you’re so scared. But from his perspective, somehow I began to understand, especially if you have only one TV channel in your country and everything about your president is beautiful and perfect, and then he comes to your house and asks you to help. In Arabic culture, you never ask your guests how long they plan to stay. Because Saddam asked if he could stay for one night. In the end, it was 235.
Given the rise of ISIS, was safety a concern when making this?
Yeah, ISIS had taken over where we wanted to shoot the movie. In the end, I secretly brought Alaa to Norway, because no place in the Middle East was safe to do the interview. I want to tell you something funny, but all our communication before that had been through Tinder. Not directly but via middlemen, because it was safe. We made Tinder profiles for the men connecting me with Alaa. Also, almost everything about this project has been kept secret only up until the last two months.
It was something I had to learn! Even in the post-production process, the people who were working on it didn’t know what the project was about. And in Iraq, when we were shooting, I wrote a script about drinking water disappearing from the area. They thought I was shooting a movie about climate change.
Alaa’s safety?
We had lots of meetings about ensuring Alaa was kept safe. But he said that the only thing he wanted to happen before he died was to tell people the story, to tell the truth behind the hole.
Relationship between Saddam and Alaa
This is actually a story of friendship. And this is why I’m working on a drama based on the story with David Seidler, who wrote The King’s Speech. We already have a script, and I hope to direct it.
