Local soldier racts to capture of former Iraqi leader
When Sgt. Nino Ovial entered his squadron’s headquarters Dec 14 to do some paperwork regarding his prisoners in the town of Husaybeh, Iraq, he noticed several Army personnel gathered around a television and talking excitedly. One of Ovial’s friends said Saddam Hussein had just been captured. Initially, the 25-year-old California resident was in disbelief.
“At first I thought it was just one of his body doubles,” Ovial said. “After they said they did a DNA test and it turned out to be him, I was really surprised.”
And he wasn’t the only one initially skeptical. Ovial’s prisoners thought the talk of Saddam’s capture was just another tactic to get them to talk, but when Ovial and his Iraqi translator, Bedia Daoud, showed them newspaper headlines about the deposed despot’s incarceration, some broke into tears.
“That evening, Bedia went down to the local town and bought a few newspapers with Saddam’s face on the front and all of the details about his capture,” Ovial said. “A few of them started crying.
“Some of them started praying to Allah and doing the ‘Halleluiah’ symbols in mid-air. Some of them started stomping their foot on the ground…the bottom of an Arab’s foot is considered the ultimate insult.”
He said one of his prisoners, a 68-year-old Al Qaida man, said through Daoud that after Hussein’s capture he had no reason to live.
Ovial has been in Iraq for more than eight months working at a detention camp, where he processes and guards enemy prisoners of war and searches for smugglers near the Syrian border.
The nuclear, biological and chemical specialist said he joined the service in 1996 to see the world but never expected to see active duty.
He admitted that Hussein’s capture boosted morale for all the troops in Iraq.
“We are happy, to say the least, especially the ones that always go out on missions and try to capture the loyalists, which they bring to me sometimes,” Ovial said. “There is a feeling that something finally got accomplished in a war that is really starting to get questioned. The unfortunate part is that this has no effect on us coming home, but it is a break and some of the troops are very excited about it.”
While Ovial noted that the reaction from the troops has been very positive, he said the Iraqis have had mixed reactions to Hussein’s capture, and he estimated that about 35 percent still want Hussein in power, mostly out of fear of the unknown.
“When you’ve had a gun pointed at your head your whole life and being told how to live and all of a sudden that gun is gone, you are going to be apprehensive,” Ovial said. “People also have to understand that all of the government jobs were all state run by the Baath Party, and with as long as it is taking us to get stabilization and rebuild the country, the people are going to call for their old leader back.
“It is going to take time, and once these people realize how bad they had it, once we establish their government, I’m sure that the people that are supporting him now will start to think twice. Basically, it is because these people don’t know how to live; they have been afraid to even make a mistake or even to talk about Saddam.”
Ovial said his unit is hopeful that with Hussein in custody, more loyalists will come forward with information and act as snitches on other Iraqi militants, but he said he is hesitant to think the capture will result in the deterring of insurrectionists.
“The insurgents are not commanded by him. They are from somewhere else. They could be from Iran, Syria, Jordan…basically any country that borders Iraq. We thought the same thing after we got his two sons this past summer. What happened? The attacks increased to daily. I don’t think that this is going to make a difference at all except in the increase and frequency of them. Saddam has so many loyalists, and senior Baath Party members that we haven’t caught yet have a pretty good following out there.”
But Ovial admits the capture of one of the most feared dictators since Hitler is good for Iraq and for the troops.
“It was big for Iraq and why we are here,” he said.
Officials believe that during his 23-year presidency, Hussein was responsible for the murder of about 300,000 people, many of them buried in mass graves.
Pentagon officials said Hussein will have prisoner-of-war status during questioning at an undisclosed site where he was taken after he was found hiding in a hole on a farm near his hometown of Tikrit. Hussein was hiding in a Styrofoam-covered underground hideout near one of his former palaces. He was disheveled and disoriented, according to reports, and although he was armed with a pistol he did not resist his captors.
After questioning, Hussein is expected to be the principal defendant before a five-member criminal tribunal formally established last week by the Iraqi Governing Council.