The marriage was cemented by the birth of Ali. The child’s arrival deepened the hatred of Saddam’s elder sons, Uday and Qusay, toward Samira. But by December, both were dead after a shoot-out with U.S. Special Forces.
Earlier, in March 2003, with the coalition forces closing in on Baghdad, Saddam had arranged for Samira and Ali to flee to Lebanon. With her she took $5 million in cash and a trunk of gold bars from the vaults of the Central Bank of Iraq.
She told friends she was going first to France and then to Moscow, claiming Saddam had been secretly promised by Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, that he would give her sanctuary. Instead, she went to a prearranged hideout, a villa in the Beirut suburbs.
It was there that Mossad discovered her in November 2003. Meir Dagan sent a team of surveillance specialists from the service’s yaholomin unit to follow Samira’s every move.
They discovered that the Lebanese government had provided her and Ali with Lebanese passports and new identities. Samira was given the name “Hadija.” But Ali, who has the same deep-set eyes as his father, insisted he would keep the family name of Hussein.
The Mossad team noted that Samira had transferred most of her money out of Lebanon to a Credit Suisse bank account in Geneva. In the past, the bank had been a repository for some of Saddam’s own fortune.
Early in December 2003, Samira cashed in her gold bars for U.S. dollars with a Beirut money dealer. Then she started to call Saddam.
Supported by Israeli air force surveillance aircraft, the yaholomin discovered that the calls were being made from inside Syria, which borders on Iraq. “The calls were affectionate. It was clear there was a close relationship still between them,” said a high-ranking Mossad source in Tel Aviv after Saddam had been captured. That one of the most reviled tyrants in the world—a man who had personally ordered the terrible torture of many thousands, including women and children—could speak of love, both fascinated and repelled the Mossad team.
But along with endearments the listeners also heard, through their electronic equipment, that Samira wanted more money.
Time and again, in further calls in December—each made to a different number the yaholomin team pinpointed as going to an area in the desolate sands of the Wadi al-Myrah, which is close to the Syrian border with Iraq—Samira repeated her request for money.
The daughter of a wealthy, aristocratic Baghdad family, Samira had never lost her taste for the good life. During their marriage, Saddam had showered her with gifts, including two palaces.
The Israelis knew that across the border in Iraq, U.S. Special Forces were roaming up and down the border looking for Saddam. Other Israeli agents on the Syrian side of the border had heard radio chatter between the units—known as U.S. Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force 121—as they also set about trying to track down Saddam. The force comprised members of Delta Force, the U.S. Rangers, Britain’s SAS and Special Boat Service, and the Australian SAS. “For political reasons, we had not been formally invited to join the party,” a source close to Meir Dagan said to the author.
Mossad—not for the first time—decided to keep to itself the information it was gleaning from the surveillance of Samira.
Then, on Thursday, December 11, 2003, the yaholomin team picked up a conversation between Samira and the man they were now certain was Saddam. He told her he would meet her close to the Syrian border. Details of the meeting were enough to prompt the Israelis finally to alert Washington. As Samira prepared to drive to her assignation, she received a second call. The meeting had been canceled. The call did not come from Saddam.
By then, it later emerged, he was inside his eight-foot-deep hole on the outskirts of Tikrit, his birthplace in Iraq. Samira and Ali heard the news of his capture on the radio. She burst into tears. Ali’s reaction is not known.
In Tel Aviv, Mossad analysts—like those of all the major intelligence services—were poring over the video footage that showed the likeness of Saddam the world had never seen before. And as part of their work, the Mossad analysts began to ask intriguing questions. Who were the two unidentified men armed with AK-47 rifles who stood guard over the hole? Were they there to protect Saddam—or kill him if he tried to escape? Why did Saddam not use his pistol to commit suicide—and become the martyr he had long boasted he would be? Was it cowardice that stopped him—or was he expecting to make a deal? Would he reveal the truth not only about weapons of mass destruction, but also about his deal with Russia and China, whose secret support had encouraged him to continue to confront the United States?
