Three Iraqis who tried to help the CIA overthrow Saddam Hussein make lives in Nebraska - and deal with the jarring turns their adopted country has dealt them.

© St. Petersburg Times
published December 8, 2002

LINCOLN, Neb. -- A decade ago, Mohammed Tuma lived in Iraq, a captain in Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard. He had training in chemical weapons.

Now Tuma lives in America and uses chemicals in a far different way -- to straighten, perm and color hair.

"I love color -- highlights and lowlights," says the burly Tuma, who graduates next month from Joseph's College of Beauty. He plans to open his own salon, Mon Amour.

Tuma is not the only one whose life has taken some unusual turns. His good friend, Dr. Adil Awadh, is unable to practice medicine, so he took telephone orders for a catalog company that sells everything from socks to ammunition. He lasted two weeks.

"It was torturing," Awadh says.

Saddam Hussein's forces tried to assissinate Safa al-Battat. They put rat poison in his soft drink.

Then there is Safa al-Battat, who miraculously survived an assassination attempt in which his Pepsi was spiked with poison. Now he works for a company that makes Kashi organic cereal.

Yes, it has been a long, strange trip from northern Iraq to the corn-fed heart of America.

Disgusted with Hussein's rule, Tuma, Awadh and al-Battat defected from the Iraqi military. They joined opposition forces that worked with the CIA to overthrow the regime. When Hussein counterattacked in 1996, the U.S. government evacuated them to Guam -- the first step, they assumed, of wonderful new lives in America.

Instead, they went to jail. For more than two years they were held as threats to U.S. national security, based on evidence the government said was too sensitive to reveal.

Some of that evidence remains classified, but hundreds of pages were finally made public. The men were able to show that much of the suspicion against them was the result of misunderstandings and translation mixups.

If the government had damning evidence, it did not disclose it. The Immigration and Naturalization Service let the men go, with a restriction. They could live in only one city in America:

Lincoln, Nebraska.

On this Tuesday night, al-Battat is working late at the cereal factory. The Tuma and Awadh families gather at the Awadhs' townhouse on the city's wind-whipped outskirts. They dig into a dinner of basmati rice, tabsi chicken and curried beef with noodles.

As much as Tuma would like to stay and visit, he can't linger long after the dishes are cleared. He has to be home by 10 p.m. so he can make his nightly call to the INS. He has to let them know he's not on the lam.

"It's our dream to leave Lincoln," Tuma says as he rounds up his kids and heads into the blustery night. "It's like a bigger prison for me."

Even as a boy, Adil Awadh hated the ruinous course Saddam Hussein had set for the nation.

In the 1980s, during Iraq's long war with Iran, he watched bodies come home in coffins roped to the tops of taxi cabs. His father was in the import-export business, and though rich by Iraqi standards, the family's lifestyle paled next to their relatives in Kuwait, a smaller country with less oil.

Awadh's grades were not good enough for medical school, but he got in by agreeing to work for the Ministry of Defense upon graduation. He was assigned to a military hospital in Al Amarah, a hotbed of opposition in the south.

In 1994, Hussein issued a decree: Iraqi deserters would have their ears surgically removed. One night Awadh saw several soldiers, handcuffed and blindfolded, dragged from a military vehicle into an operating room. An hour later they were brought out unconscious, their heads swathed in bandages.

Afraid he would be ordered to perform the amputations, Awadh decided to join the opposition. His wife supported him, his father did not. "He thought I'd bring the wrath of the regime on my family."

In 1996, Awadh hired a man to smuggle him to northern Iraq, where U.S.-funded opposition forces had been under allied protection since the Gulf War.

Carrying nothing but a briefcase and his medical diploma, he arrived in the city of Dohuk and joined one of the main opposition groups, the Iraqi National Accord. His family later joined him and there they befriended Mohammed Tuma.

Tuma had risen to the rank of captain in Hussein's Republican Guard, but he loathed the regime. It had jailed his brother for three years for political reasons and executed his uncle, a high-ranking military officer.

In 1995, he defected and took his family to the north, where the CIA was funding the opposition. But people like Tuma saw little of that money. He remembers the lean times when his 3-year-old wanted to eat bread he found in the street.

Before Safa al-Battat turned 30, he had survived enough close calls to scare a cat.

In high school, he imprisoned for nine months because of a cousin's political activities. Jailers ripped out his fingernails and hung him upside down by his feet. Upon his release, the army drafted him to fight in the Iran-Iraq war, during which he was shot in the shoulder.

Al-Battat was still in uniform when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1991. He soon deserted and went home to Basra, in southern Iraq, to join an uprising against Hussein. The rebels were confident that they had the backing of the first Bush administration. They were wrong.

"When it started, we got confirmation from the U.S. government that they will support the Iraqi people to overthrow the regime. We were seeing alliance aircraft flying low and doing certain maneuvers that we interpreted as greetings and then when we started to get massacred by the Iraqi army we realized no help was coming."

Like Awadh and Tuma, al-Battat joined the opposition in the north. By the mid '90s, his guerrilla attacks against the regime's forces prompted Hussein's agents to try to assassinate him. They put thallium, a tasteless, odorless rat poison, in his Pepsi. Initially thought to have AIDS, leukemia or malaria, he was near death by the time he was correctly diagnosed.

Al-Battat was the first of six opposition members to be poisoned in a month's time. Three died. One was permanently disabled.

Former army captain Mohammed Tuma works on one of his regular customers, Ethel B. Flynn. Says she: "He's the best. He has strong hands, and it always looks right."

In August 1996, the Iraqi regime moved against the opposition in the north and executed hundreds. The CIA got out, ending its four-year effort to topple Hussein. The agency, along with the FBI, the INS and the National Security Agency, approved the names of some 6,000 opposition members the United States would evacuate.

The families were bused across Turkey and put on a chartered plane for the 18-hour flight to a U.S. base on Guam.

"I'm thinking, it's done, we're free," Tuma recalls. "Now a new life for us and our kids, especially when I saw the American flag. It's a dream for me."

Lodged on base, the families passed the time playing soccer, watching CNN and taking classes in U.S. history and civics. They were interviewed, first by the INS, then the FBI. Awadh says that's where the problems began.

The FBI agent was interested in his military background, especially his time at the hospital where ear amputations were performed. "He didn't accuse me directly of being an accomplice, but his attitude was always skeptical, always suspicious."

In the second interview, things grew tense, Awadh says, after the agent used an idiom he did not understand: "If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck ... " Arabs consider it degrading to be compared to an animal, and Awadh thought the agent was deliberately insulting him. The agent persisted in that vein, and Awadh refused to answer more questions. The agent would later characterize Awadh as evasive and "confrontational."

When al-Battat tried to explain he had been poisoned with thallium, an agent apparently confused it with "Valium" and concluded he was a recreational drug user.

When Tuma said "I'm dying" -- a common Iraqi expression that means "I'm tired" -- the agent thought he was suicidal.

After five months on Guam, the families were told they were to be resettled on the U.S. mainland. They were thrilled -- until they boarded the plane. A contingent of heavily armed men informed them that while their cases were processed, they would be housed in a "facility" in California.

The facility turned out to be the Los Angeles County Jail. The INS held the men, but after a week granted their wives and children political asylum.

Where in the United States would you like to live, the INS asked.

Everything the Iraqis knew about America was what they had read or seen in movies. They all agreed New York and California were out -- too big and too dangerous. Dr. Awadh suggested Pennsylvania, home of the commission that accredits foreign medical students. Or maybe Seattle. He remembered that Seattle sounded nice in something he had read.

On March 28, 1997, as their wives and children boarded a bus for the airport, still not knowing where they were bound, the men said their goodbyes.

"You wouldn't believe the emotion," Tuma says. "I thought I'd never see them again."

Hours later, the families got their first look at their new home.

"We didn't know where Lincoln, Nebraska, was," says Awadh's wife, Sarab. "We knew California, Chicago, New York -- but Nebraska?"

The government chose Lincoln because it got help from a Catholic social services agency that already had settled some Gulf War refugees there. The night the families arrived, they were given food and clothes and taken to a dilapidated house infested with rats and mice.

It still felt like winter. None of them had ever seen snow, let alone slogged through a blizzard. They knew little English. They took job-training courses, but no one wanted to hire them. For women with college degrees, it was demeaning to wear used clothes and ask for help.

They missed their husbands desperately, and hoped they would be reunited in two or three months.

It took almost 2 1/2 years.

Amir al-Battat, 6, and his 11-month-old brother, Lych, stay inside most of winter.

After the families left Los Angeles, the men got some badly needed legal help. Public Counsel, a nonprofit law office, took their case for free.

Of the thousands of Iraqis evacuated to Guam, only 25 were denied asylum. The initial charges against what became known as the Iraqi 6 -- Tuma, Awadh, al-Battat and three others -- was that they had entered the country illegally.

They found that laughable. After all, it was the U.S. government that had flown them to Guam. Then the government said it had evidence -- too sensitive to reveal -- that these six were a threat to national security.

"We never argued, and our clients never argued, that the government didn't have a legitimate interest in screening anyone coming into the United States," says attorney Niels Frenzen. But the men could not defend themselves if they could not see the evidence.

In March 1998, an immigration judge reviewed it and concluded the men's credibility was "so suspect that (it is) difficult to accept the veracity of any of their statements." The judge ordered the six deported to Iraq -- a near-certain death sentence given their opposition to Hussein.

They had been locked up a year when former CIA director James Woolsey joined the defense, calling the government's case "a stain on the honor of the United States." The Iraqi 6 were a cause celebre, featured on Nightline and 60 Minutes. A U.S. Senate subcommittee held a hearing on the use of secret evidence in immigration cases.

A senior CIA official told senators that the government's treatment of the men could hurt efforts to recruit other collaborators. By jailing the Iraqi 6, Warren Marik testified, "we show that we ourselves are not friends who can be trusted."

The FBI admitted much of the evidence was erroneously classified and turned over 700-plus pages of reports.

"As we started to get some peeks ... we saw the Keystone Cops-type of investigation and started to realize how incompetent the FBI national security division was in this case," Frenzen says.

"If this is the best the division can offer in terms of an investigation and identifying possible threats, we're in trouble. These special agents have difficulty distinguishing between Iraq and Iran, Shiite Muslims and Sunni Muslims, Baath Party and non-Baath."

The Justice Department, which includes the FBI and the INS, did not respond to repeated requests to comment for this story. Janet Reno, who was attorney general at the time, said she cannot comment because she does not have access to the files. In a 1999 response to the defense's appeal of the deportation order, the INS said there were "reasonable grounds" to consider the Iraqi 6 dangerous to national security. It also said the men had made "innumerable inconsistent statements," presented "contradictory evidence" and "failed to testify in a credible manner."

Among the mixups the defense found in the declassified documents was that the thallium poisoning incident had become part of the evidence against al-Battat.

"When it's revealed this is something the FBI is basing its conclusion on -- that he's not who he says he is, that he's a drug abuser, not a hotshot opposition member -- we had to waste our time putting on medical testimony that one does not get high from taking thallium, not even one minute," Frenzen says.

"The thing that is so outrageous was that even when the mistakes were being pointed out to them they totally refused to take a second look at the information. That was frightening."

After the defense had its chance to see the no-longer secret evidence, the Board of Immigration Appeals sent the case back for a new trial. But the Iraqis didn't want more hearings, they just wanted out of jail.

"I have a wife that needs my presence," Awadh says he told the lawyers. "I have a kid that has gained weight and inches and his brain is developing without me."

A deal was struck. The INS dropped deportation proceedings and its allegations the men were national security threats. The men admitted they had entered America illegally and agreed to eventual deportation to a friendly country -- like Canada.

On June 23, 1999, Awadh, Tuma and al-Battat shed their orange prison jumpsuits and changed into civilian clothes. They were free. Sort of.

Sarab Awadh and Hussain, 2, head out for the day.

Last summer, the Tumas and Awadhs took a vacation.

Awadh had been invited to San Diego to address a new organization opposed to Hussein. The families piled in their cars and headed west. They spent two days in San Diego and felt at home there. It seemed much more of an international city than Lincoln. It had a better climate and more job prospects.

Awadh felt bad. He wished he hadn't pressured the others to reject California when the INS asked where they wanted to live.

They also stopped in Las Vegas. Tuma won $265 from a quarter slot machine.

"Mohammed is always lucky," Awadh says. "Except with the INS."

When they came to Lincoln three years ago, the men had to stay home from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. They couldn't leave Lancaster County without permission, except once a month to report to the INS office in Omaha, 50 miles away. They could not take a job without INS approval.

At the urging of Woolsey, the former CIA director, Attorney General Reno agreed to ease restrictions on five of the Iraqi 6 before she left office in early 2001. They could travel more freely, but still had to call the INS once a week and report in person monthly.

Tuma alone remained subject to the full gamut of restrictions. Why him?

"That was never revealed to us," Frenzen says, though declassified evidence showed the FBI was suspicious of Tuma because of his relatively high rank in the Republican Guard. Agents also thought he had understated his knowledge of chemical weaponry.

Tuma struggled to find satisfying employment. He worked in a nursing home, then went for a degree in respiratory therapy. After the Sept. 11 attacks he thought patients would be scared by an Arab therapist. He decided on a new career track: hairstylist.

"I was thinking about a business in which I could make a good living and be my own boss. I was thinking business, not hair." When he looked around Lincoln's Arab community, now numbering a few thousand, he saw Arab grocery stores and Mideastern restaurants. He saw no salon that catered to Arabs.

After Tuma graduates from beauty school next month, the 34-year-old will open his own salon in Lincoln's oldest shopping mall. He chose Mon Amour because he didn't want an Arab name, but on Mondays it will be open to Arab women only. They can shed their head scarves and get their hair styled by women. No men, not even Tuma, will be allowed.

If the business does well and the INS lets him, Tuma says he wants to go big time and open a salon in San Diego. Or Manhattan. Or Florida.

Al-Battat, on the other hand, wants to stay in Lincoln. He considers it a nice, quiet place to raise kids. He's a regular at Applebee's salad bar and, like most everybody in town, he's trying to understand just what has happened with the Cornhuskers football team this season.

The going hasn't been easy. At 38, al-Battat still experiences anxiety, muscle weakness and other effects of his thallium poisoning. Working as a welder proved too strenuous. His carpet cleaning business flopped.

Now he services the machines that make Kashi organic cereal at the local U.S. Foods plant. He saved enough for a down payment on a home, but no bank will give him a mortgage because, like the others, he isn't a permanent resident of the United States. He could be deported on a few weeks' notice.

He likes working, even 70 hours a week. It helps take his mind off his uncertain future.

"After we get adapted to the American life, after my kid adapted to this kind of life, we see ourselves outside the country and trying to adjust to a different kind of life. It's very scary."

At 33, Awadh is the youngest of the three and the most politically active. He has also been the most frustrated in trying to find the right work.

Soon after arriving, he applied to a family owned company that treated sleep disorders. He put together what he thought was an impressive resume -- it listed his medical credentials, cited the extensive media coverage of his case, even gave a former CIA director as a reference. The owner's grown children seemed impressed but said they needed to check with their father.

Sorry, the answer came back. No job.

Awadh tried other things. He worked as a translator. He helped people start small businesses. And there were those two weeks taking phone orders for Cabela's, a retailer catering to outdoorsmen and women.

He wants to be a doctor again, but his medical school in Baghdad refuses to verify he attended. Without a transcript, no U.S. school will take him, and he would have to start from scratch.

By and large, the Awadhs have found Lincoln a pleasant enough place. As for many Arabs, it grew distinctly more uncomfortable after Sept. 11. There were whispers in the grocery store, like the time Sarab was with her two boys and heard a little girl ask her mother, "What do you mean they're evil?"

Awadh has written opinion pieces for Arab-language newspapers and gone on TV with Lincoln's police chief to talk about the terrorist attacks, Iraq and Muslims in general.

Now, as war with Iraq looms, Awadh is troubled by news that the Bush administration has begun monitoring Iraqis in this country to identify Hussein sympathizers. Awadh says it's a waste of time.

"Iraqis in the United States are crying for the U.S. to interfere. Almost all of them are victims of Saddam Hussein and if he has any sympathizers here, they will not be Iraqis. Terrorism is a valid concern, but it will not come from Iraqis."

Iraq's media made a big deal of how the U.S. government treated the Iraqi 6 and others who collaborated with the CIA to topple Hussein. Given America's track record, Awadh wonders how eagerly Iraqi scientists will heed President Bush's call to cooperate with weapons inspectors.

The families that collaborators leave behind feel the regime's wrath. Awadh's relatives have been repeatedly harassed and interrogated. A few months ago, they sent word: Do not contact us directly again. They're hoping the reprisals will end.

Awadh says that will not deter him from continuing to speak out. "I think I have done the right thing. If we stop opposing the government for the sake of appeasing the regime and avoiding reprisals on family members, that means he has won, this regime has triumphed."

Before Thanksgiving, Awadh drove 20 hours through a blizzard to Washington, D.C. There he joined two other members of the Iraqi 6 working with the Iraqi National Congress, one of the groups opposed to Hussein. Awadh's family will stay in Lincoln at least a few months, until he knows what he will do next.

Awadh, Tuma and al-Battat -- along with hundreds of other Iraqis -- have registered with the Pentagon to help change the regime in Baghdad, however they can. Awadh says he would even go to Iraq to fight.

None of the three is eager to live there. They have spent six years on American soil. Some of their children are U.S. citizens. They have had rocky experiences with the U.S. government and still they say America feels like home.

Says al-Battat: "When the terror attacks happened Sept. 11, I asked myself, do you love the United States or do you hate it? I really had only one answer. I love the United States and I was hit by these attacks. I consider it a personal attack on me."

"Yes," says Awadh. "I find it very hard to live in the United States and not love it."

Times researcher Cathy Wos contributed to this story. Susan Martin can be contacted at susan@sptimes.com

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