Arab News Staff Writer

JEDDAH, 21 December 2003 — Noura, the daughter of Iraqi opposition leader, Taleb Al-Suheil Al-Tamimi, is demanding justice. She accuses Saddam Hussein of being responsible for the death of her father who was killed on April 12, 1994, reports Al-Sharq Alawsat.

Noura said that on Dec. 14 — Sunday morning — she received a phone call from a friend telling her about the capture of Saddam Hussein. When she heard the news, the first thing she did was to pray and then go to her father’s grave at a cemetery in southern Beirut.

As she stood at his grave, she felt conflicting emotions of joy, sadness and anger at the news. Noura, who has never been to her homeland, Iraq, remembers her father’s life. Her father fled Iraq in 1968 after Saddam sentenced him to death and confiscated all his money and possessions.

Once in Amman, he continued his opposition to Saddam’s regime. He married Minerva, the daughter of a former Lebanese Minister Ali Badraddin. Noura pointed out that the risk of danger haunted them wherever they went.

She pauses when she comes to 1993 and says: “After Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait and all that followed it, the isolation, suffering and increased oppression of Iraqis, my father decided that the time had come for a coup.

“He had long felt, by the way, that a coup was both crucial and necessary. The time for executing the plan was to be in June, during an official ceremony attended by Saddam and under his patronage. The Americans, however for some reason, did not want the coup to succeed; perhaps they knew that Taleb would not follow their instructions and policies so they leaked the information to Saddam.

“Everyone in Iraq who was involved in the plan — military officials as well as officials from Saddam’s own hometown — was arrested and tortured. Their mutilated corpses were later handed over to their families for burial.”

Noura continued, “From that time, my father began receiving direct and indirect death threats. The last one was from the Iraqi ambassador’s wife in Amman and was delivered at a social gathering. As a result of the threats, my father decided to leave Amman and move to Riyadh. Even there, however, there were attempts on his life. In April 1994, my father came back to Lebanon to take care of some family matters. On the evening he planned to leave, the murderers got him.

“One of them was a Armenian who had been my father’s tailor for 25 years; he has a number of passports: Iraqi, Syrian, Austrian and Lebanese.

“It was later revealed that Iraqi intelligence had placed him there to watch my father. And four diplomats at the Iraqi Embassy in Lebanon, after undergoing specialized training in Switzerland, assisted the tailor in assassinating my father.”

“On the night of the assassination”, Noura continued, “in my father’s house, the electricity was cut off. After receiving information that my father’s bodyguard was not present, his killers knocked on the door. My father was busy preparing for his trip and when he asked, ‘Who is it?’, the murderers replied, ‘We have brought some shirts from the tailor.’ Then the door was opened and they shot my father. The murderers fled, leaving the shirts on the floor with the tailor’s name on them. At that time, diplomatic relations between Lebanon and Iraq were also broken off.”

Noura paused at this point, accusing the world and the region of the assassination of her father. His four attackers claimed diplomatic immunity and were released. The Armenian who lacks immunity confessed to the crime and the family has now filed a law suit. Noura continued, “We have brought this case not only in Arab countries but also in the UN and the International Court of Justice.”

She said that her sister Safia had returned to Iraq to begin the procedures necessary for reclaiming reclaim the family’s possessions and assets that were confiscated 35 years ago by Saddam Hussein.

She added that the family had decided to return to Iraq with her father’s remains so that he can now be rest in his homeland.