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Iraq haunts Dublin man
SAN RAMON -- Twenty-nine years ago, Dublin resident and Iraqi native Henry Oshana was sentenced to die.
Saddam Hussein's Baath party had been waging an all-out war against Iraqi Kurdistan. The regime was summarily arresting people on charges of treason. With as much arbitration, they were killing many of them.
In 1974, as a wiry 20-year-old kid preparing to go to law school, Oshana was accused of passing military secrets to the Kurds. He said he was innocent and believes he was arrested for being a minority -- one of about a half-million Christians in Iraq.
His story, he said, is indicative of an inhumane regime gripped with paranoia.
In prison, Oshana met a wealthy lawyer who was arrested because a Kurd parked 200 yards from his house. Another prisoner was a studio photographer locked away for allowing a Kurd to sit for a portrait.
To extract guilty pleas, Baath party officers pulled off prisoners' fingernails with pliers, spun them around on ceiling fans, burned their bodies with cigarettes and hot irons, and smashed their feet on a feared torture tool called the Falaka.
International human rights advocates long have denounced Saddam's Stalinist habit of kill-
Oshana said the interrogators killed prisoners every day at the Mosul prison, where he was tortured for almost a month. Some were fed to Odai Hussein's prized lions, others were dropped in pools of acid. One of Oshana's prison friends -- a 22-year-old sugar factory worker -- had his testicles smashed on a broken beer bottle.
That man died 11 days later.
Prior to Saddam's overthrow, Oshana did not talk about these experiences outside his small circle of friends. He had escaped, first his execution, then a life sentence in prison, and finally Iraq. And he would not sacrifice any of that for a chance to speak.
"I don't fear the regime now," he said.
Things are very different for Oshana these days. He is the CEO for Low Price Auto Glass, which has 80 locations around the country. He lives with his wife and two daughters a few miles from the company's Dublin headquarters.
His house is a monument to the good life. There's a large-screen television in the living room and an air-hockey table upstairs. Each of his daughters, ages 7 and 11, has their own computer.
But neither silence nor time has tempered those years in his early 20s, the days when death hung in the air like an omnipresent foul odor.
He remembers everything. He easily intones the names of his persecutors. There was the soulless interrogator Ibrahim Shalal, who was a butcher and a first lieutenant in the army. And there was one of the judges, Ahmad Younis, who Oshana said told him, "You son of a *****. Let your Jesus Christ save you."
"I can't forget. I can't forget," Oshana said. "I never forget those days. I have no faith there."
It's a sentiment in stark contrast with his unflagging faith in God. He credits his survival -- four years, one month and three days in prison -- to his faith.
The judges commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment because, he believes, "God was there and touched one of those guy's hearts."
When he was released from prison in 1978 by order of special amnesty, he said it was another gracious act of God.
But he also knew he had to leave Iraq as soon as possible.
Oshana found a job as the general manager of a cabaret in Baghdad. He said he was being watched 24 hours a day.
"Yes, I was free, but I still felt I was in prison," he said. "I heard bad news from friends who were released from prison too. I thought my time was getting shorter. I thought I was going to disappear."
He began working tirelessly on his escape, but the regime branded him a high risk. He said officials told him, "You will never get a passport. You will not get out of this country. You were lucky to get out of prison."
Some of the top officials in the Baath party, however, wanted to see the shows at Oshana's cabaret. Many would watch them from his office. It was there that he met Saddam's half-brother, Watban al Tikriti.
With al Tikriti's influence, Oshana swiftly got a passport. Three days after he had the document in his hand, he flew to Sofia, Bulgaria, on a one-way ticket.
From there, it was no looking back. One year later, he was bottling soda in a factory in Wyomissing, Pa. -- a political exile fast on his way toward capturing the essence of the American Dream.
He has been in the Bay Area for about 10 years. With several of his brothers, Oshana has built a mini-empire out of the auto-glass business.
He has no plans to return to Iraq, where three of his 11 siblings still live.
"The way I was tortured, the way I was treated, I don't ever want to visit. (The United States) is my country," he said. "This is the country who made me somebody."
A strong supporter of the war, Oshana fears a power vacuum in which religious fundamentalists, just as radical as Saddam, construct a wayward government.
"If religion doesn't get involved, everything would be OK Because of religion, there will be a major problem in Iraq." | |
