When I Was Saddam’s Hostage

A powerful figure in business, Ali Bozkurt was at the peek of his success having the best of the worlds; money, fame, power. As a CEO of one his construction company, he went to Kuwait, just for one day, to attend a formal ceremony of a multi billion-dollar power plant construction of his company. Out of nowhere came the thousands of Iraqi soldiers to the doorstep of his construction site on August 1^st, 1990 abducting Ali and his colleagues.

Shoved into a concentration camp, labeled as "hostage," stripped off of his power and his dignity; his life hung between life and death at the trigger of an ignorant 17-year-old Iraqi soldier.

Such an unexpected sudden change in Ali's life, instead of being the most powerful person in front of his colleagues and having to obey humiliating orders of an Iraqi child in front of them, was an unbearable shame and sorrow, worse that being killed for him.

This was beyond a nightmare, it was reality; another dimension of life where survival from day to day was the object of life in which people were driven by hunger, thirst and threat of death.

You will read the feelings of a person, and how this event affected his life, his views and his values, and how his life is transformed into a different direction after his release.

Graduated from Istanbul technical university in 1963, Ali’s construction company specialized in road building, airports, tunnels and power plants.

Following his hostage ordeal, he immersed himself in political, social justice, human rights and constitutional law issues, becoming an election observer for the National Endowment for Democracy in several newly-independent states and an international business advisor to the New Jersey legislature.

As a Research Fellow at Kennedy school of Harvard University in the late 1990s, Ali undertook a several years long study of constitutional law, state and religion conflicts and political party organization.

He has over twenty books published following his release from Saddam.