ABSTRACT
Leaving Iraq on the night of August 7-8, 1995, in an Amman-bound convoy of black Mercedes, ostensibly on his way to sign an important contract in Sofia, Bulgaria, was a clever move by 41-year-old Gen. Hussein Kamil Hassan, August 8 being an Iraqi national holiday to celebrate Baghdad’s victory over Iran in the First Gulf War. Steeped in a celebratory mood on that day, the regime would be slow to react to his master-stroke – leading a large group of defectors, consisting of his family, and that of his younger brother, Col. Saddam Kamil Hassan, and their aides – he must have reckoned.
