Michael Saba recounts his time as a hostage in Baghdad during the 1990 Invasion of Kuwait, Thursday, Feb. 25, 2021.
Sunday, March 7, 2021 | 2 a.m.
After escaping from his Iraqi captors in 1990, Michael Saba did everything he could to bring attention to the plight of dozens of other Westerners still being held.
He shared his harrowing experience in interviews to persuade influential people to help bring home the others who remained trapped in the grip of Saddam Hussein during the opening days of the Gulf War.
One of the people who got the message was Harry Reid.
Reid, then a first-term senator representing Nevada, reached out to Saba, an international businessman from Illinois, because two of the remaining captives were Nevadans. Reid wanted to bring them home — and he didn’t need or want it to be widely publicized.
But Saba, now a Las Vegas resident, saw those efforts firsthand.
Reid was one of the notables, including boxer Muhammad Ali and leaders from many nations, who applied the pressure that ultimately led to the hostages being freed.
Reid met with Iraqi Ambassador Mohammed Mashat, who promised him and other members of Congress visas to travel to the Middle East to seek the release of American hostages. Reid ultimately did not make that trip after President George H.W. Bush’s administration opposed the travel out of fears it could be used as propaganda by Saddam, the Los Angeles Times reported in 1990.
Saba’s experience was well-documented in 1990, and the 80-year-old tells it now with the same clarity, color and shading.
A hotel prison
Saba was wrapping up a trip to the Middle East to organize a Gulf States Chamber of Commerce conference that fall. He had heard about the possibility that Iraq would invade Kuwait on the accusation that Kuwait had tapped into Iraq’s oil, but people around Saba, from the king of Bahrain to an American diplomat in Iraq, said it was just Saddam’s bluster.
When Saba got in a cab the morning of Aug. 2 bound for the Baghdad airport, his driver told him that the airport was temporarily closed, as was normal. So Saba went back to the Sheraton hotel to wait out what he thought would be a brief closure before going home.
When he turned on the television in his room, CNN International showed images of invasion. His wife, eight and a half months pregnant with their youngest of five children, called him, alarmed.
About 150 Westerners were in the hotel. Some stepped into the hall to talk with each other, confused.
Later that day, the troops came to round them up.
The captives were relocated to the Al Rasheed hotel in the city’s Green Zone. They were not bound, and even the U.S. government didn’t call them hostages at first. Saddam called them his “guests” in the luxury hotel, where they were free to walk around. They even checked in. They were valuable to the dictator.
The captives were terrified. They occupied their minds with puzzle rings and a bowling alley in the bomb shelter, and lots of alcohol. Somebody’s short-wave radio allowed them to hear updates from Bush, and a bus took them to the U.S. Embassy for briefings.
Some of the detainees insulated themselves with the creature comforts of the hotel, slapping down their credit cards knowing that at that time, all contracts, like American Express bills with charges for sumptuous food and liquor, were null.
Separately, Hussein’s troops brought in another set of foreign captives, including oil workers from Kuwait. These newcomers had witnessed the invasion and had intelligence that the former Sheraton visitors did not. They were kept on their own floor under armed watch, but Saba speaks some Arabic and persuaded a guard to let him approach them. He learned that they too were terrified. He also learned one was from Nevada.
‘Engelbert, thank you brother, I’m out of here’
Saba said some of the apparently strongest people cracked most under the stress. He steeled himself to be among those who would flee. To mask their conversations from guards within earshot, Saba would play a harmonica he’d bought on the trip. Speaking in pig Latin — not a complex code, but enough to throw off the guards who couldn’t follow the modified English — they discussed potential paths out. The group determined that escape via Jordan was most likely.
Saba said the diplomats at the embassy at first told them they were safe and to not attempt to run. He disagreed. Later the diplomats started saying they were “hostages.” Saba agreed. Triggered by a track of Engelbert Humperdinck’s “Release Me” playing over the hotel’s background Muzak, he said to himself, “Engelbert, thank you brother, I’m out of here.”
It was either the 10th or 11th of August when three hostages, Saba among them, pooled their cash to hire a driver to the Jordanian border about six or seven hours away. Iraqi troops stopped them twice along their journey. Both times, Saba spoke in Arabic, telling them he just wanted to get home to see his son be born. Both times, the troops let them go and sent them on their way, and even served them tea and cookies.
Their ride stopped 10 miles shy of the border and they walked the rest of the way. They carried exit visas, and because Saba could name-check a staffer for the crown prince of Jordan, the group was allowed in.
Saba’s facility with networking connected them with a Danish news crew who took them to Amman in exchange for an interview. He also ran into a journalist from “Dateline,” and told his story to Ted Koppel. The segment played on his flight home, and he made it in time for his son’s birth.
Quiet involvement
Upon Saba’s return, he started the nonprofit organization Coming Home to free the remaining captives, and continued his media tour: USA Today, Oprah, Larry King, The New York Times and more. Celebrities started lending their influence. He testified before Congress. All this got the attention of Reid, who had heard from his constituents’ families.
Saba was from Illinois by way of North Dakota, and though he is a lifelong Democrat and would later serve in the South Dakota Legislature, he didn’t know the junior senator from Searchlight at the time.
Unlike some of the celebrities, Saba said, Reid wanted to keep his involvement quiet. That’s what most impressed him.
“I thought that I did enough to help and I thought it would be untoward for me to run to the press and say, ‘Look what I did,’ ” Reid said in an interview last week. “I didn’t feel it was appropriate in a situation like this.”
The Reno Gazette-Journal reported in December 1990 that George Charchalis, a former Reno City Hall employee who was working in Kuwait at the time, was among a group to be released thanks to the efforts of late boxing legend Muhammad Ali. Ali personally negotiated their release with Saddam; Charchalis’ wife had already been released, and though he knew Charchalis, Reid said he wanted to help everyone still in peril. A Carson City man working as a planner overseas remained trapped in Iraq at the time.
By Dec. 6, 1990, Saddam had ordered all hostages released. About 2,000, mostly from Western nations, were held across Iraq and Kuwait, some explicitly as human shields.
Saba related on a human level to those around him during the tense times.
“If you deal with people as people, you forget they’re a soldier or politician,” he said.
Reid said he was flattered by Saba’s praise 30 years on, and the two have connected since Saba moved here in December to be closer to family in the area.
Because the world is small, Saba’s son-in-law is a Las Vegas horticulturalist who did the landscape architecture for Reid’s home. He’s a longtime Reid friend himself.
