BAGHDAD — They called him "the big fish" and blindfolded him with his own tie.
Raad Ommar, a 59-year-old businessman from La Crescenta, was in his upscale Baghdad office writing e-mails when his guard came running in. Downstairs, said the agitated guard, men in military uniforms were hauling away Ommar's clients and employees.
Moments later, Ommar, too, was crammed into the backseat of an unmarked sport utility vehicle, his hands cuffed and his tie tight across his eyes.
He was delivered to a building teeming with prisoners, and his captors wrapped his face with duct tape, from forehead to the bridge of his nose, Ommar said.
His suit was drenched with sweat in the hot, humid room, he recalled. He had difficulty breathing and his heart was racing.
And he was beaten repeatedly with a paddle.
Three and a half years earlier, Ommar had arrived in Baghdad full of hope. After decades in America, he had returned to the country of his birth with dreams of making a difference.
Ommar had left Baghdad in the early days of the Baath Party rule, after two sinister episodes. Once, he recalled, he and several friends were beaten by the secret police without provocation. Another time, he saw bodies hung from telephone poles at a downtown Baghdad square. There was no explanation of who the victims were or who had done it, Ommar said. "I was really spooked."
Moving to America in 1969, he lived first in Kansas City and later headed west, starting a family and finally settling in La Crescenta. He worked in marketing and sales for large electronics firms before starting his own company. When the U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq in March 2003, he was overjoyed, returning home to Baghdad in April and forming the Iraqi American Chamber of Commerce. The small-business owners organization was unaffiliated with the American government and akin to a local chamber of commerce in the States.
Thousands of Iraqis joined during the heady days after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, he said. Before long, Ommar had moved his office from the upscale Mansour neighborhood in western Baghdad to even grander surroundings on Arasat, the Baghdad equivalent of Fifth Avenue. Near the Japanese Embassy, he built his dream office of glass and marble.
The divorced Ommar also fell in love with an Iraqi woman named May. They were married in 2005 and lived in an apartment above the chamber's headquarters.
