Yusuf Salman Yusuf - Arrest and Imprisonment, 1947 - 1949

1949

On 18 January 1947 the police found Fahd and Zaki Bassim at the house of a party member, Ibrahim Bajir Shmayyel. All three were arrested and interrogated in the Central Baghdad Investigation Department, before being transferred to Abu Ghraib prison near the capital. Meanwhile Yehuda Siddiq took over as "first mas'ul" or comrade in charge. Fahd instructed him to hand over control to Malik Saif, but he initially refused to obey.

In Abu Ghraib the three were held in appalling conditions, deprived of daylight for long periods. On 13 June they started a hunger strike in protest. The authorities finally brought the three communists for trial at the High Criminal Court on 20 June. They were charged with "reliance on foreign sources of income", "contact with a foreign state" and with "the party of Khalid Bakdash", designs subversive of the constitutional order and incitement to insurrection, and the propagation of communism along members of the armed forces. On the 23 June all three were found guilty and condemned to death.

The sentences created uproar, and the government backed down, commuting them to life imprisonment for Fahd and fifteen years for Bassim and Shmayyel. The three were transferred from the death row at Abu Ghraib to Baghdad Central Prison and then to Kut Prison.

From Kut, Fahd was able to communicate regularly with the party. After the revolutionary episode of al-Wathbah (the leap of January 1948 in Baghdad), he demanded constant activity. In line with his orders, the country was shaken by strikes and demonstrations between January and May. However, the agitation that took hold of Iraq on account of the Arab-Zionist conflict in Palestine distracted attention from issues that favoured the communists, and the party then lost considerable credibility when it accepted the Soviet Union's position in favour of the partition of Palestine.

A graver setback yet came when, on 9 October 1948, a party member told police the location of the party's secret headquarters. The police raided the house and arrested Yehuda Siddiq, who after 28 days under torture broke down and told his interrogators that Malik Saif was the first mas'ul. Saif, when interrogated, admitted everything. The government thus found out that Fahd was secretly directing the party from Kut prison, and it decided to dispose of him.