BAGHDAD, Feb 3 (AFP) - As bombs rained on Baghdad in the 1991 Gulf War, Hussein Shahrastani made a daring escape from the dreaded Abu Ghraib prison, where he had been jailed 10 years for refusing to work on Saddam Hussein's weapons programme.
Today, he is widely touted as the right man to become Iraq's new prime minister and could be the best hope for ending the country's deadly insurgency.
Torture and solitary confinement were the crucible for this soft-spoken man, now a confidante of Shiite spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and the number-seven candidate on the frontrunning Shiite parliament list.
Shahrastani's strong advocacy of healing Iraq's divisions and his personal story make him one who could offer the olive branch to rebels and calm cries for revenge against former Baathists favoured by religious fundamentalists and Shiite political figures.
"We call for all Iraqis who could not take part in these elections or chose not to vote to join us in a national government," the scientist says.
At times, Shahrastani even describes the insurgency in terms uncannily identical to some mainstream Sunni politicians who advocate political negotiations with the resistance.
"We think the majority of the people, particularly the foot soldiers, are patriotic Iraqis who feel their country is under occupation," he says.
Still, like most Shiite politicians it is not clear how far Sharastani will really go. Will a keeper of the flame for those who disappeared in Saddam's gulags be ready to forgive Iraqis with blood on their hands.
Sharastani stays intentionally vague. He calls some rebels patriots but vows: "We can never accept anybody who has been responsible for killing innocent Iraqis in the past or present. We think an independent judiciary system should try them."
It seems an untenable position in an Iraq where there is a grey line between fighter and sympathiser among Sunni Muslims, resentful over their fall from power and the rise of the Shiites.
But Shahrastani is a man of surprises.
Nothing on the surface would indicate this short, greying, goateed academic could survive a harrowing decade of solitary confinement in Saddam's dungeons and then mastermind a daring escape.
Sharastani, the government's top scientific advisor threw away his career and his life in 1979 when president Saddam Hussein asked him to work on the country's nuclear weapons programme and he declined, knowing full well the consequences.
"I was arrested and tortured for 22 days and nights."
Next, he was transferred to Abu Ghraib prison, and thrown into solitary for 10 years.
It was a maddening existence where he lost track of time and spoke with no one.
"The most difficult thing was the dead silence. The silence you cannot imagine how torturous it is until you have to face that situation."
He desperately sought comfort in anything within his drab four by four foot (122 by 122 centimeter) cell.
Sharastani had resigned himself to dying in prison when one day in 1990 a prisoner, who delivered him his meals and worked for the Mukhabarrat (intelligence service) announced all of a sudden "Dr Hussein I know all about you. The whole country respects you. If there is anything I can do for you, just let me know."
The scientist was suspicious, but the two grew to trust one another. In February 1991, after the start of the Gulf War, they plotted his escape.
His friend cleaned, cooked and performed maintenance on cars for the Iraq's intelligence service in the prison. So Sharastani arranged for his friend to steal an intelligence officer's uniform that was being washed.
They plotted to leave under cover of night, taking advantage of Baghdad's power blackouts and US air strikes.
"I said get me an officer's uniform and we'll drive out in his car and that's what I did. I was a colonel. I was the highest-ranking Muhkhabarrat officer at Abu Ghraib prison," Sharastani laughs.
"The prison guards did not dare stop the car; they just opened the doors and assumed the officer was leaving. Actually, one poor guy came to us. The guard just tried to approach the car and I shouted at him 'open the door I'm in a hurry.'"
After fleeing, Sharastani hid for a month in Sulaimaniyah until the start of the Kurdish uprising in 1991, which he joined. When Saddam stormed the north, he and his family fled to Iran. There he started to work as an anti-Saddam activist and to provide aid to Iraqi refugees.
Eventually, he moved to London before returning to Iraq when Saddam's regime collapsed.
Last spring, then UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi touted him for the post of interim prime minister, but Shahrastani declined, saying he did not want an unelected post.
He currently denies any interest in being premier, but his name is constantly floated.
02/03/2005 14:20 GMT - AFP