IRAQ: Although a dentist by profession, Dr Sahib al-Hakim is such a soft-spoken and mild-mannered person that one finds it hard to imagine him even pulling a tooth. Whether or not he has the capacity to inflict pain, he has certainly suffered it, having been tortured under the regime of Saddam Hussein, writes Deaglán de Bréadún
Now that Saddam is overthrown, Dr al-Hakim can no longer be classified as an Iraqi dissident. Indeed, as a member of a prominent Shia Muslim family, he is very well-connected with the new order of things in Iraq and has been mentioned as a possible minister in a future elected government, assuming such a body comes into existence.
He is a cousin of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a member of Iraq's Governing Council, whose brother, the influential Ayatollah Muhammad Baqr al-Hakim was killed by a car-bomb in the Iraqi city of Najaf last August.
Dr al-Hakim is no Western puppet. When Bill Clinton and Tony Blair launched cruise missiles against Iraq in Operation Desert Fox during December 1998, he said it would only make Saddam more powerful in the Arab world and cause further suffering for Iraqis.
Interviewed now during a visit to Dublin, he is clearly delighted that the dictator has been overthrown and captured but expresses puzzlement over US plans for the future: "I don't know the real intention of the Americans, what they want to do.
"Are they keen to give the power to the Iraqis? Are they going to put Saddam Hussein on trial? That's what the Iraqi people are calling for now."
He says the Iraqi people are "very, very angry" that Saddam has been given prisoner-of-war status. "He's not a military person, he is a civilian. He committed crimes against the Iraqis and they want to consider him as an ordinary criminal. They want to see him in the cage, they want to see him in an Iraqi court."
As things stand, they do not even know where he is: "Is he in Iraq? Is he in Qatar, as some rumours in Iraq say? We don't know, so we want to know."
He agrees that the current security situation is a mess but claims this is the fault of "many Arab terrorists from outside" rather than native Iraqis. There have been 15,000 arrests but he complains that the US authorities in Iraq are not giving out sufficient information about these people, their origins and affiliations.
"We want to see them in the court," he continues. "Unfortunately the Americans didn't disclose anything."
There were many unanswered questions: "We don't know their names. Last month, 250 have been released, on what basis, why they were arrested, who they are, what they carried out, we don't know." But didn't he at least give the US credit for getting rid of the dictator?
"Of course we are happy to see the Americans kicking him out, of course without the Americans we couldn't get rid of Saddam Hussein at all."
Dr al-Hakim was arrested by the regime as far back as 1969: "They prevented me passing my urine for 48 hours. I was crying in the prison until I lost consciousness. They (then) forced me to pass my urine in front of other inmates inside the cell."
He says the al-Hakim family is about 500 strong but that 64 have been killed. Many of their bodies have still not been recovered. He points out that his family was the leader of all the Shia Muslims of the world in the 1960s and 1970s, but lost this position when the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in Iran.
He wants to see an elected government in his country: "I hope that this election would be held in Iraq but at this moment I don't think it will be achieved because of the security situation. What the people want now is security first. They are free now, there is free journalism, free speech, free demonstrations, free parties, but the explosions in the cities are disturbing the people."
He denies that a government with a Shia Muslim majority would institute a fundamentalist regime: "The Iraqi Shia are totally and completely different from the Shia of Iran."
But weren't they already banning alcohol and forcing women to wear head-scarves? "This is nothing to do with politics, this is tradition," he replies, adding that these restrictions only apply in the holy cities.
Fleeing persecution by the regime, he settled in London in 1976 but continued to campaign against human rights abuses by Saddam. Since the invasion, he has returned four times and, as we speak, he is planning his fifth trip home. He tells me he will be taking part in the same religious procession in Karbala which was the occasion for his arrest when the regime was in power. "I will say: 'I am here, I am in the procession, I am free, and Saddam is in prison'."
His house in Iraq was sold by the security forces, his clinic was taken over, even his bank account was confiscated by the agents of Saddam. "I have nothing in Iraq," he says. He is also putting his life at risk by returning home. But Sahib al-Hakim is free, his long exile is over, and he's enjoying every minute of it.