Torture lawsuit hinges on videos

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BASSAM NABULSI: "If not for (U.S. citizenship), I'd be six feet under."

Torture lawsuit hinges on videos

Houstonian says sheikh who trusted him with sensitive tapes turned from friend to enemy

By MIKE TOLSON

2008 Houston Chronicle

For eight years Bassam Nabulsi was riding high — rubbing elbows with the ultra-wealthy, flying around the world in search of business deals, enjoying the luxuries of private jets and VIP rooms.

Then he made the mistake, though even in hindsight he is loath to call it such, of voicing an unwelcome opinion. The Houston businessman and U.S. citizen found himself jailed in a foreign land where most of his friends suddenly were no longer friendly. He had broken no law, except the one that need not be written: Insult the king at the peril of your life.

Technically, it was not a king but only a member of the royal family from Abu Dhabi, one of the seven small states that make up the United Arab Emirates. And, technically, it was less an insult than a statement of disapproval concerning an unquestionably brutal act. No matter. Nabulsi crossed the line. He had only one thing going for him: the U.S. citizenship he had taken in 1991.

"If not for that, I'd be six feet under," Nabulsi said in an interview last week.

These days Nabulsi, 49, is back in Houston trying to revive a business career and get some of what he says is owed him. He has filed a lawsuit against Sheikh Issa Bin Zayed Al Nayhan and others within the royal family, saying he was improperly frozen out of a lucrative partnership and denied millions of dollars in profits. It's a standard piece of commercial litigation except for one thing: Nabulsi says he was tortured.

Not long after getting on the wrong side of Sheikh Issa, Nabulsi alleges, he was arrested on a trumped-up drug charge and held for several months in the spring of 2005. He said authorities threatened him and his family with death, denied him food and medical treatment and abused him in a variety of ways. The torture was mostly psychological, he said. A U.S. law makes such acts compensable in court.

Nabulsi's claim of mistreatment might be just that — a bare claim with little to support it — were it not for something that Nabulsi insists he was handed for safekeeping: three videotapes of the sheikh engaging in the physical torture of several Afghan men who he said had cheated him in a business deal.

His only leverage

The Houston Chronicle was shown 11 photographs purportedly taken from one of the videos.

They depict what appears to be the sheikh and several associates, including a uniformed police officer, kicking and beating a man on the ground, firing shots from an automatic weapon around him, rubbing salt into his bloodied face and shocking him with an electric cattle prod.

Because Nabulsi was a close business associate and a friend, Sheikh Issa had given him the tapes.

Nabulsi said the sheikh enjoyed viewing them and did not want them destroyed. But when their relationship soured, he wanted them back.

Nabulsi said his residence in Abu Dhabi was searched, his office ransacked and his computers confiscated. But he was not about to reveal the whereabouts of the tapes. They were the only leverage he had.

How Nabulsi fell so far so fast — from trusted friend, aide and manager of the sheikh's business dealings to mortal enemy — makes for a cautionary tale for those inclined to ride the coattails of the powerful.

Family friends

He met Sheikh Issa in 1994 when his company was hired to assist the sheikh during his visits to Houston. At first it was simple translation work with doctors at the Texas Medical Center and the arranging of accommodations at the Four Seasons Hotel. Quickly it mushroomed into something more.

"By 1996 we were almost buddies," Nabulsi said. "Our relationship was both personal and professional. Later I became his private office manager. Practically, I had control over everything."

That included oversight of Sheikh Issa's staff of about 400, including the servants who worked in his two palaces, and control of a business partnership the purpose of which was to use the sheikh's lofty position as an entree to business deals around the world.

In time Nabulsi, a native of Lebanon who moved to the U.S. in 1979, found himself living in Abu Dhabi with his wife and two children. The two families sometimes traveled together, and Nabulsi's kids were friends with some of the sheikh's children.

Nabulsi's fast fall

Nabulsi said the relationship changed when he spoke disapprovingly of the torture of the Afghan businessmen in late 2004. Sheikh Issa said the Afghans had cheated him by double-charging for the delivery of fertilizer to one of his farms.

Nabulsi said it was his understanding that lawyers and police would be called to investigate. Then he said he received a phone call from the sheikh describing what he had just done.

Nabulsi, shocked, said he insisted that the main victim not be left to die in the desert. Later, upon seeing the video of the beating, he spoke more harshly to the sheikh.

"I told him, 'You must not be a God-fearing man,' " Nabulsi recalled. "I said no matter what he did he did not deserve that. We were friends. As a friend, I felt compelled to tell him he was wrong."

Nabulsi said he had always spoken plainly with Sheikh Issa, unlike many of the yes-men who surrounded him daily. That enabled them to have a better rapport and a relationship closer to equals. But his criticism of the torture episode ended all that.

Over the next few months, the sheikh distanced himself and began to unwind their relationship, though without direct complaint or confirmation. Nabulsi said he heard from friends that it was best for him to leave the country. But he felt he had done nothing wrong and had no reason to flee as if he had.

"You spend eight years together and you get to know a man," Nabulsi said. "He had a lot of positives as well. He really dropped his guard with me. He accepted me. He never said, 'You can't talk to me like this or that.' For him to do what he did to me is unacceptable."

No plans to release tapes

After what Nabulsi described as prodding from the local U.S. Embassy, Nabulsi was released in July 2005 and taken directly to the airport. His family left the next day. They left a significant amount of possessions behind, he said.

Nabulsi filed the lawsuit in 2006 in hopes of getting some of the money he insists the partnership owes him. The suit languished because he could not get the sheikh or any of his representatives served. Finally that was accomplished on June 19.

Nabulsi's lawyer, Anthony Buzbee, said he has no plans to release the videos or any still frames grabbed from them. The tapes' primary purpose is to help protect Nabulsi's life, he said, and possibly to serve as evidence in a trial.

Whether Sheikh Issa will respond to the lawsuit is unknown. So far, the sheikh's only filing was made by Houston lawyer Alistair B. Dawson, who asked the judge for more time to respond because he was out of town on vacation. Dawson could not be reached for comment.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5872675.html