Shaoul Sassoon arrived in this country with no money or posessions after fleeing his native Iraq's oppressive regime. He spoke to ISABEL COE

Shaoul Sassoon's first impression of England in the Sixties was through the eyes of a political and religious exile.

He left his birth country of Iraq as a prominent politician with more than 20 years' experience as director general to the minister for agriculture. But to the country's new rulers he was just another Jew.

In England he would start a new life ,, running a small shop, keeping his head down, adjusting to his new life.

Now 93, the sprightly East Finchley resident remembers the events leading up to his downfall with as much clarity and passion as if it were yesterday.

Quoting from his new book ,, In the Hell of Saddam Hussain ,, he recalled the day his life changed. 'On July 17 1968, we went to bed as usual and woke up to a coup carried out by the Iraqi Baath party against Abdul Rahman Arif's regime,' he began.

Arif surrendered his regime in the hope that it would keep the peace, but in fact all it did was open the door to more violence and persecution.

As a Jew and the son of the head of the Jewish community in Iraq ,, Rabbi Sassoon Khedoorie ,, Mr Sassoon was no stranger to prejudice but the situation for the Jewish community in Iraq was to worsen beyond anyone's beliefs.

'At that time there were more than 120,000 Jews in Iraq, now there are only around 40. My family fled and is now living all over the world,' he said.

Mr Sassoon's ordeal began on November 11, 1968, he heard a commotion in his garden. 'It was 3 o'clock in the morning and we woke up in great fear, myself, my wife and my son Zuhair and his wife Joyce,' he said. 'My wife opened the front door and six heavily-armed men entered. They shouted: 'Are you Shaoul?'. They ordered me to put on my clothes and to go with them.'

After leaving the house, Mr Sassoon was blindfolded and his hands tied. When his blindfold was removed an officer told him to confess, to what he did not know. 'They started to beat me with a steel bar inside a rubber pipe,' he remembered. 'I did not know the reason, nor the charge against me. I received a mighty blow which crushed my face against the wall and broke three of my teeth.'

Mr Sassoon was in his sixties when imprisoned in the notorious Terminal Palace prison.

'I was in a cell with two other people ,, a soldier and a Christian. They closed the door on us and we were only allowed out twice a day to go to the toilet. I was very afraid and I thought about suicide,' he recalled.

Mr Sassoon says he was afraid of what the officers would do as they had already arrested him under a bogus charge of espionage.

'They said I was a spy for Israel. Of course I wasn't a spy ,, they arrested me because I was the son of the chief rabbi.'

But suddenly, without warning or explanation, his captors called him for a trial. He had no witnesses, there was still no formal charge and yet reams and reams of evidence documents were produced.

'They released me,' he said, with the same sense of shock and disbelief he felt more than 30 years ago. 'After all the torture, 365 days. How did I stay alive? How I did I don't know.

'They gave me a passport and I left without anything, no money, no house. I came to London with my son.'

The life Mr Sassoon made for himself in England was a modest one, but his shop did so well that he was able to retire early.

He hopes the book he has written will tell the story of his persecution and that of so many like him. 'It was something I had to do. I regret I had to leave my country, that is where the cemetery is with my father and my mother, it's our origin. But this was something I felt I had to get out of my system, a story I had to tell.'