He was arrested at Baghdad airport while waiting for his flight back to London. He was incarcerated at Abu Ghraib prison where he was kept in solitary confinement, starved and beaten. On 1 November he was placed in front of television cameras and confessed to being an Israeli agent.In 2003, the Observer tracked down Kadem Askar, the colonel in the Iraqi intelligence service who interrogated Bazoft. He admitted that he knew Bazoft was innocent, but that he was powerless to obstruct Saddam’s personal orders to have him convicted and executed.