- (AFP) -- Saddam Hussein was betrayed by a top aide who
helped the former Iraqi president during eight months as a fugitive, according
to the US military.
-
- "He was someone I would call his right arm,"
said Major Stan Murphy, the head of intelligence for the US 4th Infantry
Division's First Brigade in Tikrit, describing the man who led to the former
Iraqi leader's capture at a hideout near there on 13 December.
-
- Murphy said the informant was in detention, ruling out
the possibility that he would receive any of the $25 million bounty that
the United States had placed on Saddam's head.
-
- "He is a bad man and should rot in jail," the
major said.
-
- The man, whose name the military will not reveal, is
said to be a long-time aide of Saddam and hailed from one of five major
tribes in a 20km stretch around Tikrit, Saddam's hometown.
-
- 'Guiding resistance'
-
- In addition to helping the fallen dictator elude the
Americans for about eight months, the aide - along with four or five other
Iraqis - formed the inner circle that helped hide Saddam, implement his
orders to the resistance for attacks, finance the insurgency and provide
combatants with weaponry, claimed Murphy.
-
- "He (Saddam) would give general guidance His enablers
would then go out to their different tiers below them, give a little more
specific guidance, maybe some money or weapons or something, and that tier
would go out to the other tiers all the way down to the trigger puller,"
Murphy said.
-
- But while the other aides shared the burden of labour
and their functions overlapped, the man who eventually informed on Saddam
was the fugitive strongman's most trusted confidante.
-
- The middle-aged man, whose name or job in the old regime
Murphy refused to disclose, had started to serve Saddam in his late-teens
or early twenties and had risen to become one of Saddam's most valued sidekicks.
-
- Stock profile
-
- He fits a stock profile of many of the men who served
under Saddam. He was balding and heavily overweight, with an almost 130cm
(50-inch) waistline, and "loved women", Murphy said.
-
- US soldiers from the 4th Infantry
- Division led the hunt for Saddam
-
- He also participated in the old regime's crimes against
the Iraqi people, Murphy said, without disclosing the exact nature of his
involvement in Saddam's abuses.
-
- Generally, Saddam travelled with a small group of aides
who drove and cooked for him that came from a pool of about 20-25 people
who hailed from the five families based around Tikrit, Murphy said. He
also probably travelled in the common orange and white Passat Toyota taxis.
-
- But Saddam's top enablers did not travel with him and
it is not even sure how often they met, with some of their exchanges coming
through messengers.
-
- Crucial lieutenant
-
- However, although he had been considered important since
July, the Americans did not realise how crucial the lieutenant was until
the end of November when information about his involvement in resistance
activities emerged.
-
- The aide, along with all but one of Saddam's four or
five most trusted aides, did not even appear on the US government's blacklist
of the top 200 most wanted from Saddam's ousted regime. All but one of
them is now in jail.
-
- After escaping three raids in the first week of December,
he was captured in Baghdad on 12 December, Murphy said. Under interrogation,
he confessed Saddam was hiding at one of two locations in al-Dawr, a farming
village near Tikrit.
-
- As US special forces searched the palm groves around
two farms, Saddam's most-trusted aide pointed to the secret underground
room where the former Iraqi president was hiding, Murphy said.
|
