- Saddam Hussein was betrayed and handed over to Kurdish
forces, who negotiated for political gain before leaving him for the Americans
to find, a British newspaper has reported.
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- The former Iraqi president fell into the hands of fighters
from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) after he was betrayed by a
man belonging to the al-Jabur tribe, according to reports on Sunday.
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- The betrayal arose because the man's daughter was once
raped by Saddam's son Uday, the Sunday Express tabloid says, quoting an
unnamed British military intelligence officer.
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- The story of the blood feud and the role of Kurdish forces
in Saddam's capture on 13 December "exposes the version peddled by
American spin doctors as incomplete" the paper says.
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- Quoting an unnamed senior British intelligence officer,
the report says Saddam on whose head the US had placed a $25 million bounty
- was then held captive by the PUK, which bargained with the US before
arranging to hand the drugged dictator over.
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- The paper quotes an Iraqi intelligence source confirming
that series of events.
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- The paper also quotes a senior UK intelligence source
as saying Saddam will eventually "be held in a prison in Qatar for
the rest of his life". The Gulf state is home to the US military command
centre for the Middle East.
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- Kurdish role
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- The PUK, led by Jalal Talabani, has long campaigned for
Kurdish autonomy and fought as a US ally in the war to topple Saddam.
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- The deal over the ousted Iraqi president apparently rewards
the PUK with some political gain in the Kurdish-dominated north.
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- News of Saddam's capture broke late on Saturday 14 December
when Talabani told the Iranian news agency IRNA the former Iraqi president
had been detained near Tikrit.
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- Kurds in the north of the country were openly celebrating
early on Sunday - hours before the US military in Baghdad announced it
had Saddam in custody.
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- A PUK spokesman, Nazim Dabag, told Reuters news agency
the night of Saddam's capture PUK special forces accompanied by American
troops arrested Saddam Hussein, the Sunday Express says.
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- The following day, Kurdish media sources echoed that
line. KurdishMedia.com said an intelligence unit led by a senior PUK official
and accompanied by a group of US soldiers found the former Iraqi leader
in his birthplace of Tikrit.
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- Sedated
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- The capture of a defeated Saddam, and his later appearance
on television looking compliant and bewildered, prompted many to claim
the ousted leader had been sedated.
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- "Everyone who knew him closely knows that he who
was shown on television screens was a drugged Saddam Hussein," his
eldest daughter Raghad told Dubai-based al-Arabiya television.
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- Later, she told CNN: "One of the people he relied
on must have put something in his food... because I know my father would
never surrender."
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- "Saddam appeared to be asleep when the US soldiers
first found him, which has also given rise to speculation that he was drugged,"
the Sunday Express says.
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- Intelligence sources
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- The UK paper's version of events stressing the Kurdish
involvement was written by a former Aljazeera.net journalist who is known
to have extensive contacts in the Middle East and among British intelligence
sources.
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- An unnamed Western intelligence official was quoted as
saying Saddam "was not captured as a result of any American or British
intelligence".
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- "We knew that someone would eventually take their
revenge, it was just a matter of time," the source said.
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- Aljazeera.net telephoned US Central Command in Florida
and Baghdad on Sunday, but no one was immediately available for comment.
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- But according to the US military's official account of
Saddam's capture, a top aide of the ousted Iraqi leader, who had helped
Saddam evade the US-led occupation forces, gave the Americans crucial information
about the fugitive's movements when he was caught and interrogated last
month.
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- Troops from the US 4th Infantry Division then narrowed
their search to two locations near Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, before
discovering Saddam in a small underground hideout by the village of al-Dawr
on 13 December.
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- http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/A1D11E46-3EE1-4DDC-A193-E3233A933275.htm
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