Saddam and son ‘in Baghdad’ during US raid

TWO Arab-language newspapers placed Saddam Hussein and his son Qusay in Baghdad last week on the day US tanks drove to the heart of the capital and Iraqis toppled a massive statue, symbolically ending his 24-year rule.

Al-Jazeera yesterday showed what was thought to be Saddam’s hastily-abandoned last abode in Baghdad.

A half-filled glass of water and a stained cup stood on a desk next to military plans in an office where al-Jazeera said the Iraqi leader taped messages entreating his people to fight US invaders.

A suitcase was left next to an unmade bed. But despite the best efforts of US and British intelligence services, US special forces, tens of thousands of US troops and scores of international media, there was no sign of the ousted Iraqi leader. White House chief of staff Andrew Card said in an online discussion he believed Saddam was dead.

But a survey of 7,122 people published by Gulf News yesterday showed a majority believed he was alive, hiding outside Iraq.

US officials have stressed while they launched the war to end Saddam’s rule the success of their military campaign does not hinge on his fate.

“If we don’t find every one of them, but we can account the regime is not in place, then we have succeeded and we believe we have succeeded,” Brig Gen Vincent Brooks told journalists at US Central Command in Qatar.

Still Washington has put a price on Saddam’s head and made him the ace of spades in a pack of cards depicting most-wanted Iraqis. And on Thursday, US Central Command announced the capture of Saddam’s half-brother Barzan, a former head of Iraqi intelligence.

For some of the citizens who lived under his iron rule Saddam remains a threat as long as he is at large. Others are closely following the end-game.

Clues emerged yesterday concerning the elusive leader’s movements in the dramatic days when US troops pressed toward Baghdad and ultimately took control of the battered city.

London-based al-Hayat and Asharq al-Awsat newspapers quoted witnesses as saying Saddam appeared near the Azamia mosque in northern Baghdad on April 9 the day Iraqis, with the help of US tanks, pulled down a massive statue of Saddam and dragged its decapitated head through the streets.

That corroborated a report from a man who described himself as a former Iraqi army officer. He told Reuters he saw Saddam at about that time outside a mosque in the Aadhamiya district of north Baghdad.

Al-Hayat quoted witnesses as saying Saddam arrived at noon in a three-car convoy, with his son Qusay and bodyguard, al-Amin Abd Hamed Hamoud. Saddam stood on one of the cars and told the gathering: “I am fighting alongside you in the trenches,” Hayat quoted one witness as saying.