Saddam writes to his daughters

A letter from Saddam Hussein has been delivered to his daughters in Jordan after a US censor cleared it, the Red Cross said today.

International Committee of the Red Cross representatives have visited the deposed Iraqi dictator twice since he was captured, said Nada Doumani, spokeswoman for the ICRC’s Iraq delegation in Jordan.

Doumani said after both visits – on Tuesday and February 21 – ICRC delegates took messages from Saddam to his family.

Doumani said the February message from Saddam was “indeed handed over to his daughters a few days after approval from US censors.” She did not say what became of Tuesday’s message.

Saddam’s daughters Raghad and Rana, who have lived in seclusion in Jordan since leaving Iraq in July, could not be reached for comment.

Doumani refused to disclose the contents of the letters, but noted ICRC rules limit prisoners – “be it Saddam or not Saddam” – to discussing only personal matters in such correspondence.

Saddam has been held in an undisclosed location since his capture by American forces in December and is being interrogated by the CIA and FBI.

The United States considers him a prisoner of war and intends to hand him over to Iraqis for trial. An all-Iraqi tribunal has been created to carry out the trial.

Doumani said it was “standard procedure” for a prisoner’s letters to be reviewed by a censor.

“All messages go for censorship by the detaining authorities,” Doumani said.

She said prisoners were allowed to write only about personal matters in ICRC messages to prevent undermining its humanitarian mission and the safety of the detainee by avoiding disclosure of any sensitive information, such as hints on the location of detention.

In nine months that followed the US-led war on Iraq last year, the ICRC delivered 16,500 messages between detainees in Iraq and their relatives, Doumani said. .

The ICRC is mandated to visit detainees under the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of warfare. It does not speak publicly about the conditions in which it finds prisoners.