Saddam writes to his family

Saddam Hussein wrote a new message to his family and conversed at length with a visiting team from the international Red Cross last week.

The team, which included a doctor, met the former Iraqi president during a routine visit on Friday to about 100 “high-value detainees” at a prison in Iraq, said Nada Doumani, spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

She declined to comment on Saddam’s health or about reports that he suffers from a chronic infection of the prostate or that he has suffered a stroke.

“It’s an issue of medical ethics,” she said. “We don’t comment on the health condition of anybody.”

But she said the team “stayed for a long time” and ”could talk to him at length.” That would indicate that he was able to converse for a considerable time, unlikely for someone who has suffered a stroke.

Doumani said the ICRC had delivered three letters to Saddam’s family this week and that the messages had first been in the hands of Iraqi authorities for censorship.

“He wrote a message during the visit, but of course this has to go also through censorship,” Doumani said.

Doumani declined to disclose details of the latest message or to which family member it was addressed.

It was the ICRC’s fourth visit to Saddam since he was arrested by US forces in December, which puts him on a par with other detainees who receive visits every six to eight weeks, Doumani said.

The previous visit to him was in mid-June.

“We don’t want to make it an exceptional measure for him,” she said, noting that the team was at the prison where Saddam is being held last Thursday to Sunday and saw other detainees.

“It’s not any kind of privileged treatment,” Doumani said. “It’s just the treatment that’s given. Every six to eight weeks the ICRC visits detainees in Iraq, at least those who are held under multinational force authority.”

Doumani refused to disclose where Saddam is being held, but Iraqi Human Rights Minister Bakhtiar Amin said this week that the former president is being held at Camp Cropper at Baghdad International Airport.

She stressed that even though the ICRC includes a doctor to watch for problems it is the responsibility of the detaining authority – in this case US forces - to provide medical care to Saddam and any other detainee.

“There was a doctor present on the visiting team” to Saddam, she said, but added: “It’s not the responsibility of the ICRC which conducts visits every six or eight weeks to Saddam or to any other detainee to ensure proper medical care.”

“The appropriate medical care and follow up is to be provided by the detaining authority, which is currently the case,” Doumani added.

Amin said Saddam was in good health and that doctors at the prison were seeing him twice a day.