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Saddam, Uday, and Qusay never left Baghdad?
Edited for brevity.Uday Husseinâs personal bodyguard broke a three-month silence yesterday to give the first authoritative account of how Saddam and his sons spent the war. In an exclusive interview with The Times, the bodyguard claimed that, far from fleeing Baghdad, the three men held out in the capital for at least a week after its fall. He said that they evaded repeated American attempts to assassinate or capture them, and even appeared in public under the noses of US troops. During a three-hour interview in a house in a town an hour northwest of Baghdad, the bodyguard said that Saddam and his sons had remained in the capital throughout the war, convinced they could hold the city. When the first bombs fell on a house in a southern suburb, where the Americans believed Saddam and his sons were meeting, he and Uday were on the other side of the city in one of dozens of safe houses belonging to trusted friends and relatives through which the three men were to pass in the weeks to come. The bodyguard said the Americansâ next âdecapitationâ strike came a lot closer, and that Saddam survived only because several safe houses had come under attack and he suspected there was an informant within his camp. Saddam asked the suspect, a captain, to prepare a safe house behind a restaurant in the Mansour district for a meeting. They arrived, and left again, almost immediately, by the back door. âTen minutes after they went out of the door, it was bombed,â the bodyguard said. Saddam had the captain summarily executed while the Pentagon was claiming that the strike had probably finished off Saddam and Uday. In a way, this is encouraging. Perhaps Saddam is still in Baghdad, and if so his luck will run out eventually. Posted by: Dar 2003-07-25 |
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