New 'Saddam' Tape Praises Sons as Martyrs

July 29, 2003
By D'ARCY DORAN, Associated Press Writer

TIKRIT, Iraq - American forces searching for Saddam Hussein said interrogations of 12 suspects arrested Tuesday in Tikrit and reams of documents found in their houses should help soldiers close in on the fugitive dictator. An audiotape attributed to Saddam said the deaths of his sons was "good news" because they were martyrs.

Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council of 25 prominent Iraqis, meanwhile, appointed a nine-member presidency, failing to agree on a single leader for the beginnings of a new Iraqi government.

In the audiotape broadcast by the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya satellite channel, a voice that resembled Saddam's said he was glad Odai and Qusai Hussein were killed July 22 in a firefight with U.S. soldiers because such a death "is the hope of every fighter."

"Even if Saddam Hussein had 100 children other than Odai and Qusai, Saddam Hussein would offer their lives in the same way," the voice said. "That is the hope of every fighter for God's sake, as another group of noble souls of the martyrs has ascended to their creator."

Some Iraqis had doubted the bodies were those of Saddam's sons, accusing the United States of staging the shootout in the northern city of Mosul to demoralize Saddam's supporters. The United States released photographs of the sons and let journalists film their bodies in an attempt to convince Iraqis they were really dead.

Commanders said the documents seized in Tikrit, which include photo albums, identity cards, bound notebooks and Baath Party records, help fill in the picture of Saddam's flight from the Americans, who have reported at least two near-misses in the past week.

"Each time we do something we get information, even if we don't get the people," said Lt. Col. Steve Russell, who led the raids in Tikrit. "It slowly leads to pieces of the puzzle, and it keeps filling in."

Russell, commander of the 22nd Infantry Regiment's 1st Battalion, led simultaneous pre-dawn raids on several homes in the heart of Saddam's hometown, 200 kilometers (120 miles) north of Baghdad. Soldiers blasted open doors with shotguns, leading away their dazed occupants in blindfolds and throwing photographs and documents into the street.

Similar raids have been occurring daily across Iraq, providing varying degrees of useful information. A coalition military official said American forces conducted 58 raids between Monday afternoon and Tuesday afternoon, detaining 176 people. The official spoke only on condition of anonymity and gave no details.

Among those captured in the Tikrit raids was Adnan Abdullah Abid al-Musslit, a stocky man commanders said was one of Saddam's most trusted bodyguards. Al-Musslit, who is Saddam's cousin, was believed to have detailed knowledge of Saddam's hiding spots.

Al-Musslit had retired from his job, but Saddam called him back into service before the war started, Russell said, citing intelligence gathered from Tikrit residents.

"If everything else had failed and we just got that one guy, we would be happy," Russell said.

The soldiers had to overpower al-Musslit, who several soldiers said was quite drunk, wrestling him to the ground and dragging him down the stairs. Al-Musslit tried to make it out of his bedroom to grab a submachine gun, but the soldiers were too quick, said Lt. Chris Morris, a sniper on the raid.

Outside, soldiers tied a wide tan cloth over al-Musslit's eyes and stripped him to his underwear, searching for weapons. Blood seeped through his blindfold — Morris said from a broken nose suffered in the scuffle — and an Army medic examined him.

Russell said the resistance was to be expected.

"Were we surprised? He's a bodyguard," Russell said. "That's why we went in with our steely knives and oily guns."

Eleven other suspects were taken away from the Tikrit raids, including Daher Ziana, responsible for security at Saddam's Tikrit palaces, and Rafa Idham Ibrahim al-Hassan, another Saddam cousin and bodyguard who led the Saddam Fedayeen militia in Tikrit.

Outside Ziana's yard, six women wailed as soldiers tossed photographs and documents into the driveway. A large portrait of Saddam lay alongside a picture of Ziana in uniform. One album featured a photograph of women posing with Kalashnikov rifles.

Among the documents was something called a "Saddam Privilege Card," Russell said.

Soldiers took the men to an Army detention facility in Tikrit for interrogation.

Although U.S. President George W. Bush declared major combat over nearly three months ago, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers, said Tuesday that the area from Baghdad to Tikrit was "still a war zone."

"Eighty percent of the security incidents are happening there," Myers said at a news conference in New Delhi. "It's fair to say it's still a war zone in that area."

Hoping to begin a political process in the occupied country, Iraq's U.S. administrators on July 13 appointed a 25-member Governing Council of prominent Iraqis to name a cabinet, formulate economic policies and produce a process to write a new constitution. Its first order of business, U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer said at the time, would be to elect a president.

But the council announced Tuesday that it had formed a nine-member presidency, highlighting its inability to agree on a single leader.

Like the Governing Council itself, the presidency has a slight Shiite Muslim majority, with two Kurdish leaders and two non-Kurdish Sunni Muslims represented.

The council's statement gave no details on how the presidency would function.

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