Saddam sold out

2003-05-25 21:08

Paris - One of Saddam Hussein's cousins, Special Republican Guard chief Maher Sufian al-Tikriti, betrayed the deposed Iraqi leader by ordering his elite forces not to defend Baghdad.

This happened after he made a deal with the United States, the French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche reported on Sunday.

Citing an Iraqi source close to Saddam's former regime, the newspaper said that the general, responsible for defending the Iraqi capital, left Baghdad aboard a US military transport plane, bound for a US base outside Iraq.

His departure, along with that of a 20-strong entourage, came on April 8, the day before US forces swept into Baghdad, and after US Marines announced that the general had been killed, the newspaper said.

Before he left Baghdad, following the capture of the capital's international airport on April 4, Sufian ordered his troops to lay down their weapons, another Iraqi general, Mahdi Abdullah al-Dulaimi, was quoted as saying.

Sufian does not appear on the US military's list of most wanted Iraqis, which names Barzan al-Ghafur Sulayman Majid as commander of the Special Republican Guard.

An Arab diplomat told Le Journal du Dimanche that the plot was hatched more than a year before by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), noting: "Many suitcases filled with dollars were floating around."

"Being cautious, those who accepted the deal only agreed to defect once the American soldiers were in sight. The signal was to be the taking of the airport in Baghdad," the diplomat added.

- AFX