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Saddam is alive, says aide
21/06/2003 10:33 - (SA)
Washington - A top lieutenant to Saddam Hussein has told American interrogators that the Iraqi leader and his two sons survived the US-led war in Iraq and are likely hiding in the country, The New York Times reported on Saturday.
Quoting unnamed Defence Department officials, the newspaper said the accuracy of the claims made by Abid Hamad Mahmud, who was arrested in Iraq last on Monday, had not been assessed yet.
But the officials said the United States regarded the information as having huge potential significance, and that clandestine American military activity aimed at capturing Saddam and his sons, Uday and Qusay, had increased sharply, the report said.
If Mahmud's account is true, it would be "the most authoritative confirmation that neither Saddam nor his sons were killed in American attacks in March and April," The Times wrote.
Mahmud, who ranked behind only Saddam and his sons in importance in the Iraqi government, has told the interrogators that during the weeks after the war with the United States he spent time in hiding with the former Iraqi leader himself and then fled to Syria with Uday and Qusay, the paper reported.
But the trio was forced to return back to Iraq after Syrian authorities expelled them.
According to The Times, until now, there has never been any credible suggestion that those who fled to Syria might have included Saddam's sons.
The paper said a senior Defence Department official had declined to provide any details about the newly energised search for Saddam and his sons, which others said was being carried out by Task Force 20, a secret military organisation that includes Army and Navy counter-terrorist personnel.
But the official made clear that the operations had been prompted by information provided by Mahmud, who has been questioned over the last four days at an American military installation in Baghdad, the report said. - Sapa-AFP
- SAPA
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