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Saddam's daughter blames aides
02/08/2003 19:36 - (SA)
Dubai - Saddam Hussein's eldest daughter, Raghad, on Friday accused his aides of "betraying" the deposed Iraqi president and causing the fall of Baghdad to US-led forces in April.
"The main betrayal came from the people he trusted fully, those he considered his right hand... (In fact) they betrayed their country before betraying Saddam Hussein," she told the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya satellite news channel in Amman.
Raghad, who arrived in the Jordanian capital with her sister Rana and their nine children on Thursday after being granted refuge, termed the sudden fall of Baghdad on April 9 "a great shock."
Describing the hours leading up to the abrupt end of her father's 24-year rule, Raghad said she spent them in Baghdad's posh Mansur district with Rana and their children, knowing it was "all over".
In a separate interview with CNN, Raghad said she had not seen her father since a final meeting of the family the day before the start of the war.
"He is not going to tell anyone where he us now, even my mother and family," she insisted.
Asked how it had been to say goodbye to her nearest and dearest, she said: "Horrible."
Raghad insisted that despite his brutal reputation, Saddam had been a caring father, whom she missed a great deal.
"He was a very good father, loving and with a very big heart. He loved his daughters, sons, grandchildren. He was a very good father," she said, speaking in fluent English.
Asked what she would say to him, if he could hear her, she said: "I love you and miss you as a father, if not more than that."
Asked the same question, her younger sister Rana, who spoke through an interpreter said: "I hope that God will protect him and keep him safe... If God is willing, we will see him again."
Raghad said she did not expect to return to her homeland for at least a decade, and said she hoped to make a new home in Jordan, where she and her sister arrived from Syria Thursday after being granted refuge.
"In Iraq, I can no longer live any more ... The situation there is very difficult," she said.
Raghad, 34, and Rana, two years her junior, first took refuge in Jordan in August 1995, along with their husbands General Hussein Kamel Hassan al-Majid, at the time military industrialization minister, and his brother Saddam Kamel Hassan al-Majid, who was in charge of a presidential guard.
The brothers had defected to Jordan, along with around 30 other members of the al-Majid family, and Hussein Kamel at the time made open calls for an overthrow of the Baath party regime in Iraq.
But Hussein Kamel's defection came to a tragic end. In February 1996, believing in an amnesty issued by the Baath Party as well as guarantees from Uday that they would be safe, the families returned to Iraq, only for Hussein and Saddam Kamel Hassan to be assassinated on charges of treason along with several family members.
Asked by CNN about her father's role in the killings, she declined to answer, saying: "We are in a big stress and our wounds are very deep."
She also evaded a question about how she had felt over the deaths of Uday and Qusay in a US raid in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on July 22.
Raghad said: "Excuse me, I won't answer this question, if you please, it's so difficult for me to answer it."
Sources close to Raghad and Rana told reporters on Friday the two women would claim the bodies of Uday and Qusay in order to give them a proper Muslim burial despite the estrangement that followed their husbands' assassination seven years ago.
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