Saddam Hussein enjoys watching videos of his foes being tortured but also has a tender side, dancing to Frank Sinatra and dyeing his hair, a woman who claims she was his mistress over three decades said in an interview.
Parisoula Lampsos (54) told ABC television’s ”Primetime Thursday” that she was Saddam’s mistress on and off for 30 years. She said he was cruel – allegedly ordering his son killed ? and vain, using herbal medicine to hide his wrinkles.
The exclusive interview is to be broadcast this week. Among Lampsos’ claims: Saddam’s favorite movie is ”The Godfather,” he eats gazelle meat for dinner and is fond of scotch. He has taken Viagra and danced to Sinatra’s ”Strangers in the Night.”
The interview was conducted at a secret location in Lebanon, but it’s not clear if the woman is still there. She said she now wears a veil in public to disguise herself; after fleeing Iraq a year ago, she fears Saddam may try to kill her.
Inquiries with Lebanese security officials turned up no information about her whereabouts. Other sources said she may have been interviewed at an earlier date and moved on to a different location.
According to excerpts released by ABC on Monday, she said Saddam’s eldest son Odai told her that the Iraqi leader met Osama bin Laden in the mid-1990s and gave money to him. She personally saw bin Laden in one of Saddam’s palaces in the late 1980s, according to the excerpts.
Lampsos described Saddam’s dark side, claiming that he enjoyed watching videos of his foes being tortured, sometimes wearing a cowboy hat for the occasion.
Saddam considers both President George Bush and his father to be criminals, she said.
When asked whether Saddam was worried the younger Bush would come after him, she said, speaking in English, ”Yeah, but he don’t care.”
Saddam cried when the US-led coalition threw Iraqi troops out of Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War, she said.
”His eye was red, red, red,” said Lampsos, adding that Saddam vowed at the time to retake Kuwait. ”’Who’s America? Who are they, what they think they are? I am Saddam,”’ she quoted the Iraqi leader as saying when Kuwait fell into the hands of coalition forces.
The present US administration accuses Saddam of amassing weapons of mass destruction and it has not ruled out attacking Iraq to bring about a regime change. UN resolutions stipulate that, before sanctions imposed in 1990 for invading Kuwait can be lifted, UN weapons inspectors must verify that Iraq has destroyed all such weapons and that its capacity to manufacture them is dismantled.
”He would say they will never find anything. But he would laugh about them,” Lampsos said referring to the inspectors, who left Iraq in late 1998 ahead of US and British airstrikes. ”’They are crazy. Let them come … They will not find anything,”’ she quoted Saddam as saying, according to the excerpts.
She claims that Saddam once told her that he ordered his son killed because he feared that the son wanted to oust him. ”’I will kill him someday. Really, I mean I will kill him,”’ she quoted him as saying.
Odai was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt in December 1996. – Sapa-AP