Well-informed Lebanese sources said on Sunday that former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s second wife supplied the US with ”some information” about where her husband was hiding in Iraq.
Samira Shahbandar, who lives with the ousted Iraqi leader’s only surviving son Ali, ”is believed to have given the Americans and their allies some information about the area where Saddam was hiding in,” the sources said.
Lebanese security sources failed to confirm whether Samira was living in Beirut under an assumed name with her son, as was reported by the Sunday Times in London.
The Times report claimed that Samira speaks to her husband on the phone weekly and receives letters from him regularly. According to the paper, Saddam’s wife told them that her husband gave her five-million dollars in cash plus gold and jewellery before sending her with his son Ali to the Syrian border after the US-led invasion of Iraq in March.
The paper said a representative of the Sunday Times met Samira in La Cottage, a restaurant in the ancient city of Baalbeck in eastern Lebanon. However, sources in Baalbeck said that there is no La Cottage restaurant in the city.
During a press conference in Baghdad Sunday, the US forces commander in Iraq General Ricardo Sanchez ignored a question as to whether the U.S. had received information from Saddam’s second wife, saying only ”we had intelligence information.”
Saddam (66) was captured during a pre-dawn raid on Sunday on an isolated farmhouse near his hometown of Tikrit. – Sapa-DPA