Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi lawyer said on Friday he will write a book revealing ”many secrets” told to him by the executed dictator about the fall of Baghdad, his arrest and imprisonment.
”The book will contain information never before revealed and many secrets about the fall of Baghdad,” Khalil al-Dulaimi told Agence France-Press in a telephone interview about the book he is planning.
”It will contain 200 to 300 letters, poems and other texts handwritten by President Saddam while the rest will be devoted to stories he revealed to me during more than 140 interviews in jail,” Dulaimi said.
”It is not just his memoirs,” he added.
According to Dulaimi, the book will be more than 500 pages long and ”could be out in a year”.
”I am still collecting the material before writing it and finding a publisher,” he said.
The ousted Iraqi dictator was hanged in Baghdad last December 30, a month after being convicted of crimes against humanity for the killing of 148 Shi’ite civilians following an assassination attempt against him in 1982.
He was captured by United States troops in December 2003, eight months after the fall of Baghdad, in a hole on a farm near his hometown of Tikrit, and jailed in a US-run prison at Baghdad airport.
Dulaimi said he met Saddam 140 times in jail, including 70 times alone, and ”wrote down every single word he told me” about the fall of Baghdad, his capture, life in jail and his views on the future of Iraq.
The book will reveal details about Saddam’s participation in a battle with US troops that took place in April at Baghdad airport and his reportedly contested relationship with his deputy, Taha Yassin Ramadan, in the days preceding the fall of Baghdad.
”There were positive, not negative, discussions [between Saddam and Ramadan] about the Baghdad airport battle,” said Dulaimi.
”The president was taking part in the airport battle and Taha Yassin Ramadan did not want him to be caught in the crossfire,” he added.
Ramadan, who is also Dulaimi’s client, was sentenced to death earlier this month over the Dujail killings.
”There are secrets about the fall of Baghdad, which no one knows about yet,” Dulaimi said, declining to share any of the information he claims to have received from Saddam himself.
”There will be revelations, in Saddam’s own words, the last meeting he had with the Iraqi leadership” in a restaurant in Baghdad’s al-Mansur neighbourhood ”and ties with the insurgents before his arrest”.
”The book will also talk of the relations the prisoners had with each other after their arrests and if they negotiated or not with the Americans,” he added.
During his encounters in Saddam’s prison cell, Dulaimi said he took extensive notes. ”There are no audio tapes but I wrote down every single word he said.”
”He told me about the conditions surrounding his arrest.
”Most people believe that the American version of the arrest is the truth, particularly the story about the hole they said they found him hiding in,” Dulaimi said.
”The story about the hole is not true. The story is somewhat different. This is one of the secrets that will be revealed in the book,” he added.
Saddam was a prolific writer and is known to have penned several books and poems in his lifetime.
Another of his lawyers, Jordanian attorney Ziad Najdawi, said in January that the defence team, which has since been dissolved, was mulling plans to write their memoirs about the trial that led to Saddam’s execution.
”You will discover the depth of the injustice and the farce and the depth of the American aggression against the Arab and Muslim nation,” Najdawi said. — AFP
