Saddam recounts his capture to British tabloid
(AFP)
Updated: 2005-12-19 16:50

Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein has for the first time recounted the moment of his capture two years ago in an "interview" conducted via his lawyer, British newspaper The Sun said.

"The once feared despot broke his silence in an interview with The Sun from his cell," the tabloid title said, adding that Saddam was speaking through his lawyer, former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark.

Clark told the paper that before Saddam was cornered by US troops in a cramped underground hideout near his hometown Tikrit on December 13, 2003, he had been "moving every day to a different location, organising the insurgents".

Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, pictured at his trial this month (L) and shortly after his capture, has for the first time recounted the moment of his capture two years ago in an 'interview' conducted via his lawyer, British newspaper The Sun said. [AFP/File]

When captured, the former Iraqi leader had been about to flee the scene by motorbike, the paper said.

"I came out of the house where I was hiding by this hole. I went through the trap door. I went through the hole, through the tunnel then lost consciousness," Saddam said, adding: "I believe I was betrayed. I have been set up."

Clark said Saddam "thinks he was gassed in the tunnel".

"He tried to get to the exit of the tunnel. But he did not have time to get away. He told us he spent maybe minutes in this tunnel, not hours or days," Clark added.

According to US forces who pulled Saddam from his hiding place, his first words to them were: "I am Saddam Hussein, I am the president of Iraq and I want to negotiate."

Saddam has since gone on trial along with seven of his deputies for the massacre of 148 Shiites from Dujail village following an assassination attempt on the former president in 1982, and faces a possible death sentence.

The Sun, a famously eurosceptic paper with a particular fondness for needling France, also quoted Saddam on his relations with French President Jacques Chirac.

"Chirac has been a longtime friend of mine," the paper cited him as saying.

In May, The Sun printed photographs it had obtained of Saddam in his prison cell clad only in his underwear.

"Tyrant's in his pants," was the gleeful headline, using the British term for underwear briefs.