Saddam Was Held by Kurdish Forces, Drugged and Left For U.S. Troops
Agence France-Presse
Saturday 20 December 2003
LONDON - Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) was captured by US troops only after he had been
taken prisoner by Kurdish forces, drugged and abandoned ready for American soldiers to recover him,
a British Sunday newspaper said.
Saddam came into the hands of the Kurdish Patriotic Front after being betrayed to the group by a
member of the al-Jabour tribe, whose daughter had been raped by Saddam's son Uday, leading to a
blood feud, reported the Sunday Express, which quoted an unnamed senior British military intelligence
officer.
The newspaper said the full story of events leading up to the ousted Iraqi president's capture on
December 13 near his hometown of Tikrit in northern Iraq (news - web sites), "exposes the version
peddled by American spin doctors as incomplete".
A former Iraqi intelligence officer, whom the Express did not name, told the paper that Saddam was
held prisoner by a leader of the Kurdish Patriotic Front, which fought alongside US forces during the
Iraq war, until he negotiated a deal.
The deal apparently involved the group gaining political advantage in the region.
An unnamed Western intelligence source in the Middle East told the Express: "Saddam was not
captured as a result of any American or British intelligence. We knew that someone would eventually
take their revenge, it was just a matter of time."
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Revealed: Who Really Found Saddam?
By David Pratt
The Sunday Herald
Sunday 21 December 2003
Saddam’s capture was the best present George Bush could have hoped for, and
then Gaddafi handed a propaganda gift to Blair. But nothing’s ever that simple.
It was exactly one week ago at 3.15pm Baghdad time, when a beaming Paul Bremer made that
now-famous announce ment: “Ladies and gentlemen, we got him!”
Saddam Hussein: High Value Target Number One. The Glorious Leader. The Lion of Babylon had
been snared. Iraq’s most wanted – the ace of spades – had become little more than an ace in the
hole.
In Baghdad’s streets, Kalashnikov bullets rained down in celebration. In the billets of US soldiers,
there were high fives, toasts and cigars. In the Jordanian capital Amman, an elderly woman overcome
by grief broke down in tears and died. Inside a snow-blanketed White House, George W Bush
prepared to address the nation.
“There’s an end to everything,” said a sombre Safa Saber al-Douri, a former Iraqi air force pilot, now a
grocer in al-Dwar, the town where only hours earlier one of the greatest manhunts in history had ended
under a polystyrene hatch in a six foot deep “spider hole.”
But just how did that endgame come about? Indeed, who exactly were the key players in what until
then had been a frustrating and sometimes embarrassing hunt for a former dictator with a $25 million
(£14m) bounty on his head?
For 249 days there was no shortage of US expertise devoted to the hunt. But the Pentagon has
always remained tight-lipped about those individuals and groups involved, such as Task Force 20, said
to be America’s most elite covert unit, or another super-secret team known as Greyfox, which
specialises in radio and telephone surveillance.
Saddam, of course, was never likely to use the phone, and the best chance of locating him would
always be as a result of informers or home-grown Iraqi intelligence. On this and their collaboration with
anti-Saddam groups the Americans have also remained reticent.
Enter one Qusrat Rasul Ali, otherwise known as the lion of Kurdistan. A leader of the Patriotic Union
of Kurdistan (PUK), Rasul Ali was once tortured by Saddam’s henchmen, but today is chief of a
special forces unit dedicated to hunting down former Ba’athist regime leaders.
Rasul Ali’s unit had an impressive track record. It was they who last August, working alone, arrested
Iraqi vice-president Taha Yassin Ramadan in Mosul, northern Iraq. Barely a month earlier in the
al-Falah district of the same town, the PUK is believed to have played a crucial role in the pinpointing
and storming of a villa that culminated in the deaths of Saddam’s sons Uday and Qusay.
In that mixed district of Mosul where Arabs, Kurds and Turkemen live side by side, PUK informers
went running to their leader Jalal Talabani’s nearest military headquarters to bring him news on the
exact location of the villa where both Uday and Qusay had taken shelter.
Armed with the information, Talabani made a beeline for US administration offices in Baghdad, where
deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz was based for a week’s stay in Iraq at the time.
The Kurdish leader and US military chiefs conferred and decided that PUK intelligence would go
ahead and secretly surround the Zeidan villa and install sensors and eavesdropping devices. The
Kurdish agents were instructed to prepare the site for the US special forces operation to storm the
building on July 22.
American officials later said they expected that the $30m bounty promised by their government for
the capture or death of the Hussein sons would be paid. Given their direct involvement in providing the
exact location and intelligence necessary, no doubt Talabani’s PUK operatives could lay claim to the
sum, but no confirmation of any delivery or receipt of the cash has ever been made.
The PUK and Rasul Ali’s special “Ba’athist hunters” have, it seems, been doing what the Americans
have consistently failed to do. In an interview with the PUK’s al-Hurriyah radio station last Wednesday,
Adil Murad, a member of the PUK’s political bureau, confirmed that the Kurdish unit had been
pursuing fugitive Ba’athists for the past months in Mosul, Samarra, Tikrit and areas to the south
including al-Dwar where Saddam was eventually cornered. Murad even says that the day before
Saddam’s capture he was tipped off by PUK General Thamir al-Sultan, that Saddam would be arrested
within the next 72 hours.
Clearly the Kurdish net was closing on Saddam, and PUK head Jalal Talabani and Rasul Ali were
once again in the running for US bounty – should any be going.
It was at about 10.50am Baghdad time on last Saturday when US intel ligence says it got the tip it
was looking for. But it was not until 8pm, with the launch of Operation Red Dawn, that they finally
began to close in on the prize.
The US media reported that the tip-off came from an Iraqi man who was arrested during a raid in
Tikrit, and even speculated that he could get part of the bounty. “It was intelligence, actionable
intelligence,” claimed Lt General Ricardo Sanchez, commander of coalition ground forces in Iraq. “It
was great analytical work.”
But the widely held view that Kurdish intelligence was the key to the operation was supported in a
statement released last Sunday by the Iraqi Governing Council. Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi
National Congress, said that Rasul Ali and his PUK special forces unit had provided vital information
and more.
Last Saturday, as the US operation picked up speed, the Fourth Infantry Division moved into the area
surrounding two farms codenamed Wolverine 1 and Wolverine 2 near al-Dwar, the heart of the Saddam
heartland – a military town where practically every man is a military officer past or present. It is said to
have a special place in Saddam’s sentiments because it was from here that he swam across the
Tigris River when he was a dissident fleeing arrest in the 1960s.
Every year on August 28, the town marks Saddam’s escape with a swimming contest . In 1992,
Saddam himself attended the race. It was won by a man called Qais al-Nameq. It was al-Nameq’s
farmhouse – Wolverine 2 – that about 600 troops, including engineers, artillery and special forces,
surrounded, cutting off all roads for about four or five miles around.
Next to a sheep pen was a ramshackle orange and white taxi, which US officials say was probably
used to ferry Saddam around while he was on the run, sometimes moving every three or four hours.
Inside the premises was a walled compound with a mud hut and small lean-to. There US soldiers
found the camouflaged hole in which Saddam was hiding.
It was 3.15pm Washington time when Donald Rumsfeld called George W Bush at Camp David. “Mr
President, first reports are not always accurate,” he began. “But we think we may have him.”
First reports – indeed the very first report of Saddam’s capture – were also coming out elsewhere.
Jalal Talabani chose to leak the news and details of Rasul Ali’s role in the deployment to the Iranian
media and to be interviewed by them.
By early Sunday – way before Saddam’s capture was being reported by the mainstream Western
press – the Kurdish media ran the following news wire:
“Saddam Hussein, the former President of the Iraqi regime, was captured by the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan. A special intelligence unit led by Qusrat Rasul Ali, a high-ranking member of the PUK,
found Saddam Hussein in the city of Tikrit, his birthplace. Qusrat’s team was accompanied by a group
of US soldiers. Further details of the capture will emerge during the day; but the global Kurdish party
is about to begin!”
By the time Western press agencies were running the same story, the emphasis had changed, and
the ousted Iraqi president had been “captured in a raid by US forces backed by Kurdish fighters.”
Rasul Ali himself, meanwhile, had already been on air at the Iranian satellite station al-Alam insisting
that his “PUK fighters sealed the area off before the arrival of the US forces”.
By late Sunday as the story went global, the Kurdish role was reduced to a supportive one in what
was described by the Pentagon and US military officials as a “joint operation”. The Americans now
somewhat reluctantly were admitting that PUK fighters were on the ground alongside them , while
PUK sources were making more considered statements and playing down their precise role.
So just who did get to Saddam first, the Kurds or the Americans? And if indeed it was a joint
operation would it have been possible at all without the intelligence and on-the-ground participation of
Rasul Ali and his special forces?
If the PUK themselves pulled off Saddam’s capture, there would be much to gain from taking the
$25m bounty and any political guarantees the Americans might reward them with to keep schtum.
What’s more, Jalal Talabani’s links to Tehran have always worried Washington, and having his party
grab the grand prize from beneath their noses would be awkward to say the least.
“It’s mutually worth it to us and the Americans. We need assurances for the future and they need the
kudos of getting Saddam,” admitted a Kurdish source on condition of anonymity. It would be all to
easy to dismiss the questions surrounding the PUK role as conspiracy theory. After all, almost every
major event that affects the Arab world prompts tales that are quickly woven into intricate shapes and
patterns, to demonstrate innocence, seek credit or apportion blame. Saddam’s capture is no
exception.
Of the numerous and more exotic theories surrounding events leading to Saddam’s arrest, one
originates on a website many believe edited by former Israeli intelligence agents, but which often turns
up inside information about the Middle East that proves to be accurate.
According to Debka.com, there is a possibility that Saddam was held for up to three weeks in
al-Dwar by a Kurdish splinter group while they negotiated a handover to the Americans in return for the
$25m reward. This, the writers say would explain his dishevelled and disorientated appearance.
But perhaps the mother of all conspiracy theories, is the one about the pictures distributed by the
Americans showing the hideout with a palm tree behind the soldier who uncov ered the hole where
Saddam was hiding. The palm carried a cluster of pre-ripened yellow dates, which might suggest that
Saddam was arrested at least three months earlier, because dates ripen in the summer when they
turn into their black or brown colour.
Those who buy into such an explanation conclude that Saddam’s capture was stage-managed and
his place of arrest probably elsewhere. All fanciful stuff. But as is so often the case, the real chain of
events is likely to be far more mundane.
In the end serious questions remain about the Kurdish role and whether at last Sunday’s Baghdad
press conference, Paul Bremer was telling the whole truth . Or is it a case of “ladies and gentlemen
we got him,” – with a little more help from our Kurdish friends than might be politically expedient to
admit?
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