Saddam Secretly Flown Out of Iraq

The Hindu

The former Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein, has been
secretly flown out of Iraq by his U.S. captors and moved
to a high-security air base in Qatar to prevent his
supporters from forcing his release, a British newspaper
claimed today.

In a front-page despatch from its authoritative and
internationally respected West Asia correspondent,
Robert Fisk, The Independent said the operation had been
so hush-hush that even the authorities in Qatar were not
told about it.

The U.S. officials, it said, refused to discuss
"Saddam’s place of imprisonment’’ and Iraqis continued
to believe that he was still in Iraq, "possibly at the
big American base at Balad, 60 miles north of Baghdad,
on the road to Tikrit, Saddam’s home’’. The newspaper
said that the move was prompted by fears that the
"increasingly sophisticated attacks against Americans’’
in Iraq might lead to attempts to "stage a spectacular
prison escape’’. Qatar was chosen as the "safest place’’
in the region to hold Mr. Hussein. "Even senior Qatari
intelligence officers were not informed of Saddam’s
presence in the Emirate, home to the largest U.S.
military base in the Middle East,’’ Mr. Fisk wrote,
adding that surrounded by thousands’ of U.S. troops and
intelligence men, Mr. Hussein was "as well-guarded as he
would be at Guantanamo Bay’’. Mr. Hussein, who was
picked up by U.S. forces in December, is reported to
have given little joy to his interrogators.

"He does not want to help the FBI-CIA team who are
questioning him, and gives vague replies to many of the
questions he is asked, often stating the Iraqi
Government’s official position on the Iran-Iraq war, the
invasion of Kuwait and U.N. sanctions,’’ according to
Mr. Fisk. Americans, he said, were reluctant to put Mr.
Hussein on trial before the U.S. presidential elections,
fearing that he would disclose details of the close
relationship that U.S. administrations had with his
regime.