Bushra Khalil

Saddam Hussein tells the only woman in his life that he is ready to meet his hangman – provided he is allowed to finish writing his novel.

"I will go to the gallows with dignity knowing I will die a martyr," he told his lawyer, Bushra Khalil, the only woman on his defense team. "The legacy I will leave the world is my new epic work that will assure my place in literature."

In an exclusive interview at the closing stages of Hussein's trial, Khalil, 44, revealed how she built up a unique relationship with the former dictator. She described how she listened for hours in his cell as he spoke about foreign leaders – including Bush and Blair whom he disparaged – and his ambition to be a best-selling author.

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Today, as he was sentenced to death, she sat near him in court, watching as he sat, arms folded, eyes half closed, looking like a man impatient to get back to his writing.

Khalil is a Shi'ite Muslim who took on the task of trying to defend the hated Sunni dictator.

She is the only member of the defense team Hussein has allowed to visit him in his high-security prison near Baghdad International Airport. He has refused to see his own family.

For hours at a time, Khalil, dressed in chic Western clothes – usually a customized trouser suit or calf-length skirt and high-buttoning blouse – has listened to Hussein discuss not his defense, but international issues and reading the latest passages from his "epic."

"I am taken to the prison by the Americans in a van with blacked-out windows," she said. "I have been told it is for my own protection."

Since Hussein's trial started, two defense lawyers were murdered – and a third fled the country to escape assassination.

While Khalil, as his lawyer, was given the normal client-prisoner relationship, she believes her talks with Hussein were closely monitored.

He is treated with the same vise-like grip that exists on Death Row in an American prison. His iron bed is bolted to the floor. The bedding is standard U.S. military prison issue. His toiletries consist of a weekly bar of soap, a sponge and a tube of toothpaste. But he has reverted to the days of his childhood and brushes his teeth in the Arab fashion with a stick of miswak, a hardwood.

His bathroom has a shower and European-style toilet. A metal washbasin and two towels complete the facilities. Toilet paper is of the kind sold in any Baghdad marketplace.

His breakfast consists of yogurt, toast and tea, eaten with airline-style plastic cutlery. His guards are unarmed. Hussein has told Khalil his relationship with them is "friendly."

When not in court his daily routine never varies. All his meals are cooked by a specially recruited Iraqi. Drinking water comes from sealed bottles – part of consignments flown in from the United States for its troops.

Every day Hussein was taken out to a small courtyard for a period of exercise. In a corner of the yard was a water tap. The first thing Saddam did was to turn it on. The sound of flowing water has always been a reminder for him that, in a land parched by nature, he could always command water. In his palaces there were magnificent tumbling waterfalls and the sound of water was pumped into his office. But often the tap produced only a mere trickle.

His usual dinner would be fruit – dates and olives are a staple of the diet – along with soup, possibly chicken and rice. The diet has led to Hussein shedding his potbelly. His shaggy salt-and-pepper beard is trimmed once a week, enhancing his sharp, penetrating eyes.

An MI6 source said Hussein's "epic work" is filled with paranoid invective against the United States and Israel. However, according to Khalil, he sees the book as "a cross between 'Gone with the Wind' and Russia’s epic defense of Stalingrad in World War II."

Aviv Rubin, a former Mossad analyst, said: "Letting Saddam play out his fantasies on paper could offer important clues to his past relationship with countries like Syria, Egypt and even Iran. His characters are thinly disguised but based on living Arab leaders."

The one certainty is that Hussein's "epic work" will be a strictly limited edition.

"It will never be published," said Rubin. "That would make it a collector's item for fanatics – rather like having a first edition of Hitler's "Mein Kampf."

Gordon Thomas, a regular contributor toJoseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, is the author of "Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad." He specializes in international intelligence matters.

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