Saddam Hussein and his son Uday are alive and hiding in a Baghdad suburb, and Uday is considering surrendering to U.S. forces, reports the Wall Street Journal.
Citing an unnamed third party familiar with the surrender discussions, the Journal said the U.S. is taking a tough negotiating posture because officials are confident Uday eventually will be found and captured.
Indeed, an AP report states U.S. officials will accept only an unconditional surrender.
“Nobody’s brought an offer from Uday to me, and I would facilitate his coming on in. But it would be unconditional,” Lt. Gen. David McKiernan told reporters in Baghdad.
The paper says Uday wants to know what the charges against him would be, the process for interrogation and what the conditions of his incarceration would be.
In the former Iraqi regime, Uday was the commander of the Saddam Fedayeen paramilitary unit that fought against coalition troops reportedly using Iraqi citizens as human shields. Uday also headed Iraq’s Olympic committee, and human-rights organizations say he brutally tortured athletes over their poor performance.
Uday is No. 3 on the coalition’s most-wanted list, behind his father and younger brother Qusay. The whereabouts of Qusay, who supervised the country’s feared Special Security Organization and held a top Baath Party post, are unknown.
The Journal’s source said Tariq Aziz, Iraq’s former deputy prime minister, told his family and others before he surrendered to coalition forces that Hussein’s sons took more than $1 billion in gold from Iraq’s central bank. Earlier this month, U.S. officials said Qusay took approximately a billion dollars in cash from the central bank in Baghdad just before the Iraq war, but that most had been recovered. Coalition troops found some $600 million in U.S. currency in boxes near Baghdad palace complexes.
The Reuters News Agency reports $500 million worth of gold was discovered in a truck by coalition forces conducting routine traffic stops near the Syrian border in western Iraq yesterday.
The 2,000 40-pound bars were seized at Qaim by soldiers of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, according to a statement released by U.S. Central Command.
CENTCOM officials said two occupants of the truck were taken into custody. They told the soldiers they had been told the bars were bronze, and were paid about 350,000 Iraqi dinars, or approximately $350, to pick up the truck in Baghdad, drive it to Qaim and turn it over to an individual.
The Journal’s source also said Saddam Hussein remains in questionable mental health.
As WorldNetDaily reported, the London Arabic-language newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi published a letter April 30 purportedly written by Saddam Hussein, urging the Iraqi people and the Arab nation to resist coalition troops.
The handwritten message was said to have been penned by Saddam on the occasion of his birthday two days prior and faxed to the paper.
“They did not vanquish you, you who refuse to accept occupation and humiliation, and you, who have Arabism and Islam in your hearts and minds, [they did not defeat you] except through treachery. By Allah, this is no victory, as long as there is resistance in your hearts,” the letter read, according to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute. “We do not live in peace and security as long as the monstrous Zionist entity is on our Arab land, and therefore there should be no split in the unity of Arab struggle.”
Hussein hasn’t been seen since April 9, when Iraqi television broadcast videotape of him in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. This was the same day Iraqis toppled a landmark statue of Saddam in a joyous celebration captured live on television.
The Saddam footage suggested he had survived targeted airstrikes by coalition forces on the first day of the war, March 20, and again on a building in Mansur where Saddam was believed to be meeting with his sons April 7.
As WorldNetDaily reported, U.S. and British intelligence sources reported Hussein survived the attack.
The Pentagon said determining Saddam’s fate rested on DNA tests – based on samples it claimed the U.S. has.
Forensics experts conducted tests of samples gathered at both bombing sites. No test results have been reported.
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