SADDAM HUSSEIN’S eldest daughter described the “horrendous” final hours of her father’s regime last night, and claimed Baghdad fell so swiftly because he was betrayed by those he trusted most.
“The main betrayal came from the people whom he trusted fully,” Raghad Hussein said in a television interview from a royal residence in Amman, where she and her younger sister, Rana, were granted refuge on Thursday night.
“This is an act of treason,” she told the Arab satellite television station al-Arabiya. “If someone does not like you, they should not betray you . . . betrayal is not a trait of the Arabs.”
The interview came as the CIA released six digital pictures of how Saddam might have altered his appearance to avoid detection after three months on the run.
But yesterday US troops met only defiance from the deposed dictator on a new audiotape on which a voice purporting to be Saddam said that coalition forces would soon be defeated and that the country would “get back to normal”, but only if Iraqis fought hard. CIA analysis of the new tape found a “high likelihood” that it was Saddam’s voice. Raghad, 36, said that the fall of Baghdad had been a “great shock”. She had been staying in a house in the up-market Mansour district of the capital with Rana, 34, and their children. For two days she had been “listening to all radio stations and kept telling my sister that it seems the end is nearing”.
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“But Rana would tell me: do not listen to foreign news . . . nothing will happen”.
She said that at noon on the day American tanks rolled into Baghdad, their father sent them a car and a driver from his special security forces and instructed them to leave the house. Also present was Sahar, the wife of her brother Qusay, and her children.
“The moments of saying goodbye were horrendous,” she said. “We left Baghdad and met up with my mother (Sajida) and Hala (a third sister) after a few hours . . . links were all but cut with my father and brothers because matters had got out of hand.”
She went on: “The second morning, my mother told us it would be safer for us to separate, so we (Rana and I) left her and drove to the unknown . . . the future ahead of us was bleak . . . it was a very sad moment”.
A few weeks after the war, Raghad and Rana unsuccessfully sought asylum in Britain. They wanted to settle in Leeds where a cousin lives. Late on Thursday night they and nine children were flown out of Iraq by helicopter, with the apparent approval of the Americans, having been granted refuge by King Abdullah. Other sources, however, said that they may have flown in from Syria on a Jordanian plane.
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In the hour-long interview, Raghad spoke about Saddam as a caring, warm and loving father who defied his family to marry his cousin Sajida.
She said that she met with her father for the last time at her mother’s palace in Baghdad’s al-Jabiriyah area five days before the war began. The impromptu encounter lasted for an hour. “All the grandchildren began pulling out chairs and sat around their grandfather in a circle, he was very kind to them and after he left, he sent them sweets.”
Raghad and Rana were granted asylum in Jordan after they sent a letter to King Abdullah “informing him that they were in a desperate situation” and they asked if they could come to Jordan, a Jordanian official told The Times.
Though members of Saddam’s family, the two sisters were also victims. Hers and Rana’s husbands were executed by Saddam in 1996 after they defected to Jordan and were lured back by a false promise of an amnesty and protection from Uday.
“We were an exemplary and a warm family that enjoyed close ties,” Raghad recalled. “My father, who often had lunch with us, was a very affectionate and caring Dad, who loved his sons and daughters in an unbelievable way,” she said with a smile.
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“He would look at us, and at my mother, in a loving way and tell her, ‘Sajida, didn’t I tell you that daughters are better than sons as they will always come to you if you are in need of help’.
“I was trapped between two raging fires . . . that of my husband and children, and that of my father and my family,” she said of her decision to join her husband in his defection.
“Our departure was a big mistake and the decision to return was even a bigger mistake,” she said, trying hard to maintain her cool and carefully selecting her words. She blamed her husband’s uncle, Ali Hassan al-Majid, better known as Chemical Ali, for orchestrating and leading the massacre of her husband, brother-in-law and more than a dozen other family members after their return from Amman in 1996, even though the Baath party had issued a decree forgiving the defectors.
“This Ali is a malicious, wicked and damned man, with a black history. After the defection, he turned things to his benefit. He climbed up on our shoulders.”