Iraq lawyer to publish first volume of book on Saddam's life
AMMAN (AFP) — The first of a three-volume book on Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's life from childhood to the day of his execution is to be published later this year, Iraqi lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi said on Tuesday.
Dulaimi told AFP he has been working "day and night to compile the memoirs of the late Iraqi 'rayess' (leader in Arabic) so as to publish the first volume by the end of the year."
The leader of Saddam's defence team in court said the three volumes would run to more than 2,000 pages, covering his life "from childhood to his youth... his rise to power and the last day of his life."
It will contain 400 texts handwritten by Saddam, as well as interviews which the slain dictator gave to Dulaimi in his prison cell and details about his life in US custody.
"I transcribed what he dictated to me or what I could remember because the Americans often prevented me from leaving the prison with Saddam manuscripts," said Dulaimi, who said he visited Saddam in jail a total of 144 times.
The first volume will be devoted to what Saddam told Dulaimi in prison, and the second to the handwritten texts. The final volume will focus on the trial which led to Saddam's execution.
Iraq's ousted president was hanged in Baghdad in December 2006, a month after being convicted of crimes against humanity for the killing of 148 Shiite civilians following an assassination attempt against him in 1982.
He was captured by US troops in December 2003, eight months after the fall of Baghdad, in a hole on a farm near his northern hometown of Tikrit, and jailed in a US-run prison at Baghdad airport.
Dulaimi said he would also reveal other secrets in the book but refused to give details. "The book will reveal to the world everything that happened in Iraq before Saddam took power to the American invasion."
The Arab newspaper Al-Hayat published this week what it said were extracts from Saddam's prison writings, in which the hanged dictator spoke of his life and his fear of contracting sexual diseases while in US custody.
Dulaimi said Saddam took personal hygiene seriously and washed his own clothes in jail, adding however that the former dictator "never spoke to me about the disease (AIDS) of his fear" of it.
