(Updated)

Curiously enough, this story isn't getting much traction in the US press. I'm inclined to take it with a grain of salt myself, since it appeared only in a British tabloid and quotes only unnamed sources. Still, if it's true it means that the glorious locating and capturing of Saddam Hussein story may need some revision.

According to the Sunday Express, Saddam Hussein had actually been captured some time before by the Kurdish Patriotic Front. Saddam had been ratted out by someone from the al-Jabour tribe whose daughter had been raped by Saddam's late son, Uday (payback's a bitch). This is according to an unnamed British military intelligence officer. I think we can possibly excuse an intelligence officer from giving his name, but it sure would be nicer if there was some confirmation from someone whose name we could know.

A second unnamed source, this time a former Iraqi intelligence officer said that Saddam was held until he negotiated a deal involving the Kurdish Patriotic Front gaining a political advantage in the area. This seems rather suspicious, since Saddam didn't seem to be in a position to be granting political favors. It's also seems questionable whether the Kurds would want to negotiate anything at all with Hussein, considering his history of trying to exterminate the Kurds. Unfortunately it's also not clear from the article we do have access to whether the person cutting the deal was Hussein with his Kurdish captor, or his Kurdish captor with the coalition. The latter might actually make sense.

And a third unnamed source, supposedly a Western intelligence source is supposed to have said, "Saddam was not captured as a result of any American or British intelligence. We knew that someone would eventually take their revenge, it was just a matter of time."

The rest of the story is that Saddam was then drugged and abandoned, left for coalition forces to find him.

Of course this story leaves a lot of unanswered questions, which admittedly the Express may have answered in their paper, but since they don't have their stories online it's hard to check. Anyone in the UK got a copy handy? Questions like: why would the Kurds bother holding him and not just execute him or immediately turn him over to the coalition forces? In what position to negotiate was Saddam? If they were hoping to get something from Saddam, why then did they drug him and leave him for troops to find? Or was the person cutting the deal the unnamed member of the Kurdish Patriotic Front? If so, why hasn't anyone from the Kurdish Patriotic Front stepped forward to claim the reward money on Saddam's head? Why are all the sources unnamed? Why hasn't any other news organization reported this?

So if this story turns out to be true, then history needs an edit. Hopefully another news organization will back up or counter the story soon.

---Nick

UPDATE: mlcastle was kind enough to dig up the original story from Lexis-Nexis which had this important tidbit of information that wasn't carried in the story that we saw: "Saddam had already been handed over to Kurdish forces who then brokered a deal with US commanders" which clears up the ambiguity about whether it was Saddam negotiating or the Kurds negotiating with the coalition. They go on to say that the unnamed British intelligence officer said, "There was no question of the tribe claiming the GBP 16 million reward from the US. Apparently it was a question of honour. The Kurdish Patriotic Front held him while they thrashed out their own deal. It didn't just involve the reward but it involved gaining some sort of political advantage in the region."

So that's 4 questions answered, and 3 to go...

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