DUBAI, 27 June 2003 — Iraq’s Former Information Minister Mohammed Said As-Sahaf said yesterday in his first television appearance since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime that he had turned himself in to US forces who released him after questioning. “I went to the Americans ... through some friends, and was questioned about a number of issues related to my work,” Sahaf told Al-Arabiya news channel in an interview, a short excerpt of which was aired by the Dubai-based TV.
“After the interrogation, I was released,” said Sahaf, denying reports that he had been captured by US forces occupying Iraq. The moments that preceded Baghdad’s fall to the US-led coalition on April 9 were “difficult not for one individual, but for everyone.”
Al-Arabiya aired pictures of Sahaf during the war but has yet to broadcast the full interview conducted “in a suburb of Baghdad.” Sahaf was shown on Al-Arabiya, his hair turned white, looking thinner and wearing a gray shirt, speaking with the channel’s regional director, Saad Al-Silawi, in a living room.
A spokesman for the channel told AFP the interview was conducted yesterday. The interview, in which Sahaf will reveal “a lot of important information about the war and the fall of the Iraqi regime,” gives the lie to reports that he was captured by US forces, Al-Arabiya said.
The Pentagon said Wednesday it had no confirmation that Sahaf had been captured in Baghdad. The Daily Mirror of London said earlier Wednesday that Sahaf, famous for his wildly inaccurate claims during the US-led war, was captured at a military roadblock on Monday.
In a dispatch from Baghdad, the Mirror said Sahaf’s captors allowed him to go back to a house where he had apparently been holed up with his wife and three children “to collect a toothbrush, razor and book.”
“He has some serious talking to do ... this time,” the tabloid quoted a “senior coalition source” as saying.
