WASHINGTON, 16 June 2004 — US President George W. Bush said yesterday he was seeking security assurances from the interim Iraqi government before giving it custody of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Bush would not commit to handing over Saddam by the June 30 transfer of power, as asserted by interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, but he did not rule it out.

He said the United States would not allow “lax security” to jeopardize plans to bring Saddam to trial.

“We want to make sure that he (Saddam) doesn’t come back to power. And so therefore, it’s a legitimate question to ask of the interim government: ‘How are you going to make sure he stays in jail?’ And that’s the question I’m asking. And when we get the right answer, which I’m confident we will — we’ll work with them to do so — then we’ll all be satisfied,” Bush said.

“He is a killer. He is a thug. He needs to be brought to trial,” Bush said at a Rose Garden news conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. “I’m confident that when it is all said and done he will stay in jail. I just want to be assured.”

Allawi said Monday Saddam and other prisoners would be given to the new Iraqi government within two weeks to prepare for trial.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan was also noncommittal about the timing: “We’re going to turn him over at the appropriate time... We’re talking to them about those issues, and about the process for turning them over.”

US troops captured Saddam in December near his hometown of Tikrit and he has been in US custody since, held as a prisoner of war at an unknown location.

The United States has agreed to give him — and other indicted officials in its custody — to the Iraqis for trial once a sovereign government sets up a special tribunal capable of conducting a fair trial after June 30.

The tribunal plans to charge some of Saddam’s associates by the end of this year, the top court administrator Salem Chalabi said last week.

It hopes former Saddam aides captured by US troops will testify against him during their prosecution, which could take many months.

Officials say the aides would be tried before Saddam appears in the dock in a Baghdad complex that once stored gifts for him. The aides’ trials could help the tribunal prove a chain of command linking Saddam to crimes against humanity.

Yesterday Salem Chalabi said Iraqi authorities would be ready to handle the high-profile prisoner and would issue arrest warrants for Saddam and others.

“We’re putting it together. We should have it together very shortly,” Chalabi told AFP when asked if Iraq had adequate facilities to detain Saddam.

The top tribunal official said arrest warrants were required before the former president was transferred to the Iraqi authorities.

Saddam’s lawyer alleged yesterday that the former president had been subjected to “physical and moral torture” by the coalition troops. “We have received a confidential report by the International Committee of the Red Crescent that the Iraqi president was subjected to physical and moral torture on Jan. 21, 2004, and that he suffered wounds as a result,” Mohammad Rashdan said.

He said ICRC’s move to press for Saddam’s release or trial after the handover of sovereignty to Iraqis came after an “acrimonious meeting the defense panel held with head of the ICRC office in Amman on June 9”.

“We told him that the ICRC is under obligation to do something in accordance with international law,” Rashdan said.

The ICRC said that its personnel had so far visited Saddam twice at his detention site in Baghdad, and got two messages from him addressed to his family.

“His family has received one letter made up of 17 words after the American occupation troops omitted three quarters of it,” Rashdan said. “The ICRC reportedly got a second letter from him, but the US troops have continued to withhold it,” he added.

Rashdan leads a defense team comprising dozens of renowned Arab and non-Arab lawyers. He said that about 1,500 Arab lawyers, including 700 from Jordan, had so far volunteered to defend Saddam.