BAGHDAD, 8 September 2005 — Ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has “confessed” to some of his alleged crimes and deserves to die “100 times,” according to the country’s Kurdish President Jalal Talabani, an opponent of the death penalty.

“Saddam Hussein deserves to die 100 times,” Talabani, a former Kurdish leader who spent much of his life fighting the ousted regime, told Iraqi television overnight.

Saddam, who has been in US custody since December 2003, is to go on trial next month before the Iraqi Special Tribunal over a 1982 massacre in a Shiite village north of Baghdad following an attempt on his life there.

“I recently met with an investigative judge responsible for interrogating (Saddam) and he brought me some good news. He said he’d been able to get him to make and sign important confessions,” Talabani said.

The confessions related to “hand-signed orders” by Saddam concerning the 1987-88 “Anfal” operation when around 180,000 people are reported to have been killed in a government campaign to suppress rebellious Kurds in Iraq’s north.

“There are tons of documents incriminating Saddam Hussein,” Talabani added.

But a member of Saddam’s Jordan-based defense team, Ziad Najdawi, denied the deposed Iraqi leader had confessed to any crime, describing Talabani’s comments as “completely false.”

Saddam initially will stand trial with seven former henchmen, including his former vice president and secret police chief, for the 1982 massacre of Shiite villagers in Dujail.

Meanwhile, US-led forces yesterday freed an American contractor held hostage in Iraq for 10 months and an Iraqi after raiding an isolated farmhouse south of Baghdad on a tip-off from an Iraqi prisoner.

“Coalition forces rescued American Roy Hallums and an Iraqi citizen from captivity in an isolated farm house located 15 miles (25 kilometers) south of Baghdad,” a US military statement said, adding that Hallums was “in good condition.”

Also yesterday, four American security guards were killed when a US diplomatic convoy was hit by a roadside bomb in the southern city of Basra, the US Embassy said.

Pictures taken by an AFP photographer at the scene showed a silver-colored four-wheel drive vehicle on its roof with two bodies, wearing bullet-proof vests, lying nearby.

In further unrest in the city, nine Iraqis were killed and four others wounded yesterday when a car bomb exploded outside a restaurant packed with members of Iraqi security forces.

US and Iraqi forces continued their military offensive in the restive northwestern town of Tal Afar near the Syrian border, evacuating families from neighborhoods which have been taken over by insurgents. “They have told people to clear out of certain areas... which are basically terrorist strongholds,” said Lt. Col. Andre Hance, spokesman for US forces in the nearby main northern city of Mosul.

In other rebel violence, nine Iraqis, including four soldiers and a police colonel, were killed and 19 others wounded in separate attacks, most of them in Baghdad, security sources said.

One US soldier was also killed yesterday in a “non-combat related” incident at a US military base in central Iraq, the military said. The latest death brings US military losses in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to at least 1,882, according to an AFP toll based on Pentagon figures.