New claims have come to light suggesting the former Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, spent the days leading up to his trial listening to RnB legend Mary J Blige, eating muffins and befriending his US military guards.
According to a report in British news website The Independent, Hussein was seen as a “grandfather— like figure” by 12 young American soldiers while he waited to go on trial for crimes against humanity.
It has also been claimed that he cackled like Dracula from the US children’s television show Sesame Street.
And when he was finally executed by hanging in 2006, the young soldiers are said to have even mourned his death.
Former American soldier Will Bardenwerper is quoted as saying that Saddam showed “surprising affection, dignity, and courage in the face of looming death”
The surprising revelations are made in Bardenwerper’s upcoming book: The Prisoner in His Palace: Saddam Hussein, His American Guards, and What History Leaves Unsaid.
The former soldier claims Hussein talked about his notoriously violent son Uday and when he made a “terrible mistake,” shooting several people dead at a party.
Hussein is reported to have said that in punishment for the incident he burned his son’s collection of Rolls Royce cars, Porches and Ferraris – he was said to have “laughed wildly” as he recalled the incident.
The book was created after Bardenwerper collected stories from American guards, interrogators, and spies about their memories of Hussein before he died.
In one account a soldier said he “was like a lion at a zoo,” when he slept. While another recalled trying to stop crowds beating and spitting at Saddam’s corpse following his execution.
Bardenwerper’s book: The Prisoner in His Palace is due for publication next week.
