BAGHDAD, 17 December 2003 — US soldiers gunned down at least 17 Iraqis in rebellious towns and a bomb in Tikrit wounded three members of the US forces yesterday as violence flared over Saddam Hussein’s capture.
The spate of violence yesterday showed Saddam’s capture offered no quick fix to Iraq’s woes, but US leaders hoped his arrest would help win global allies for their plan to speed up Iraqi self-government.
US forces kept the ousted 66-year-old dictator at a secret location for interrogation ahead of a trial which a key Iraqi judge said would not start for months. He could face death.
American and Iraqi envoys took to the road to win UN backing for plans to form an Iraqi government by June and to persuade Europeans to write off the oil-rich country’s debts.
But Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said plans for economic and political rebirth could be derailed by violence.
“The capture of Saddam Hussein will deal a huge blow to his misguided former loyalists but we need to empower Iraqis to take charge of their own security,” he said. “Until we see significant improvements the road ahead isn’t going to be easy.” His comments to the UN Security Council came after a series of clashes in the heartland of Saddam support north and west of Baghdad.
In Fallujah, US troops killed one Iraqi yesterday after they broke up a second day of riots. US troops killed 11 “Saddam loyalists” who tried to ambush them in Samarra on Monday and also killed five Iraqis in Fallujah and nearby Ramadi overnight after coming under fire in riots.
In Tikrit, Saddam’s hometown near which he was caught on a tip-off, a roadside bomb wounded three US soldiers yesterday.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said yesterday that the US-led Iraq Survey Group hunting for weapons of mass destruction had found “massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories” in Iraq.
Blair did not go into detail, but a spokesman for the prime minister said that the findings were part of the interim report produced by the survey group several months ago.
“The Iraq Survey Group has already found massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories, workings by scientists, plans to develop long range ballistic missiles”, Blair said in an interview with the British Forces Broadcasting Service.
America’s top soldier Gen. Richard Myers, in Baghdad, said Saddam’s capture would hurt the anti-US insurgency but that US forces would stay on for a couple of years at least. President George W. Bush said on Monday the United States and Iraq would organize a fair trial for Saddam whom the Iraqi Governing Council wants to try in a tribunal set up last week.
Dara Nooraldin, a judge who helped draft the court’s charter, said it would not be ready to try Saddam for months and could let judges from other countries take part in the trial.
“The transitional government may have been formed by then, and the question will be left to that government to decide whether the death penalty is to be abolished,” he said.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called Saddam’s capture an opportunity for Iraqis to “take control of their destiny.” It was urgent they assumed sovereignty, he said.
Saddam’s daughter Raghad said she and her sisters wanted an international trial to ensure justice.
“He should not be tried by the Governing Council, which was put in place by occupiers,” she said in Jordan where she lives.
“A lion remains a lion even in captivity,” she said. “I am really proud that this man is my father.”
Raghad also said that Saddam must have been drugged before his capture.
“How do you believe they can capture him if they didn’t drug him? I don’t doubt it, I’m sure that they couldn’t (have captured him otherwise),” she said.
Meanwhile, Saddam’s fugitive number two, Izzat Ibrahim, may have surrendered to US-led coalition forces in Iraq, Kuwait Television reported yesterday, quoting its correspondent in Baghdad.
The correspondent said on air that “the information is not confirmed and is confusing.”
— Additional input from agencies
