Baghdad - One of Saddam Hussein's top aides turned him over to American forces, according to fresh details on the former Iraqi leader's capture, as the United States administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, said he had escaped an assassination bid earlier this month.
"He was someone I would call his right arm," said Major Stan Murphy, the head of intelligence for the 4th Infantry Division's First Brigade in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit said on Friday of the man who led to Saddam's capture at a hideout near there on December 13.
Murphy said the informant was in detention, ruling out the possibility that he would receive any of the $25-million bounty that the United States had placed on Saddam's head.
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"He is a bad man and should rot in jail," the major said.
| 'He is a bad man and should rot in jail' |
The man, whose name the military will not reveal, was a longtime aide of Saddam and hailed from one of five major tribes in a 20km stretch around Tikrit, the fallen dictator's hometown.
In addition to helping Saddam elude the Americans for about eight months, the man, who along with four or five other Iraqis helped the fugitive dictator implement his orders to the resistance for attacks, finance the insurgency and provide combattants with weaponry, according to Murphy.
There were four to nine tiers of the resistance, Murphy said.
US overseer Paul Bremer, meanwhile, said that he had survived an attack against him on December 6 near Baghdad airport.
"That's correct," Bremer told reporters on Friday in the southern city of Basra when asked about the incident and without providing further details.
| The blast was detonated by remote control |
But a senior US defense official in Washington said later that a roadside explosion blew out tires of a lead vehicle in a convoy carrying Bremer as he returned from seeing off visiting US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at Baghdad airport.
A windshield in the vehicle carrying Bremer was cracked by the force of the explosion, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
However, the official said the attack was not believed to be specifically directed at Bremer but at "targets of opportunity" on an airport road that had been the scene of past attacks on convoys with improvised explosive devices.
Bremer's spokesman Dan Senor said it was the first perceived attack on Bremer, who heads the US-led coalition that is administering the country after the overthrow of former president Saddam Hussein by US coalition forces in April.
In Baghdad, one woman died Friday and eight people were wounded when a homeless shelter run by Iraq's largest Shiite political group collapsed, blamed by a US general on a structural defect and not a bomb as Iraqi police said earlier.
The flattening of the shelter marked the second time this week US officials disputed Iraqi claims of deliberate violence, following the explosion in Baghdad of a tanker truck which police said was loaded with explosives.
The building collapsed on families sleeping in the west Baghdad compound of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).
"One woman died and eight other people were injured from the explosion in premises occupied by three families," said Mohsen al-Hakim, a nephew of Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, the head of SCIRI and current chairman of Iraq's US-appointed Governing Council.
He said the blast was detonated by remote control.
Mohsen al-Hakim blamed "agents of the old regime and terrorists" for the bombing, which came two days after his cousin and SCIRI member Muhannad al-Hakim was gunned down outside his Baghdad home.
But US Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, speaking at a press conference in Baghdad, said he had received a report indicating that there was no explosion. At first he said he knew nothing of the incident.
"The Iraqi police service reported to 1st Armoured Division that the building collapsed due to a structural integrity problem," he said.
On Saturday, the US military had no further comment about the incident and told AFP Iraq's interim interior ministry should be contacted for further information.
They were not available when reached by telephone.
Meanwhile, a senior Iraqi police official said Friday that some 260 members of the new Iraqi security forces had been killed in attacks since the fall of Saddam's regime.
But Kimmitt Friday put the number at 116.
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