He will be buried in Iraq - official

Baghdad/Amman: Saddam Hussain will be buried in Iraq but the government is not yet ready to say exactly where, an official in the office of Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki said yesterday.

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"The body would not go outside Iraq. We cannot announce the place where he would be buried now. But he should certainly be buried," the source told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Earlier, National Security adviser Mouwafak Al Rubaie, who attended the execution told Iraqi state television the body might be handed over to Saddam's family at some point, but that no decision had yet been made. The body, he said, was held by the government.

Controversy

One of Saddam's lawyers earlier told Sky News that the corpse would be transferred outside Iraq following his execution for crimes against humanity.

Speaking in English via telephone, Najeeb Al Nuaimi said it should be up to the toppled president's family to decide where the body should be taken.

Asked what would happen to the body, Al Nuaimi said: "We are requesting it to be handed over to us, and we will transfer it outside Baghdad, outside Iraq. ... We have one of our colleagues who is actually waiting there in the Green Zone" in central Baghdad.

Pressed on reports that Saddam's body would be taken to his home town of Tikrit to be buried there, Al Nuaimi said that was not his understanding.

"My understanding is that ... the family would determine the destination of the body where they have to be buried," he said.

Dubai-based Al Arabiya satellite TV quoted his daughter Raghad as having asked Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to request Saddam's body for temporary burial in the country. She hoped to eventually take her father's remains to Tikrit, Saddam's hometown north of Baghdad.

Issam Ghazzawi, a member of Saddam's defence team said from Amman that he was worried the body would be buried in an unmarked location.

"We do not know what they would do with Saddam's body," he said. "They would bury him in an unknown location so nobody could be able to pay respect to the president."

Daughters stoic

Saddam's two older daughters, who live in Jordan, reacted with grief and stoicism yesterday to news of his hanging, one of the former Iraqi dictator's lawyers in Amman said.

"Raghad Hussain and Rana Hussain gathered together with their nine children [overnight on Friday] to wait for news," the lawyer told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Several of Saddam's lawyers were with them at Raghad's residence in the west of the Jordanian capital, where the eldest daughter Raghad was said to have reacted "stoically".