Saddam takes secrets to his grave

Baghdad: Saddam Hussain carried to the grave many of the most closely guarded secrets of the labyrinthine nation he ruled for 30 years.

Even many Iraqis who are not mourning Saturday's execution of the fallen dictator are wistful about losing the opportunity to learn more about the crimes of his regime.

Investigators are still scouring the globe for billions of dollars Saddam transferred to foreign accounts before his fall in 2003. Human rights agencies continue to search for mass graves of thousands of unaccounted-for victims of his reign.

Historians are still trying to understand why Saddam risked economic ruin when he invaded Iran in 1980 and international condemnation when he invaded Kuwait in 1990, putting him on a collision course with the United States that eventually would lead him to the gallows.

Researchers still wonder how much support Saddam might have received from Western governments and corporations for his weapons programmes and gas attacks on Iraqi civilians.

And many Iraqis continue to harbor more tragic questions about the fate of tens of thousands of loved ones taken away by Saddam's security forces.

Judge Rahdi Hamza Rahdi still wants to know what happened to all the money. Immediately after the US invasion, troops discovered sealed cottages containing washing machine-sized stacks of $100 (Around Dh367) bills.
Nearly $500 million (around Dh1.83 billion) was found in Lebanon, according to US officials, who feared that the money had been secreted there to fund future insurgent efforts.

But billions of dollars from Saddam's regime remain missing, said Rahdi, who heads the Commission on Public Integrity, Iraq's national anticorruption agency. After three years, he said, he has found only a fraction of the funds.

"He used to work out agreements with foreign companies through the United Nations Oil for Food programme to sell oil for higher prices and take a percentage of all oil profits," Rahdi said.

"Where is this money now? We have only been able to retrieve a small amount." Rahdi said he is also working with US advisers to find money Saddam paid to companies in advance of services and goods being delivered.

"None of these companies have confessed that they received money from Saddam in advance," Rahdi said.

Rahdi said that if he could have, he would have asked Saddam about the money -- and another more personal matter.

Joost Hilterman, Middle East director for the International Crisis Group, said he wanted to know the extent of collusion by Western governments and companies with Saddam's regime. Hilterman referred to Frans van Anraat, a Dutchman convicted last year of supplying Saddam with chemicals used to make mustard gas and nerve agents, as one example of Western collusion. The Iraqi army later used the chemicals against Kurds and Iranians.

But less widely known, said Hilterman, is that the US government kept a close eye on Iraq's chemical weapons as far back as 1983, even as the Reagan administration was giving Saddam a high level of assistance in its war with Iran.

Recently declassified documents reveal that although US officials criticised Iraq's use of chemical weapons against Iran, the Reagan administration sent several high-level delegations to Baghdad to reassure Saddam of continued American support in the war.

Hilterman recently completed a forthcoming book that he said will reveal details about a Clinton-era State Department review of US involvement with Saddam.