Saddam's body in home town for burial

Baghdad, Dec 31: The body of Saddam Hussein was taken to hishome town of Tikrit after his execution and his family said theexecuted former Iraqi leader would be buried in the Sunni insurgentstronghold of Ramadi.

''After the family received the will of the martyred presidentfrom lawyers who last met him where he asked to be buried either inAwja or Ramadi ... it was decided to bury him in the city of Ramadi,''a family statement received by Reuters said.

The statement did not say when he would be buried. It is Muslim practice to bury the dead within the day.

Burying Saddam in Ramadi, 110 km (70 miles) west of Baghdad,instead of Awja close to where he was born, was due to ''private familyreasons and the prevailing security situation'' in Iraq, the statementadded.

Saddam's sons, Uday and Qusay, were buried in the family shrine atAwja after US troops killed them in mid-2003. Saddam himself wascaptured nearby at the end of that year.

Defence lawyer Bushra al-Khalil said Saddam's body was flown in aUS military aircraft to Tikrit. A senior government source told Reutersthe transfer had been made by road. A US military spokesman declinedcomment.

Yahya al-Atawi, a senior Sunni Muslim cleric in Tikrit, toldReuters by telephone from the city 180 km (110 miles) north of Baghdadthat the head of Saddam's Albu Nasir tribe, Ali al-Nida, had receivedthe body.

Saddam's daughter, Raghd, in exile in Jordan, had earlier askedfor her father's body to be flown to Yemen for a temporary burial thereuntil it can be transferred back to Iraq for a proper family ceremony.

An adviser to Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had earliersaid the government wanted Saddam, 69, to be buried in a secretlocation in Iraq to prevent the site becoming a place of pilgrimage forrebels.

US troops are on alert for trouble from insurgents among Saddam's Sunni minority.

Reuters

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