Hussein’s Daughter Wants an International Court to Try Him

A daughter of Saddam Hussein called Tuesday for an international court to try her father and said her family would arrange for a lawyer for him. But President Bush reiterated his view that the trial should be held in Iraq and said Hussein deserved to be executed.

In an interview on Al Arabiya television, Raghad Saddam Hussein said her father appeared sedated in footage released by the U.S. after his capture.

“Every honest person who knows Saddam knows that he is firm and powerful,” she said. “Saddam was tranquilized.”

“He would be a lion even when caged,” said Raghad Hussein, who lives with her sister Rana in Jordan, where they were granted asylum last summer. “We demand a fair and legal trial, not one held by the Governing Council, which was appointed by the occupier. It should be fair and international.”

Raghad Hussein said an attorney would try to contact her father, whose exact whereabouts have not been disclosed. U.S. authorities say they are interrogating him at a secure location.

A senior U.S. official said Tuesday that Saddam Hussein had told officials during his first day in captivity that he did not have any role in the insurgency and that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday characterized Hussein as “resigned,” and he sharply rejected criticism that the U.S. had violated international rules on prisoners of war by showing video of the deposed leader.

“If lives can be saved by physical proof that that man is off the street, out of commission, never to return, then we opt for saving lives. And in no way can that be considered even up on the edge of the Geneva Convention protections,” he snapped.

Meanwhile, the White House expressed doubt that the United Nations’ involvement would be necessary in any trial of Hussein.

In an interview with ABC News, Bush said, “Let’s just see what penalty he gets, but I think he ought to receive the ultimate penalty.” He said Hussein “is a torturer, a murderer, and they had rape rooms, and this is a disgusting tyrant who deserves justice, the ultimate justice. But that will be decided not by the president of the United States, but by the citizens of Iraq.”