A high-ranking defector from Iraq's army, Najib al-Salihi, said Sunday that he was the victim of unspecified "immoral blackmail" by President Saddam Hussein.
Salihi said he "received from the criminal Saddam a videocassette that attacks the honor of our families that are under his tutelage in Iraq," followed by "direct threats in a telephone call."
The defected general denounced the "well-known baseness of the stratagems" of Saddam, which Salihi said were intended to "make him submit" and push him into "leaving the path of the struggle to save the Iraqi people."
Salihi, 48, was a commander of an Iraqi division until 1995, when he defected to Jordan and joined the Iraqi opposition, he told AFP.
In 1998, Salihi published "The Earthquake," in which he gave details on the 1991 Gulf War and the uprising that followed it in Iraq – AMMAN (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
