The top US administrator in Iraq, Paul L. Bremer escaped unharmed when his convoy struck an explosive device and came under fire in the capital of Baghdad on December 6, according to NBC News.
The station said Thursday that Bremer was returning from the Baghdad airport when his convoy ran into an explosive device and his personal armored vehicle took small arms fire.
The convoy managed to speed away and no one was hurt in the incident, the report added.
The incident, which took place on the same day US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld arrived in Baghdad, was not reported to the media by Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), the report further said.
Meanwhile, the eldest daughter of Saddam, Raghad Hussein, says if her father is to be tried, it should be before an international court, and claims he had been drugged on the day he was captured.
In her first on-camera interview, given to CNN, since the ousted Iraqi leader was caught, Raghad said she disagrees with plans to try Saddam before an Iraqi court.
"Of course I don't believe he'll receive a fair trial because it will be conducted by an unrecognized party," she said. "The interim government is not recognized internationally, nor in the Arab world. It has not been recognized by anyone, so by what right will the trial proceed?
"I want a fair trial under international supervision, and we have a right as his daughters to appoint an attorney to defend him."
She also alleged that her father, as seen in videotape footage after American forces found him hiding near Tikrit, had been drugged. Raghad said the man shown on television was not the father she knew.
"Anyone with insight could tell from the first instance that my father was not fully conscious," she said. "As a daughter, I told them from the start, my father is drugged. I am 100 percent convinced."
"My personal expectation is that one of the people he relied on must have put something in his food, or that there is a military technique of some sort or a gas that can drug a person. Because I know my father and he would never surrender."
Raghad said she initially learned of her father's arrest from television news coverage that began as she was watching a soap opera.
She watched for several hours in disbelief, she said, waiting for someone to tell her the news was not true.
When she finally accepted the truth, the daughter told CNN, she sat down on the floor and cried.
"The effect of the TV shots were horrific," she said of the first images that showed her father looking bewildered. "It was really horrific, painful and very cruel, it wounded me very deeply."
Asked about reports that her father told US troops when he emerged, "I am Saddam Hussein, president of Iraq, and I want to negotiate," Raghad said she didn't believe it.
"That is what they said. But whoever saw it and heard it ... If it were true, why didn't they film the capture, as they claimed it had happened in the media? It was an event they had been waiting for a long time, they supposedly should have filmed it from the very beginning."
She said her father was known for his "courage and steadfastness."
"I witnessed through my years his strength, his endurance through all the difficult periods he went through. He was always proud and dignified and his courage was well known, even to his enemies."
Raghad said she hopes to visit her father at some point, if it is legally possible. (Albawaba.com)
© 2003 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
