Saddam is treated with the same vicelike grip that exists for any inmate on death row in America. Officially now under the legal authority of the new Iraqi interim government, he is in reality still a prisoner of the United States. But he has already won one tonsorial battle. His captors wanted to shave off his beard.
“Saddam convinced them his beard is a sign of mourning for his two sons. Tradition demands he must go unshaven for at least a year. Yasser Arafat, an old friend of Saddam’s, maintains a close beard out of mourning for the Palestinian people,” said Alice Baya’a, an expert on Saddam’s life.
But they will control his every movement outside the time he meets with his defense team for his appearances in court. They will watch over him until the moment he is sentenced. But that would be at least two years away (it would finally open in 2006). Saddam also plans to delay matters by calling as witnesses presidents and prime ministers. The names of George Bush, Tony Blair, and Vladimir Putin appear on the list he has given his Iraqi prosecutors.
By July 2004, six hundred lawyers had already offered to defend him. For them it was a golden opportunity to showcase their talents. Twenty were selected by his family. None have been allowed to visit him in captivity—let alone enter his monastic quarters.
His iron bed is bolted to the floor. The bedding is standard U.S. military prison issue, a long way from the years Saddam slept between silk sheets purchased from Harrods of London. His pillows then were filled with the finest of feathers from rare birds shot by his guards in the marshlands of southern Iraq.
Saddam’s quarters are in a storeroom. Once his retinue of servants used it to keep vats of fragrant oils for perfuming Saddam’s bathwater. Other vats were reserved for masseuses to knead his body. Now his toiletries consist of a weekly bar of supermarket soap, a sponge, and a tube of toothpaste. But he has returned to the days of his childhood for his oral hygiene. He brushes his teeth in the Arab fashion with a stick of miswak, a hardwood.
In an alcove in his bathroom is a ceiling shower and a European-style toilet bolted across the original hole over which his servants once squatted. A metal washbasin and two towels complete the facilities. Like any cheap hotel, the towels are changed once a week. The toilet paper is the kind sold in any Baghdad marketplace.
When his breakfast arrives—his staple diet is yogurt, toast, and weak tea served on the same cheap plates his guards eat off—the guards treat him with respect. They call him “President Saddam,” the only title he will respond to. While he uses airline-style plastic cutlery to eat with, they stand watch at the door. The guards are unarmed—a precaution in the unlikely event Saddam would attempt to grab a weapon. A high-ranking British intelligence officer who has firsthand knowledge of Saddam’s conditions said (to the author): “The psychiatrists have ruled out that Saddam has suicidal tendencies. But he can be highly temperamental and abusive. And he can be very confrontational if his demands are not met.”
Those demands have included international law books. There were growing signs that Saddam, like Slobadan Milosovich, plans to star in his own defense.
“He is consumed by the idea he can cause huge damage to President Bush and Tony Blair. When he talks about them, his eyes mist over and he hates them with a passion which is awesome,” said the British intelligence officer.
Each day follows the same pattern. Saddam has a noonday lunch—Arab-style food cooked by an Iraqi specially recruited by the Coalition. There is a food taster who samples every dish before it is brought to Saddam. Drinking water comes from sealed bottles—part of consignments flown in from the United States for its troops.
Twice a day, after lunch and late afternoon, Saddam is taken out to a small courtyard to exercise. He often wears a T-shirt and a pair of military shorts—far from the days he had customized underwear of the finest Egyptian cotton. Those were bought by the box load from a New York store. In a corner of the yard is a water tap. The first thing Saddam does is to turn on the tap. The sound of flowing water has always been a reminder for him that, in a land parched by nature, he could always command water. In his palaces there were magnificent tumbling waterfalls and the sound of water was pumped into his office. As he paces the courtyard, the water is a mere trickle. When his exercise time is up, the tap is turned off.
