Saddam Daughter Blames Betrayal For Baghdad Fall
Raghad arrived in the Jordanian capital with her sister Rana and their nine children Thursday, July 31, after being granted refuge.
Describing the hours leading up to the abrupt end of her father’s 24-year rule, Raghad said she spent them in Baghdad’s posh Mansur district with Rana and their children, knowing it was “all over.”
“I had to go to my sister to tell her that the situation has now ended completely, but she did not believe that all was lost.”
She told the Dubai-based channel that her father sent a car with a security brigade to move them and their children.
“We left Baghdad. We met our mother (Sajidah) a few hours later. They placed us in a house in the extreme suburbs of Baghdad. Then, the situation was out of control,” she said.
She also asserted that the first U.S. missile strike on Baghdad targeted her two farms, where the U.S. intelligence believed that a key meeting for the Iraqi leadership was being held.
“Rockets were falling all over the place, sometimes about 50 meters from where we were. Because of the intensity of the bombing, the house was shaking,” Raghad said.
“I told my mother also that everything is lost. We are all women together, and we have to decide what to do next,” she said, adding that her mother advised them to split up.
Raghad also had harsh words for Barzan, Watban and Sabaawi al-Tikriti, her father’s three half-brothers and former top officials, accusing them of hatching plots against herself and her brothers, but most of all against her late husband.
Watban and Barzan are now both in U.S. custody.
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