[Al Arabiya Latest] In his final days, ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein complained of torture and severe "beatings" as well sleep deprivation in a series of letters penned during his time in American captivity, press reports said on Tuesday.
The handwritten letters, obtained by the New York Daily News, poured out complaints of mental and physical abuse by the "detention gang" of the United States military jailers.
In one letter Hussein wrote: "not a single part of my body was spared of the severe harm inflicted by the detention gang," adding, "some of the traces are still visible on my body."
Hussein described his detention center -- believed to be inside Baghdad International Airport -- as a nightmarish chamber where sleepless nights echoed the screams of prisoners being tortured.
"My opportunity to sleep in this place is limited and almost scarce," Saddam wrote. "I don't think there is anyone with a sensitive and humanitarian heart who can sleep amidst the screams of the tortured and the many blows of the doors and the squeaking sounds of the chairs."
In one letter written on Christmas day 2003, the former Iraqi leader claimed that in the past three days, the "total hours of sleep did not exceed four to five hours." |