I'm ready to die: Saddam

LONDON: Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has reportedly told one of his lawyers that he is not scared of execution and is ready to die, a British daily reported on Sunday.

"I am ready to die," Saddam was quoted as saying by the Sunday Times during an interview to his lawyer and confidant Bushra Khalil in his Baghdad prison.

"I am not scared of execution," he said. Saddam is expected to return to court on Monday for resumption of a trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity that has lasted almost seven months.

Khalil, a Lebanese lawyer in her forties and now the only woman Saddam meets, reportedly spoke to him for nearly five hours, mostly about international politics and even a little on poetry.

He confided that he had no fear of death and seemed to have accepted his fate. "I took the decision to die the day I tried to assassinate Abdel Karim Qasim," he said, referring to a botched coup against a former leader that forced him to flee the country in 1959. In Iraq, hanging is the customary form of capital punishment.

Saddam seemed fit and well. "I get on very well with my American bodyguards," he said. "They are changed frequently but we get to know each other, I like them and we become friends."