Monday 16th April, 2007
**Is Saddam alive and well?
**
New York, Apr.12 : A Phoenix-based agent has claimed that he has forensic evidence of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein being “alive and well”, and his execution being faked on December 30, 2006.
David Hans Schmidt was quoted by the New York Daily News as saying that he had been hired by an unnamed “foreign head of state,” whose intelligence service believes Saddam “is living in a foreign country under an assumed name.”
Schmidt says he is ready to reveal Saddam’s whereabouts, but warns that anyone venturing out to the new address should be well guarded.
German forensic pathologist Dieter Buhmann has asserted that, based on his analysis of 450 images, Saddam had at least three doubles to confuse his enemies, lending credence to the skeptic view that the dictator may have escaped the gallows.
Officials at the Iraqi Embassy in Washington D.C. had no immediate comment on claims that Saddam is at large, but a Pentagon spokesman called the assertion “preposterous.”
Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney (Ret.), an Iran Policy Committee member, allowed that “anything’s possible in the Middle East, but this one’s a reach.”
Nimrod Raphaeli, a senior analyst with the Middle East Media Research Institute, scoffed: “The people who took part in the execution were all Shiites. They were fanatics who wanted revenge. They were screaming with joy. They would not let him go, even if he offered them his weight in gold.”
Schmidt, who’s taking bids, insists that his “evidence” is “undeniable”.