May 5, 2003	Monday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 2, 1424

LONDON: Iraq’s former information minister Mohammad Said al-Sahaf kept broadcasting until the last minute and then slipped out of the door, taking off his trademark black beret for the last time, turning down his collars to hide his red general’s tabs and wrapping a scarf around his head, reports said on Sunday.

As the US tanks rumbled into the Iraqi capital, the man known as “Comical Ali” haunted a radio studio in Baghdad, urging engineers to carry on broadcasting Saddam Hussein’s propaganda, even after his leader’s statue was toppled on April 9, the Sunday Telegraph newspaper reported.

The former information minister, indefatigable to the last and brave to the point of foolhardiness, refused to accept reality until the early hours of April 10, with the sound of battle raging ever closer to the studio.

Then he finally left the studio in the al-Adhamiyah district, disappearing into the night, the British newspaper’s Baghdad correspondent reported.

“Sahaf slowly removed his black beret,” Raibah Hassan, 35, the manager of the Hikmat studio and the last known person to have seen Sahaf, told the Telegraph.

Sahaf has since become a cult figure. Perhaps the most outrageous manifestation of his ironic celebrity status is the attempt by record producers to create a dance track from his most popular catch phrases.

According to the Telegraph he could be trying to strike a deal allowing him to go into exile in Egypt. A former Iraqi general working closely with Jay Garner, the retired US general overseeing Iraq, told the newspaper that he had been approached by one of Sahaf’s cousins.—dpa