BAGHDAD, Sept 9: British troops arrested a tribal chief in southern Iraq on Monday night, triggering rumours that he had been detained on suspicion of sheltering former president Saddam Hussein.

The troops also searched the leader’s residence and took away certain objects and some money.

Sabah al Maliki, who heads the Bani Malek tribe, was taken from his home in the Qorna district, 80 kilometres north of Basra, said tribe member Majed al Maliki.

About 100 Bani Maliki men demonstrated outside British forces’ headquarters in Basra on Tuesday demanding the chieftain be freed.

“British officers promised to free him today. If they don’t keep their promise we will no longer use peaceful means. We will ask members of the tribe to pull out from the security forces and stop all cooperation with the coalition,” warned Majed al Maliki.

A spokesman for the multinational division in southeastern Iraq said he could confirm that a prominent local figure had been arrested. But he added: “There was nothing to suggest that he had been harbouring Saddam Hussein.”

“We’re not able to confirm the identity of the person arrested at this time,” the spokesman, from the British command in Basra, said.

The senior official in Baghdad said he could not comment on the report, but added “if we knew where he (Saddam) was we would get him, we would find him”.

“How relatively close we’ve been in the past is a judgment we simply cannot make. We have not caught him yet. We continue to search for him every minute of every day,” he said.

—AFP