LONDON, May 21: Rubbing salt in the wounds caused by publishing prison photographs of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in underclothing, a British tabloid on Saturday released another shot of Iraq’s ex-president as the US military launched an investigation into how the pictures got out. The Sun newspaper — Britain’s best-selling daily — printed a further photograph of Saddam, viewed through a coil of barbed wire, wearing a long white tunic-like shirt and walking, seemingly in conversation with someone or possibly praying.

That followed Friday’s front-page cover of a bare-chested Saddam standing in his underwear with the headline, “Tyrant in his pants”. The Sun also quoted an unidentified “senior British military source” as saying that the top brass at the British defence ministry and the US Pentagon were secretly pleased by the media exposure.

While the Pentagon publicly expressed anger about the pictures, “commanders on the ground will be secretly quite pleased. It is a morale blow to the resistance to see their great leader so humbled,” the source said, according to the Sun. The pictures, which also ran in the New York Post, another tabloid owned by Australian-born media mogul Rupert Murdoch, immediately drew protests from human rights groups and Muslim groups, who complained they violated the Geneva Convention over the treatment of prisoners.

In Baghdad, Sunni leaders called the photos ‘humiliating’. “There are limits that should not be overstepped whoever the person and whatever his past,” said Mohammad Ali Mashhadani.

Speaking to reporters on Friday, President Bush did not condemn the photographs and said he doubted they would stoke the anger of Iraqi insurgents.

“I don’t think a photo inspires murders,” Mr Bush said. Billed as a world exclusive, the Sun said it got the pictures from American military sources.

Saturday’s edition also included a photo of the 68-year- old former Iraqi leader washing his clothes by hand in a bucket. The Sun’s managing editor, Graham Dudman, defended the paper’s decision to run the photos of Saddam, whom he compared with Germany’s Nazi leader.

“He’s not been mistreated. He’s washing his trousers. This is a modern-day Adolf Hitler. Please don’t ask us to feel sorry for him”, Mr Dudman said in a statement. The paper also ran photos of other detainees, including Saddam’s cousin Ali Hassan al Majid, known as “Chemical Ali”.

He was pictured holding a towel and apparently struggling to get up from a chair, using a walking stick. The tabloid also showed a photo of Dr Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, a US-educated microbiologist dubbed “Mrs Anthrax” and “Chemical Sally” for her purported involvement with Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction programme.—AFP