LONDON, Dec 19: Saddam Hussein has for the first time recounted the moment of his capture two years ago in an ‘interview’ conducted via his lawyer, British newspaper The Sun said on Monday.

“The once feared despot broke his silence in an interview with The Sun from his cell,” the tabloid title said, adding that the former Iraqi ruler was speaking through his lawyer, former US attorney general Ramsey Clark.

Mr Clark told the paper that before Saddam was cornered by US troops in a cramped underground hideout near his home town Tikrit on Dec 13, 2003, he had been ‘moving every day to a different location, organizing the insurgents’.

When captured, Saddam Hussein had been about to flee the scene by motorbike, the paper said.

“I came out of the house where I was hiding by this hole. I went through the trap door. I went through the hole, through the tunnel then lost consciousness,” Saddam said, adding: “I believe I was betrayed. I have been set up.”

Mr Clark said Saddam ‘thinks he was gassed in the tunnel’.

“He tried to get to the exit of the tunnel. But he did not have time to get away. He told us he spent maybe minutes in this tunnel, not hours or days,” Mr Clark added.

—AFP