THE first wife of Saddam Hussein, their three daughters and their grandchildren fled Iraq for Syria as American troops advanced towards Baghdad, according to the ousted dictator’s son-in-law.

Jamal Mustafa, who surrendered last week, is Saddam’s last remaining son-in-law — he had the other two killed — and the most senior member of the family to have been captured so far. He was number 40, the nine of clubs, in America’s “deck of death” playing cards depicting the 55 most wanted Iraqis.

His arrest demonstrated the vice-like hold that the family will continue to exert on the Iraqi population as long as Saddam and his two sons, Uday and Qusay, are at large.

When Mustafa turned himself in to troops from his former foes in the Iraqi National Congress (INC) at their Hunting Club base in Baghdad, he showed that he had not lost any of the sense of entitlement felt by those in Saddam’s inner circle. As he passed the kitchen on his way to interrogation, he was saluted by a frightened cook who recognised him from the days when Uday held wild parties there and everyone in Saddam’s family could do as they pleased.

In his interrogation there was little acknowledgment that the regime was finished. Mustafa may have been dressed as a peasant, in a brown dishdasha robe, but his manner showed how far he had come: from Saddam’s barely literate bodyguard to the husband of Hala, his youngest daughter.

He took the worry beads and cigarette lighter from the man who had brought him in, without asking and without thanks. Then he complained. He told me the same thing he told his questioners: “I didn’t kill anyone. I am not a bad man. I am not a war criminal.”

He chain-smoked and his eyes darted back and forth. He fingered the worry beads and lied, saying he had not seen Saddam for months, even though he worked for the president’s private secretary.

By the end of last week American forces in Iraq had captured 12 of the 55 most wanted. But in Baghdad people say nobody will feel secure until Saddam and the sons he calls his “cubs” are dead or in custody.

The rumours on the street are that they and their supporters are planning a spectacular guerrilla attack for April 28, Saddam’s 66th birthday.

Mustafa’s testimony reveals some of the last actions of the family. All lived in palaces in the presidential compound, which reveal an unrivalled extravagance. In one of the many palaces owned by Uday, for example, the American military found $650m in $100 bills, all in steel boxes.

By the time the war began and bombs were falling on selected targets, Mustafa said, Saddam and his family were long gone from their homes. They had taken refuge in small, undistinguished “safe houses”.

“Before the war I rented a small house in Yarmouk (a wealthy Baghdad neighbourhood) for my family,” Mustafa said at the Hunting Club, the headquarters of Ahmed Chalabi, the INC leader, before he was handed over to the Americans. “All of us did the same.”

He continued to work and last saw Hala and their daughters, aged 10 and eight, on April 6. He left for Syria two days later with a cousin Khaled Ibrahim, a senior official with the Mukhabarat security service.

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