THE members of Saddam Hussein’s inner circle seem little different from many criminals under interrogation. Whatever the crime, they say, someone else did it.

So it was last week with Walid Hamid Tawfiq al-Tikriti, the eight of clubs in America’s playing cards depicting the most wanted Iraqis. He was governor of Basra until the British captured the city, a former chief of operations for the Special Security Organisation (SSO), one of the most feared forces in Iraq, and a former commander of the Special Republican Guard, Saddam’s praetorian guard. Bad things might have happened under Saddam, but as far as al-Tikriti was concerned, he had nothing to do with it.

Al-Tikriti surrendered last week to the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and looked relieved not to be on the run. He walked into the former opposition group’s hunting club headquarters in Baghdad after days of negotiations, unshaven and with the look of someone who had not bathed for a while. His only condition was that his father come in with him.

The elderly man sat one chair away from him, a strange, lost-looking figure with sparse red hair and darting blue eyes. He felt it important to say that his father in turn had worked for the British when they occupied Iraq in the 1940s. Then he watched his son, not knowing when he would see him again.

“I am honest, a good officer,” al-Tikriti said. Every Iraqi nods when he hears the surname. Saddam surrounded himself with privileged men from his home town of Tikrit. They were once deeply feared, now deeply resented.

“I want to point out that I have no blood ties to Saddam, and I did not marry a woman from his blood,” al-Tikriti said. He asked for his kidney medicine and a glass of water.

His account of Saddam’s family was reminiscent of The Godfather movies. The family was riven by internecine feuds, he said, and everyone feared being caught up in them. Al-Tikriti claimed he had never wanted to be appointed commander of the SSO, the special force headed by Qusay, Saddam’s younger son and heir, because it might incite jealousy.

“When I heard Saddam Hussein had ordered me to be head of the SSO, I was afraid. I was afraid Qusay would resent me. I was afraid of Uday (Saddam’s elder son). There were always troubles between Uday and Qusay. Uday is very cruel.”

The brothers were very different, he said. “Uday was very generous, but then he might kill you. Qusay was greedy and miserable and most of the promises he made to anyone were an illusion. He never kept them.”

His father was staring with big eyes. These would have been heresies just weeks ago.

Al-Tikriti claimed he had barely had any contact with Saddam. “The last time I saw Saddam was when all of us governors were called to Baghdad before the war to show loyalty. I was asked to speak and I stood up and said all the people of Basra were loyal to him . . . Well, I thought it was true.”

Of course he never thought it was true. Basra is largely populated by the Shi’ite majority of Iraq, long oppressed by Saddam. Had al-Tikriti worried about water and food for the people of Basra, he probably would have been executed.

It is a hard thing to see evil in a deflated man who sits across the table and frets about his medicine. And yet the SSO was responsible for disappearances and summary executions; it ran its own prisons and tortured those who were held there.

Al-Tikriti knew this and was anxious. He wanted to keep talking, but the INC needed to take him to the Americans before curfew. He faces an uncertain future as an enemy prisoner of war.

Aras Karim, head of the INC’s effort to capture leading members of Saddam’s ruling Ba’ath party, was exasperated. He had brought in al-Tikriti but gained little information that would help in his quest for Saddam.

“When we capture Saddam himself, he will be surprised,” Karim said and went on to mimic an imagined Saddam in captivity. “What? You mean to tell me that so many Iraqis were killed? Are you telling me thousands were tortured and murdered? But nobody told me!” The hunt for Saddam continues.

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