He may be the last of the Husseins, the sole surviving son of the hanged dictator and the last hope for his dynasty. If, indeed, he exists.

The fate of Saddam’s other children has been well documented: Qusay and Uday were killed by US troops and his daughters Raghad, Rana and Hala are in exile in Jordan and Lebanon. But that of Ali, Saddam’s reputed youngest son, remains a mystery.

Over the years, Ali’s name has surfaced again and again as Saddam’s only son by his second wife, Samira Shahbandar. Yet he remains elusive. For a week after the death of his supposed half-brothers in 2003, I scoured Baghdad for traces of the princeling. The search rendered not a single convincing fact.

During Saddam’s reign, Iraqi state media had nothing to say on Ali, allegedly under duress from their boss, Uday, who had never forgiven his father for taking a second wife. But the editors I spoke to said that they would have been hard-pressed to say anything as they knew nothing about the boy.

Not one photograph of the boy exists; there is no birthdate or consensus on his age.

Yusuf, a former member of Saddam’s security apparatus, swore that his son used to work out at a gym that Ali used. But the gym manager told us that his client had been another Ali, Ali Khairallah, son of one of Saddam’s cousins. Saad and Osama, well-connected Baath-ists, swore that they had met Ali at an auction for expensive cars. But the descriptions they gave did not tally: one described him as a boy, the other as being tall and aged 20.

The dean of Baghdad College, where Uday and Qusay were educated, betrayed a hint of relief when he said that Ali had not studied there. Uday and Qusay had not been model pupils. “So many people say they saw Ali with bodyguards,” Sarmed Mahmoud Fawzi said. “Personally I don’t believe.”

Neither does Raghad Saddam Hussein, Saddam’s oldest daughter, who said that people were confusing him with her own son, Ali. Saddam’s former valet also dismissed the stories, although Samira Shahbandar spoke lovingly of her son in an apparent interview in 2003.

Sceptics blame Iraq’s rumour mill. “No one really knows the truth,” Nada Shawkat, a newspaper editor said. “Iraq is a country of rumours. But this was the biggest one of all.”

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