Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi dictator, will have the right to vote in this week's referendum on his country’s new democratic constitution.

Farid Ayar, spokesman for the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, said that about 10,000 detainees being held on remand in US and Iraqi-run jails would be allowed to cast their ballot.

Voting will begin in Abu Ghraib prison and Camp Bucca and other Iraqi detention centres from October 13, two days before the rest of the nation is due to cast its ballot.

Abdul Hussein Hindawi, one of the eight highest-ranking officials on the Independent Electoral Commission in Iraq, said: "All non-convicted detainees have the right to vote. That includes Saddam and other former government officials. They will vote."

Mr Ayar was more cautious. Asked if Saddam would vote, he said: "If his name is on the electoral lists to be delivered by the Iraqi and American authorities, he could vote."

If that was the case "Saddam will find out for the first time how to vote", he added.

Said Arikat, a United Nations spokesman in Baghdad, confirmed that UN officials recently left 10,000 copies of the constitution at Iraqi detention centres to hand out to the inmates. "We don’t know if Saddam and other officials from his government got copies or not," Mr Arikat said.

By coincidence, the referendum on the constitution is being held three years to the day since Saddam was re-elected unopposed as President, in a referendum in which he gathered an impressive 100 per cent of the vote. Less than a year later he was deposed by the US-led invasion.

He and seven former aides are due to go on trial on October 19, charged with the 1982 murder of 143 of his citizens, said to be an act of retaliation following an attempt on his life in a Shia village north of Baghdad.

Many of the detainees who will be voting on Thursday are Sunni Arabs, who were rounded up by US and Iraqi forces on suspicion of supporting Sunni-led insurgent groups.

They join more than 15.5 million Iraqis registered to vote in Saturday's referendum on the draft constitution, that lays out the legal framework for a post-Saddam Iraq.

But the constitution has deeply divided the country along sectarian lines. Sunni insurgents today continued their efforts to disrupt the vote, killing nearly 50 people and wounding dozens in a series of bombings.

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