She has been seen in public once since her father’s execution, sporting Chanel sunglasses and a Socialist Party megaphone.

A decade ago Saddam Hussein’s eldest daughter, Raghad, was a privileged member of the Baathist aristocracy, her every whim fulfilled. Now living in comfortable exile in Jordan, she has been elevated to the de facto headship of the family.

Raghad, 39 and a mother of five, is described by one close friend as “quick-tempered’ and has earned the nickname “Little Saddam”. She is tall and slim, has dyed blonde hair and is an avid shopper in Amman’s upmarket boutiques on the aptly named Wakalat (Label) Street. Her place of exile is Amman’s richest hill-top suburb Abdoun, among Jordan’s old money and nouveaux riches. Her two-story sandstone villa, with palm trees and immaculately pruned bushes, is between the homes of a former Jordanian Prime Minister and a retired head of intelligence.

She lives with her 15-year-old son Saddam — said to bear a striking resemblance to his grandfather — and her youngest daughter, 12. Her three other children — including her eldest son, Ali — live in Qatar with Saddam’s widow, Sajida. But for a week her house has been a grim scene as she devoted herself to greeting guests and taking condolence calls.

Rasha Oudeh, Raghad’s office manager, said that her boss learnt that her father’s execution was imminent at about 9am on December 29, the eve of the Muslim festival Eid al-Adha (Feast of the Sacrifice). Accompanied by her son Saddam, her daughter, her sister’s family and a few Iraqi female friends, they waited until 5.30am Jordanian time, when the death was announced on Arabic satellite television, Ms Oudeh told The Times.

“They read the Koran a lot. They were asking Allah to give him [Saddam] the power to get through these minutes,” she said. “There were just hot tears, like you cry when you know you can’t do anything to help.”

Ms Oudeh said that one of the children comforted Raghad with the words: “Don’t cry, because your father is Saddam Hussein.” Her sister, Rana, left at 7am. Raghad went to bed at 7.15am. Waking four hours later, Raghad turned on the television and was shocked to see the “official” heavily edited execution footage.

“She was alone, she had just woken up. Yesterday she told me, ‘Whenever I sit down for a minute, I keep having flashbacks, those execution pictures keep coming back to me.’ ”

Raghad has not, her aides insist, seen or asked to see the unofficial mobile-phone footage that records the chaotic moments of her father’s death.

Raghad rarely speaks in public or to the media, acutely conscious of the unwritten deal with her Jordanian hosts that she would be granted asylum so long as she remained quiet and politically inactive. She and Rana remain fiercely loyal to their dead father, even though both their husbands, Hussein Kamel and Saddam Kamel, were killed by his regime after they defected then unwisely returned in 1996.

King Abdullah II, a fellow Sunni, granted the women refuge when they fled Syria in mid-2003, shortly after Saddam’s regime fell and their brothers Uday and Qusay were killed in a shootout with US troops in Mosul.

However, Raghad broke her silence on Monday this week, briefly attending a rally in central Amman. A megaphone was thrust into her hand and she defied aides’ advice to address 500 pro-Saddam demonstrators. “God bless you, and I thank you for honouring Saddam the martyr,” she said.

Grateful to the Jordanian regime for taking them in and — supporters insist in the face of considerable scepticism — providing their only means of financial support, the families also bask in the pro-Saddam feelings of many Jordanians from all classes.

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