Frankfurt, Sept 29: Video footage showing Saddam Hussein at his favorite fishing spot and giving a television address from a Baghdad villa during the US-led attack was aired on German TV. The footage shown yesterday, some of it previously unreleased, comes from the archive of Saad Ashim, who claims to have served as the deposed president's personal cameraman for a decade. It included material from the mid-1980s up to the former Iraqi President's April 6 appearance before a crowd of cheering Iraqis in downtown Baghdad, days before US forces entered the city.
"At that point, we were all very said," Ashim, who was pictured in the crowd holding a camera, told the television network. "We knew that the end of the regime was near." Ashim showed the TV station several older photos of him on the job following Saddam, including one of the two of them together.
Ashim also claimed to have filmed Saddam's first TV address during the war, where the former President, wearing glasses, stood before a blue backdrop at a podium reading from a prepared speech. "We filmed that at 7:00 in the morning. It wasn't in a bunker, but in a normal house in the city (Baghdad)," Ashim said. "He was wearing his glasses because his speech was written by hand and not typed in the usual large letters." Bureau Report