Saddam Hussein was betrayed by a relative who was his personal bodyguard and who led US troops to the ousted Iraqi leader's hideout after drugging him, a Jordanian newspaper reported, quoting a source close to the US-led coalition in Iraq.  

"A source close to the occupation forces ... revealed that the one who informed on Saddam, betrayed him and handed him over to the American forces is his relative, General Mohammed Ibrahim Omar al-Muslit," Al-Arab Al-Yawm daily said Thursday from Baghdad.

Muslit was Saddam's "personal bodyguard and companion throughout the period of his disappearance as he moved from one hideout to another," the report said.

According to the source, Muslit was the link between the former Iraqi president and his relatives and knew of his various hideouts.

He informed some of his relatives of his plans to betray Saddam and "contacted the Americans through one relative he trusted," the newspaper said.

They agreed on a plan by which Muslit had "to drug the Iraqi president ... to guarantee his capture alive, without giving him a chance to resist or to escape from the trap that was laid out for him," the report said.

The officer "succeeded in drugging Saddam in his hideout," the report added.

There was no independent confirmation of the report.

The US Army has not identified the person who provided the tip-off on Saddam, who was captured Saturday near his hometown of Tikrit, in northern Iraq.

The following day the commander of the army's 4th Infantry Division responsible for nabbing Saddam said he had been betrayed by a family close to him.

"There were a lot of people involved in this ... as we continued to chat to to people we got more and more on a family that was considered close to Saddam Hussein," Major General Raymond Odierno said.

"Finally we got the ultimate information from one of the individuals," he said, refusing to identify him.

(China Daily December 19, 2003)