| Raghad Hussein, accompanied by her son and daughter and several of Saddam's defense lawyers, was greeted with chants of "Revenge for Saddam!" and "Eternity to Saddam!" A convoy of cars carrying pictures of Saddam then drove them to a palace for a ceremony hosted by the chief of the state security forces, Yahia Mohammed Abdullah Saleh, a cousin of the Yemeni president. |
With tears and sobs, former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's elder daughter joined hundreds of Baathists in the Yemeni capital on Wednesday to mark the passage of 40 days of mourning his death. Raghad Hussein, accompanied by her son and daughter and several of Saddam's defense lawyers, was greeted with chants of "Revenge for Saddam!" and "Eternity to Saddam!" on arrival at the San'a airport. A convoy of cars carrying pictures of Saddam then drove them to a palace in downtown San'a for a ceremony hosted by the chief of the state security forces, Yahia Mohammed Abdullah Saleh, who is also a cousin of the Yemeni president. Addressing the gathering, Raghad praised the insurgents in Iraq, saying that "as long as the resistance and the mujahedeen are fulfilling their duties in Iraq, the Iraqi people, without any doubt, will achieve victory."
"Saddam Hussein is the real hero and the pan-Arab leader. I am proud of him and proud of his great struggle and sacrifices," she said. Other speakers at the ceremony lashed out at the United States and Iran as well as Arab regimes they did not identify but labeled as U.S. collaborators in Iraq.