Unrepentant as he is flown out

Saddam Hussein was today being interrogated at a secret American camp in Qatar where he was flown within 24 hours of his dramatic capture by US forces.

After being apprehended in a hole beneath a mud hut near his home town of Tikrit, the 66-yearold former dictator was taken first to a military base and then by helicopter to Baghdad International Airport.

In an extraordinary moment of drama at the airport, he was confronted by four members of Iraq's governing council.

Offered the chance to see him through a window, they demanded that they speak to him - and reported the first defiant words from the man who brought decades of terror to their country.

After being grilled for about half an hour, a "tired and haggard" Saddam was unrepentant, justifying his actions in language littered with obscenities.

Mowaffak Rubaie, a member of the council imprisoned by the regime in 1979, said Saddam showed "no regret or remorse", adding: "He remains the street thug he always was."

Another senior Shi'ite Muslim politician, Adel Abdel-Mehdi, said Saddam was "unrepentant and defiant. He was not at all apologetic. He just made excuses for his crimes".

In one exchange, Saddam was asked about the estimated 400,000 bodies found in mass graves since his downfall.

He replied: "Ask their families. They were thieves and they ran away from the bat t lefields with Iran and from the battlefields of Kuwait."

He also blamed Iran for the

chemical weapons attack that killed around 5,000 Kurds in the northern Iraqi town of Halabja in 1988.

Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi described the former tyrant as "quite lucid".

Mr Chalabi went on: "He had command of his faculties. He would not apologise to the Iraqi people. He did not deny any of the crimes he was confronted with. He tried to justify them."

He said Saddam hinted he was responsible for the wave of attacks on US forces since he was forced underground.

He added: "He was not remorseful at all. It was clear he was a complete narcissist who was incapable of showing remorse or sympathy-to other human beings." Adnan Pachachi, the foreign minister of Iraq before Saddam seized power, said: "He tried to justify his crimes by saying he was just but firm ruler."

Saddam was today officially classified as a prisoner of war with the protection of the Geneva Convention, American defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld said.

US interrogators were being flown to Qatar today to begin their questioning.

They will quiz Saddam on who is co-ordinating the resistance, where the weapons of mass destruction they are convinced exist are hidden, and what links, if any, he had to the September 11 terror attacks. Despite Saddam's capture, however, the atmosphere in Baghdad remained tense.

Guns were fired throughout the night in celebration at the news that the dictator could never return. But this morning, in a reminder that danger still lurks in Iraq, a series of car bombs exploded in what were clearly coordinated attacks.

Outside the city nine people died in an explosion outside a police station, while a second car bomb detonated close to another police station in the city, and at a third another car bomb was defused.

Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari said: "The war is not over. These are desperate attacks by his supporters. This is a message saying they are still alive."