Amman: A biography of the executed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is being drafted and could be released by the end of the year, his Amman-based lawyer Khalil Duleimi said on Wednesday.

"I am writing down his memoirs and the biography could be published by the end of the year or early in 2009," Duleimi told reporters. "The biography will be based mainly on 350-400 pages of memoirs that were written by the president himself in 2006 at his jail in Baghdad as well as on verbal remarks I recorded during meetings with him in 2004 and 2005," he said.

Duleimi led Saddam's defence team of about 20 prominent Arab and non-Arab lawyers, including former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark and former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas. Saddam was condemned and sentenced to death by a controversial Iraqi court which found him and other top aides guilty of killing thousands of Shia Iraqis at the village of Dujail in 1982.

His execution by the Iraqi Shia-led government on Dec 30, 2006 that coincided with key Muslim festivities drew severe criticism from the Sunni-dominated Arab and Islamic worlds. "The late president knew since he was arrested that he was going to be executed and hence he was keen to write his memoirs," Duleimi said.

"The biography may come in three parts - the first includes his written memoirs, the second includes his verbal memoirs and the third will contain his unpublished poems," Duleimi said. He pointed out that he was not certain that his memoirs did not leak to the Americans, because his US guards prevented the delivery of any messages from the executed Iraqi leader until 2006, when they allowed me to pick up between 350 and 400 pages of hand-written memoirs from him.

"Before that, all memoirs depended on verbal utterances he made in my presence," Duleimi said, refusing to go into further details.

Source : IANS