Baghdad: Former President Saddam Hussein is to be moved at the start of July to a new jail with Iraqi guards and limited support from the US-led military, Iraq's interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said today (June 27, 2004).

"He will be kept by Iraqis ... We may ask a multinational force to be involved in the protection of the outside, of the outskirts of the prison, but definitely he will be under the jurisdiction of Iraq," he said.

"You will see him move and you will know where he is," Allawi told reporters.

A senior official of the US-led coalition said last week that Iraq would take legal custody of Saddam and nine other high-profile prisoners soon after the country gained sovereignty on June 30, but coalition jailers would continue to guard them.

Allawi, however, appeared convinced he had the manpower to hold the ex-President securely. "We have the forces, we have the judicial system," he said.

"He is going to court and it will be a just trial unlike the trials he gave for the Iraqi people ... and he will face whatever the Iraqi judicial system decides."

The Premier declined to specify whether Saddam would receive the death penalty.

"I am going to endorse what the judicial system decides," Allawi said.

"They are deliberating to see whether they will restore capital punishment or not ... Once they decide, whatever their decision, I will be signing it."