The hero of Baghdad

Baghdad We shall slaughter them all. God will barbecue their bellies in hell. We trap and beat them everywhere. I triple guarantee you, there are no American soldiers in Baghdad.’ The last declaration was made while a US army Abrams tank could be clearly seen blazing away across the Tigris. Welcome to the world of Mohammed Said al-Sahaf, who until Tuesday was Iraq’s minister of information. During the war, Sahaf was by far the most high-profile member of Saddam Hussein’s regime: television viewers from Tokyo to San Francisco became accustomed to him boasting how the Iraqi forces had inflicted stunning defeats on the ‘mercenary lackeys of the Zionist entity’. During his press conferences, up to four of them a day, he exhorted the international media not to listen to the ‘shameless, shameless propaganda’ coming from Washington and London, while describing a surreal, parallel war. A man of boundless energy, Sahaf would also regularly turn up at briefings given by colleagues such as Tariq Aziz and Tahir Yasin Ramadhan. He is a tiny man – not much over 5ft tall – and has a lugubrious face faintly resembling Walter Matthau. Sahaf appeared to be everywhere. He would often be accompanied by Uday al-Ta’aie, the director-general of the information ministry, the first port of bribes for journalists wishing to extend their Iraqi visa, and the collector of the $225 a day one paid for the privilege of being in Baghdad. Just how important a player Sahaf was in the regime, and to what extent culpable in its appalling human-rights abuse, depends on whom one talks to. He was born in 1940, and worked as an English teacher in Baghdad before joining the Baath party in his twenties. It is said that he came to the notice of the local leadership as someone worthy of nurturing when he denounced his brother for disloyalty.