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Press play for the voice of Saddam 

Ed O'Loughlin reports

05/07/03: (Sydney Morning Herald) A tired-sounding voice calls on Iraq's people to stand together in a new underground war against the occupying forces.

"I don't want to talk in details about the occupation and why and how, and I am going to focus instead on how to face these invaders and kick them out from Iraq," it says, pausing to cough.

"... It sounds as if we have to go back to the secret style of struggle that we began our life with. Through this secret means, I am talking to you from inside Great Iraq and I say to you, the main task for you, Arab and Kurd, Shia and Sunni, Muslim and Christian and the whole Iraqi people of all religions, your main task is to kick the enemy out from our country."

The Herald played the tape, allegedly recorded two days ago, to more than a dozen Iraqis from various walks of life, including a judge, a law professor and a former acquaintance of Saddam in exile. The overwhelming opinion was that the voice and rhetoric were very similar, or identical, to those of Saddam.

"Certainly it's him," said a judge from a Baghdad criminal court, who asked not to be named. "I am 100 per cent certain. I deal with physical evidence all the time."

Two men gave the tape to the Herald on Monday, only after they failed to deliver it to correspondents for the Arab TV station Al-Jazeera.

Baghdad is still without effective administrative authorities, and at this point there is no way of verifying whether the voice is Saddam's.

"We are not experts," said Talib al Shar'aa, a law professor at Baghdad University. "We have known many many similar voices to Saddam Hussein to appear in the past few years, and similar faces as well.

"But this speech sounded very realistically like Saddam Hussein. This is the first time he has admitted the reality of the occupation. He focuses on the word occupation, and he admits to being in hiding and working by secret means. And it sounds to me like this speech is new because he mentioned the Iraqi people celebrating his birthday on April 28, 2003."

Su'ad Jasim, a native of Tikrit, Saddam's home town, said she clearly recognised the accent on the tape as that of her own area.

Two of the groups the Herald played the tape to listened to it sitting outside in their gardens. On both occasions, neighbours came to the fence to ask what radio channel Saddam was making his speech on.

The two men who had the tape approached the Herald after spotting our clearly marked press car near the Palestine Hotel on Monday. One of the men, who seemed nervous, came and asked for directions to the offices of Al Jazeera or Al Arabiya TV while his companion waited behind the wheel of a taxi.

When he was directed to the main television base in the Palestine Hotel - guarded by a security cordon of United States troops - he appeared to lose heart and returned to the car.

The Herald's interpreter, Kifah Hameed Mehdi, went after him to ask why he wanted to talk to the media and the driver of the car handed over a tape, saying it was a copy of Saddam's most recent speech, made that morning.

As an Iraqi, Mr Mehdi should make sure it was broadcast for the sake of Iraq, the men said, before driving hurriedly away.

Mr Mehdi said the men spoke with the distinctive accents of Saddam's Tikrit region.

The voice on the tape refers several times to the post-Baath occupation, and accuses US forces of looting the Iraqi National Museum.

It also refers to the Iraqi people celebrating Saddam's birthday - possibly a reference to US claims that a crowd of demonstrators fired on by US soldiers in Falluja, killing 15, were celebrating the birthday.

The voice on the tape speaks of previous attempts to communicate with the Iraqi people.

"I addressed some messages before, many messages before," it says. "Some of them were by my voice and some were addressed to the mass media, but we know and you know very well the mass media in the whole world is controlled by the Zionists, and especially by their headquarters in the White House."

Some, however, were sceptical.

"We know the ability of the West to change voices and to mislead people," said Fellah Hameed, a sports instructor. "I can't say it's him but maybe that's because it's a next-generation tape. I'm not convinced."

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