Saadam's capture arranged -- newspaper

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Dec. 17 (UPI) -- One of Saddam Hussein's companions had drugged the former Iraqi dictator to facilitate his weekend capture by U.S. forces, a Beirut newspaper said.

The mass-circulation daily An-Nahar quoted informed sources in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit as saying the former president could not have been taken alive unless he was sedated and his pacification was arranged with U.S. forces.

The sources said five men, including three bodyguards and two cooks, were with Saddam in the last days before his capture and one of them must have put a drug in his food to sedate him before calling in the U.S. troops to arrest him.

Saddam, the sources said, is known to be physically strong and would have resisted his capture otherwise.

Saddam's daughter, Raghd, claimed in an interview with the Dubai-based al-Arabiya satellite television Tuesday her father, who looked haggard and disheveled, was sedated at the time of his capture.

The Tikrit sources suspected Ezzedine Mohammed Hassan al-Majid of being the one who arranged the deal with Saddam's companions.

Ezzedine al-Majid, who lives in London, is the cousin of Hussein Kamel, Saddam's son-in law, whom the Iraqi dictator killed when Kamel returned to Baghdad after fleeing to Jordan in 1996.