Rubbing salt in the wounds caused by publishing prison photographs of a half-naked Saddam Hussein, a British tabloid Saturday released another shot of Iraq's ex-dictator as the US military launched an investigation into how the pictures got out. The Sun newspaper - Britain's best-selling daily - printed a further photograph of Saddam, viewed through a coil of barbed wire, wearing a long white tunic-like shirt and walking, seemingly in conversation with someone or possibly praying. That followed Friday's front-page cover of a bare-chested Saddam standing in his underwear with the headline "Tyrant's in his pants," using the British term for underwear briefs.
The Sun also quoted an unidentified "senior British military source" as saying that the top brass at the British defence ministry and the US Pentagon were secretly pleased by the media exposure.
While the Pentagon publicly expressed anger about the pictures, "commanders on the ground will be secretly quite pleased. It is a morale blow to the resistance to see their great leader so humbled," the source said, according to the Sun.
The pictures, which also ran in the New York Post, another tabloid owned by Australian-born media mogul Rupert Murdoch, immediately drew protests from human rights groups and Muslim groups, who complained they violated the Geneva Convention over the treatment of prisoners.
In Baghdad, Sunni Muslim clerics called the photos "humiliating."
The Sun on Saturday headlined "Bush probes Saddam's pants", in an irreverant play on US President George W. Bush's pledge on Friday "to get to the bottom of the investigation," in the words of a White House spokesman.
Saturday's edition also included a photo of the 68-year-old former Iraqi leader washing his clothes by hand in a bucket.
The Sun's managing editor, Graham Dudman, defended the paper's decision to run the photos of Saddam, whom he compared with Germany's Nazi leader.
The paper also ran photos of other detainees including Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali" for his role in gas attacks during an offensive against Iraqi Kurds in 1987. He was pictured holding a towel and apparently struggling to get up from a chair, using a walking stick.
The tabloid also showed a photo of Dr Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, a US-educated microbiologist dubbed "Mrs Anthrax" and "Chemical Sally" for her alleged involvement with Saddam's weapons of mass destruction programme.
Lawyers representing Saddam said Friday they planned to sue the Sun after it published the first set of photos of the deposed Iraqi dictator, Al-Jazeera television reported, quoting the head of the defence team.
A Pentagon spokesman said it appeared that the pictures were taken more than a year ago. If true, that means they were taken at a time when the US military had exclusive custody of Saddam.
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