Saddam Hussein will be buried in Iraq but the government is not yet ready to say exactly where, an official in the office of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has said. "The body will not go outside Iraq. We cannot announce the place where he will be buried now. But he should certainly be buried," the source told AFP on Saturday.
One of Saddam's lawyers earlier told the London-based Sky News TV that the corpse would be transferred outside Iraq following his execution for crimes against humanity. Najeeb al-Nuaimi said it should be up to the ousted president's family to decide where the body should be taken.
Asked what would happen to the body, Nuaimi said: "We are requesting that they have to be handed over to us, and we will transfer the bodies outside Baghdad, outside Iraq.
"We have requested to have the bodies transferred outside, handed over to us. We have one of our colleagues who is actually waiting there in the Green Zone."
Pressed on reports that Saddam's body would be taken to his home town of Tikrit to be buried there, Nuaimi said that was not his understanding. "My understanding is that we want them to deliver the bodies and the families will determine the destination of these bodies where they have to be buried," he said.
