The US has formally declared Saddam Hussein, captured on December 13th, an enemy prisoner of war, the Pentagon said yesterday.
Air force Maj Michael Shavers, a Pentagon spokesman, said Saddam (66) was entitled to, and was being given, all the rights due to him under the Geneva Convention for enemy prisoners of war.
He said the declaration of his status did not change the conditions under which US forces were holding Saddam.
"The bottom line is that Saddam Hussein was the leader of the old regime's military forces, and therefore he was a member of the military, and he was captured.
"That makes him an enemy prisoner of war," said Maj Shavers.
A senior British official said Saddam was not telling his captors anything, but documents found with him had provided good intelligence. "The results of the capture of Saddam were greater than we were ever expecting," the official said.
US officials have said the former president is being interrogated at an "undisclosed location" inside Iraq after being seized in a hole during a raid on a farm in a village near his hometown of Tikrit last month.
Meanwhile, Iraq's chemical and biological weapons were smuggled out of the country, a leading Syrian dissident claimed last night. They were hidden at three sites in Syria, claimed human rights campaigner Mr Nijar Nijjof, who is now based in Paris.
He told Channel Five news that they were pinpointed by a senior source inside Syrian military intelligence. The source allegedly revealed the weapons were smuggled across the border in ambulances in the months before war.
"I knew this man during the last two years; he sent me much information," said Mr Nijjof.
"I discovered all his information was exactly 100per cent accurate, or at least 90 per cent." - (Reuters/PA)