Amir Alawi, 46, burst into tears of joy when he heard that the body of former president Abd al-Kareem Qassem had been found.
Killed in 1963 during a coup organised by members of the Baathist party, Qassem's body was recently discovered by a news team associated with Baghdad's Radio Dijla.
"The Baath regime was bloody and criminal from the beginning. Saddam was a coward and he was afraid of the dead, so he hid the tomb of al-Zaeem, the leader," Alawi told IWPR.
Saddam was outside Iraq when the coup overthrew Qassem, and he did not rise to power for another five years. And - if recently released testimony is to be believed - his regime did not even know where its former nemesis was buried.
Alawi's statements underline the feelings of many Iraqis - particularly those persecuted under Saddam - that the former president was a martyr to Baathist brutality.
For many Iraqis - especially the poor - Qassem's short-lived regime was a golden age, the first time they had a president who cared about them.....
Iraqis Recall Golden Age
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