A SISTER of Saddam Hussein has demanded that he be tried before the world court and said that the former Iraqi leader was drugged by US forces before his capture, a newspaper reports in its edition today.

"We do not want a trial in Iraq. We demand a fair trial at the International Court of Justice (in The Hague) in the presence of Arab and foreign lawyers," Nawal Ibrahim al-Hasan was quoted as saying by the London-based pan-Arab daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi.

The paper, which said it interviewed Hasan by telephone in an unnamed Arab capital, sent a copy of her remarks to AFP last night.

It quoted her as saying that all of Saddam's relatives were under US custody and were being "maltreated and deprived of food".

She said the detainees included her husband, Arshad Yassin, a former officer in the ousted president's special guard.

Hasan slammed the "humiliations" inflicted on Saddam by the Americans, affirming that he would have "resisted to death had he been fully in control of himself" when he was captured by US forces in a hole near his hometown of Tikrit on Saturday night.

"He must have been drugged or injected with nerve agents that crippled him," she was quoted as saying.

The humiliations inflicted on Saddam "are an affront to all Arabs and Muslims," Hasan said.

She said Iraqi resistance to the US occupation would continue, and even increase, following her brother's capture.

Agence France-Presse