Red Cross Presses U.S. on Saddam Letters

AMMAN, Jordan – The international Red Cross (search) is pressing U.S. authorities to release three letters sent by Saddam Hussein (search) in detention to his family.

Nada Doumani, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, told The Associated Press Tuesday the letters were given to U.S. authorities for inspection, as the Geneva Conventions provide.

She said that "there has been a lot of delay" in releasing the letters, but she did not have the dates they were written.

"We have repeatedly raised the issue with the detaining authority and urged it to speed up the process," Doumani said.

One of Saddam's daughters, Raghad Saddam Hussein (search), told an Arab women's magazine earlier this month that the Red Cross had delivered one letter from her father, who has been held by U.S. forces since his Dec. 13 capture. She said three lines of a six-line letter were deleted by censors.