Hussein Bunker Has Canopy to Protect Bed, German TV Reports

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s luxury Baghdad bunker has a reinforced canopy over his bed and NATO-standard safeguards against nuclear or poison-gas attacks, the German television channel ZDF reported Monday.

Plans and order sheets for the German-built underground refuge, finished about 10 years ago, show nine gas-tight doors, including the four-ton entrance door, it said.

The bunker’s five-foot-thick walls should withstand the heaviest bombing, and NATO-standard electronics could protect the bunker’s communications system from being cut off, ZDF added.

Just in case there is an attack as he sleeps, Hussein’s bed has a reinforced canopy to protect him against falling pieces of concrete, ZDF said.

The TV report quoted a man who it said had worked on the bunker. His face was not shown, and his voice was disguised.

The man said a German technician who worked on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s early warning system had set up the complex electronics system meant to protect the bunker’s communications from being cut off.

ZDF did not say where it had obtained the order slips and plans for the bunker. The company that built the refuge said the plans were so secret that they were left behind when the $65-million project was completed in 1981.