A group of aerial photographs showed the overturning of the hull of the yacht of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (Al-Mansour) on the banks of the Shatt al-Arab, at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the city of Basra.
Following the controversy, Abdul-Zahra Al-Khelu, director of the Marine Science Center at the University of Basra, issued a clarification on the matter on Tuesday. Al-Hilu said – according to local media – “We would like to show that there are two presidential yachts in Basra, one of them is Al-Mansoor and the other is the Naseem al-Basra yacht.
He added: “Al-Mansoura’s yacht was hit by American aircraft and capsized in 2004. The second yacht is Naseem Basra. This yacht is located at the Basra University Marine Science Center and is a working yacht collecting water samples from the Shatt al-Arab and Iraqi territorial waters and it’s a working yacht. To work and nothing happened to him or any kind of emergency and he’s currently there.”
He stressed: “Therefore, a distinction must be made between the two yachts, the old Al-Mansour yacht, which was hit during the American attack, and the presidential yacht, which was brought from outside Iraq from Greece and entered Iraqi territorial waters under the supervision of University of Basra and property registered in the name of the Center for Marine Sciences.
