British independent MP George Galloway flies to the United States today to counter allegations made against him that Saddam Hussein awarded him the right to buy oil.
The US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations last week released documents that it said showed Saddam personally granted Mr Galloway the rights to export 20 million barrels of oil under the now-defunct UN oil-for-food humanitarian programme.
"The committee came to its conclusions without any questions or contact being made with me," Galloway told journalists yesterday. "It is a monstrous abuse of natural justice."
Mr Galloway, expelled from the Labour Party for his fervent opposition to the Iraq war, said he was looking forward to putting his side of the story across.
"I am going to put them on trial, the villains of the piece - the US government and those politicians who support it," he said in a telephone interview. "I leave for Washington on Monday and go before the committee on Tuesday."
Mr Galloway, who was a vocal critic of UN sanctions against Iraq, met Saddam several times during visits in the 1990s.
He was elected MP in the previously Labour safe east London parliamentary seat of Bethnal Green and Bow in the May 5th election after he narrowly beat the sitting Labour MP Oona King.
The victory was thanks in part to the Muslim vote turning to his Respect party because of an unhappiness in the Islamic community about the war in Iraq.