Saddam captured near home town, bearded and tired

UPDATE - 3.00am


TIKRIT, Iraq - US troops captured former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein near his home town of Tikrit yesterday, in a major coup for Washington's beleaguered occupation force in Iraq.

Grubby and bearded, apparently exhausted and resigned to his fate, the fugitive dictator was dug out by troops from a narrow hiding hole during a raid on a farm late on Saturday, the US commander in Iraq told a news conference on Sunday.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we got him," a beaming US administrator Paul Bremer said today in his first, pithy comments.

"The tyrant is a prisoner."

Amid scenes of undisguised jubilation at US headquarters in Baghdad, Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez played a video of the 66-year-old ousted leader, in a heavy black and grey beard, undergoing a medical examination that appeared to include the taking of saliva swabs for DNA testing.

Sanchez also showed a still photograph, apparently taken later, of a shaven Saddam.

Across the capital, gunfire crackled in celebration.

Joy greeted final proof that the man who terrorised his people for 30 years and led them into three disastrous wars was now behind bars and facing trial, even possible execution, at Iraqi hands.

"There were no injuries. Not a single shot was fired," Sanchez said, adding that Saddam seemed "tired and resigned".

It was a contrast to the end of Saddam's once powerful sons, Uday and Qusay, who went down guns blazing against an overwhelming US force at a house in Mosul in July.

Troops acting on a tip-off surrounded the farm outside Ad Dawr, just south of Tikrit, the city where Saddam was born into a poor family of minority Sunni Muslims. He rose through tribal contacts and a taste for ruthless violence to dominate the Arab nationalist Ba'ath party, which seized power in a 1968 coup.

The soldiers finally tracked the fugitive down to the bottom of a narrow, man-sized pit, some two to three-metres (six to eight feet) deep, Sanchez said.

The arrest is a major boon for US President George W Bush after seven months of increasingly bloody attacks on US forces and their allies following Saddam's ousting on April 9.

His campaign for re-election next year has been overshadowed by mounting casualties and wrangling with key allies over Iraq.

It may break the spirit of some of his diehard supporters and ease anxieties of many Iraqis who lived in fear for three decades under a man who led them into three disastrous wars.

US officials will also hope to extract key intelligence on the alleged weapons programmes which formed the public grounds for Bush to go to war in defiance of many UN allies. Little evidence of banned weapons has been found.

Saddam had kept up a stream of belligerent rhetoric from hiding, even after his sons were killed. Already vexed by its failure to find al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, Washington blamed Saddam for promoting some of the violence against its forces and put a US$25 million ($39.28 million) price on his head.

However, analysts warned that other groups could go on fighting.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the US's closest ally in the war, said Saddam's capture and the "rebirth" of Iraq were of principal benefit to Muslims who suffered under him.

"Muslims were Saddam's victims, Muslims today in Iraq are the beneficiaries of his demise," Blair told reporters.

French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, both of whom strongly opposed the US-led invasion, said they were delighted at Saddam's arrest.

Chirac said this should "contribute to the democratisation and the stabilisation of Iraq and allow the Iraqis to once more be masters of their destiny in a sovereign Iraq".

Washington had made Saddam number one -- the "ace of spades" -- on its list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis. An informer was paid US$30 million and given refuge in the United States for turning in Uday and Qusay.

Saddam would be put on trial, Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi told Reuters. A tribunal system for Iraqis to try Saddam and fellow Baathist leaders was set up only last week.

"This is good for Iraq. He will be put on trial. Let him face justice," Chalabi, who returned after the invasion from years in US exile, said in Baghdad.

A US-led coalition official said last week the Iraqi government to be formed by June would be free to re-establish the death penalty, although most of the countries supplying experts setting up the tribunal do not have it. Saddam made free use of execution, killing thousands during his years in power.

Hours after the arrest, a suspected suicide car bomber killed at least 17 people and wounding 33 at an Iraqi police station in the restive town of Khalidiyah, west of Baghdad.

US officials had said Saddam had eluded American troops by moving every few hours, probably in disguise and aided by members of his clan around Tikrit, north of Baghdad.

"His arrest will put an end to military and terrorist attacks and the Iraqi nation will achieve stability," Amar al-Hakim, a senior member of the Shi'ite political party the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said.

"We want Saddam to get what he deserves. I believe he will be sentenced to hundreds of death sentences at a fair trial because he's responsible for all the massacres and crimes in Iraq."

Mustafa Alani, an analyst at the Royal United Services Institute in London, warned, however, that there were other anti-American groups in Iraq ready to continue attacks.

"There will be a reduction in operations sponsored by former regime loyalists, but this is not the full story because they are not the only group involved," he said.

"For the Americans after the failure to capture Osama bin Laden after so many years, it is a propaganda coup...It's an intelligence prize because they can get information from him about cells working now. And it's a huge victory."

- REUTERS



- REUTERS
Herald Feature: Iraq