BAGHDAD — When darkness fell, the Americans moved into position, 600 of them, from infantrymen to elite special forces. Their target: two houses. Someone big was inside, they were told.
But when they struck, they found nothing.
Then they spotted two men running from a small walled compound in the trees. Inside, in front of a mud-brick hut, the troops found a hole under a rug. The hole led to a tiny chamber, just big enough for a single person to squeeze into.
At first they didn’t recognize the man hiding inside, with his ratty hair, wild beard and a pistol cradled in his lap. But when they asked who he was, the bewildered-looking man gave a shocking answer.
He said he was Saddam Hussein.
"He was just caught like a rat," said Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno, commander of 4th Infantry Division, which led the hunt in the area for one of the world’s most wanted men and conducted the raid that caught him without the firing of a single shot. "When you’re in the bottom of a hole, you can’t fight back."
"Ladies and gentlemen, we got him," U.S. administrator Paul Bremer told a news conference Sunday. "The tyrant is a prisoner."
The former Iraqi president was spirited from the farm near Adwar, near his hometown of Tikrit, to Baghdad, officials said, where he was subjected to a medical examination and questioning that could lead eventually to a trial for crimes against humanity and genocide.
U.S. officials declined to specify Hussein’s whereabouts, saying late Sunday only that he had been moved to a secure location. The Dubai-based Arab TV station Al-Arabiya said he was taken to Qatar, though that could not be confirmed.
Within hours of his capture, however, the man who exercised absolute power in Iraq for almost three decades was confronted by several politicians he had tormented. In a 30-minute meeting at a detention facility at Baghdad International Airport, four of the country’s new leaders grilled Hussein about his rule.
At first, they said, Hussein appeared fatigued and disheveled, as if he had just awakened. "He seemed tired and haggard," said Adnan Pachachi, who served as Iraq’s foreign minister before Hussein’s Baath Party took power in a 1968 coup.
But his attitude changed when questioned about some of the worst crimes that occurred during his years in power, including the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the use of chemical weapons on Kurdish villages and the killing of two prominent Shiite Muslim clerics. Hussein was unrepentant, the four politicians recalled.
"He was arrogant and hateful," said Adel Abdul-Mehdi.
"He was defiant," Pachachi said. "He tried to justify his crimes by saying he was a just ruler."
Asked about the mass graves across the country that contain the bodies of tens of thousands of Iraqis killed by his government, Mowaffak Rubaie said Hussein scoffed and called the victims "thieves, army deserters and traitors."
"He had no regret or remorse," Rubaie said. "He remains the street thug that he always was."
However, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top military commander in Iraq, said Hussein "has been cooperative and is talkative." Sanchez, who inspected Hussein in custody, described the 66-year-old former leader as "a tired man, a man resigned to his fate."
The U.S. military said it confirmed Hussein’s identity with a DNA test.
It also took the unusual step of displaying a two-minute video clip of the former president, who had grown a long beard, having his hair searched for lice and his mouth examined by a latex-gloved doctor. It was an ignominious end for a ruler who had cultivated an image of ruthless invincibility as he executed political rivals, invaded two neighboring nations and then eluded U.S. forces since the fall of Baghdad in April.
The news prompted emotional celebrations across Baghdad, with some residents cheering and dancing in the street and others crying with joy. Shouts of "God is great! Saddam has been captured!" echoed through several neighborhoods. In a traditional act of merriment, thousands of people fired automatic weapons into the air, sending many scurrying for cover from stray bullets.
Iraqi leaders said Hussein would be tried before a war crimes tribunal established last week by the Governing Council. But U.S. authorities have not yet determined when — or whether — to hand Hussein over to the Iraqis for a war crimes trial or what his legal status would be.
Military officials said attacks may spike over the next few days and weeks, but they predicted an eventual decline as Hussein loyalists realize their former leader, the ace of spades in the U.S. deck of "most wanted" playing cards distributed to troops, will not return to power.
"This will change the landscape," a senior military official said. "This is a big blow for the terrorists and bitter-enders."
Although the U.S. government offered a $25 million reward for information leading to Hussein’s capture, none of the tips was accurate or timely enough to result in his capture.
Odierno, the 4th Infantry Division’s commander, said he believed Hussein had 20 to 30 safe houses in central Iraq that he shuttled among, often spending no more than a few hours in each.
The 4th Infantry conducted dozens of raids aimed at finding Hussein, occasionally coming close, military officials said. Over the past 10 days, however, the division shifted its strategy, detaining and questioning "five to 10 members" of families "close to Saddam," Odierno said.
The division received intelligence about Hussein’s whereabouts Saturday from a member of one such family. "Finally, we got the ultimate information," Odierno said.
Hussein’s last stand had a special resonance in Adwar, because the village had once been the site of his salvation. His capture Saturday came near an unusually narrow stretch of the Tigris River known as Abra, or "crossing." In 1959, after a failed attempt to assassinate Prime Minister Abdel Karim Qassem, the 22-year-old Hussein swam for his life across the river at that very spot.
U.S. troops found Hussein hiding in an underground crawl space at a walled compound on a farm, Odierno said. The entrance to the hide-out — covered with Styrofoam, rugs and dirt — was a few feet from a small, mud-brick hut where Hussein had been staying.
Two other Iraqis — whose identities were not released but who were described by military officials as "low-level figures" — were arrested in the raid. Soldiers at the scene found two AK-47 assault rifles and a green metal trunk filled with $750,000 in $100 bills.
During the arrest of Hussein, U.S. troops discovered "descriptive written material of significant value," another U.S. commander said, speaking on condition of anonymity. He declined to say whether the material related to the anti-coalition resistance.
Hussein was "very disoriented" as soldiers brought him out of the hole, Odierno said, and made no attempt to resist. A Pentagon diagram showed the hiding place as a 6-foot-deep vertical tunnel, with a shorter tunnel branching out horizontally from one side. A pipe to the concrete surface at ground level provided air.
The crawl space was next to a two-room mud hut that contained some clothes and a rudimentary kitchen, officials said. Odierno said he assumed Hussein had been there only a short time because new, unwrapped shirts were found in the bedroom.
Odierno noted Hussein was apprehended just downstream from some of his most lavish palaces. "I think it’s rather ironic that he was in a hole in the ground across the river from these great palaces that he built," Odierno said.
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