The tunnel was roughly in the middle of the compound. The entrance to the hideout was under the floor of a small, walled compound, with a room in one corner and a lean-to attached to the room. A pipe to the concrete surface at ground level provided air. "I believe he was there more for moral support," he said.Ī Pentagon diagram showed the hiding place as a 6ft-deep vertical tunnel, with a shorter tunnel branching out horizontally from one side. Maj Gen Odierno said Saddam did not appear to be directly organising resistance, noting that no communication devices were found in his hiding place. Major General Ray Odierno, the commander of 4th infantry division - which participated in what the US military called "Operation Red Dawn" to capture Saddam - said the ousted dictator had a pistol but did not attempt to use it.Īt a news conference in Tikrit, he described how US forces were able to determine Saddam's location, saying: "We tried to work through family and tribal ties that might have been close to Saddam Hussein." Finally, he said, US forces had received good information from one of the five to 10 individuals who had come forward. He seemed defiant, trying to find excuses for the crimes in the same way he did in the past," he added. "When we told him, 'if you go to the streets now, you will see the people celebrating,' he answered, 'those are mobs.' When we told him about the mass graves, he replied, 'those are thieves', Mr Abdel-Mahdi said. However Adel Abdel-Mahdi, a senior official of a Shia political party who, along with other Iraqi leaders, visited Saddam in captivity, said that the toppled dictator was "unrepentant and defiant".
He described Saddam as "a tired man, a man resigned to his fate". Lt Gen Sanchez, who saw Saddam overnight, said the deposed leader "has been cooperative and is talkative". The two men were "fairly insignificant" regime figures, a US defence official said. Saddam was discovered along with two supporters, but Lt Gen Sanchez said DNA tests had not yet proved their identities. $750,000 (£430,000) in $100 notes, two AK47s and a taxi were also found in the compound. Video footage of the former Iraqi president undergoing a medical examination after he had been captured showed a dishevelled figure with unkempt dark hair and a thick beard that had become grey. He added that bricks and dirt camouflaged the entrance to the hiding place. The underground hideout was little more than a specially-prepared "spider hole", with just enough space for a man to lie down, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the top US military commander in Iraq, said. Saddam was captured without a shot being fired at 8.30pm local time (1730 GMT) in a walled farm compound in Adwar, a town 10 miles from Tikrit.
Radio stations in Baghdad played celebratory music, residents fired small arms in the air in celebration, and passengers on buses and trucks shouted: "They got Saddam! They got Saddam!" The arrest comes eight months after US troops swept into the Iraqi capital, and brings an end to one of the most intensive manhunts in history. "In the history of Iraq, a dark and painful era is over. However, Mr Bush also cautioned that it does not mean the end of violence in Iraq. He said that the former Iraqi leader's arrest "marks the end of the road for him and all who bullied and killed in his name". In a televised address this afternoon, the US president, George Bush, said that Saddam will face "the justice he denied to millions".
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