Saddam Hussein captured

Saddam Hussein captured

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1106951,00.html

Associated Press
Sunday December 14, 2003


Video image of captured former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein displayed at a 
news conference in Baghdad. Photograph: AP


US forces today captured a bearded and haggard-looking Saddam Hussein in an 
underground hideout on a farm near his hometown, Tikrit.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we got him," Paul Bremer, the civilian head of 
Iraq's US-led administration, told a news conference. "The tyrant is a 
prisoner."

In a televised address this afternoon, the US president, George Bush, said 
that Saddam will face "the justice he denied to millions".

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". However, Mr Bush also 
cautioned that it does not mean the end of violence in Iraq.

"In the history of Iraq, a dark and painful era is over. A hopeful day has 
arrived," he said.

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.

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!"

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.

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. He added that 
bricks and dirt camouflaged the entrance to the hiding place.

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.

$750,000 (£430,000) in $100 notes, two AK47s and a taxi were also found in 
the compound.

Saddam was discovered along with two supporters, but Lt Gen Sanchez said 
DNA tests had not yet proved their identities. The two men were "fairly 
insignificant" regime figures, a US defence official said.

Saddam 'has been cooperative'

Lt Gen Sanchez, who saw Saddam overnight, said the deposed leader "has been 
cooperative and is talkative". He described Saddam as "a tired man, a man 
resigned to his fate".

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".

"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.

"He didn't seem apologetic. He seemed defiant, trying to find excuses for 
the crimes in the same way he did in the past," he added.

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.

At 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.

Maj Gen Odierno said Saddam did not appear to be directly organising 
resistance, noting that no communication devices were found in his hiding 
place. "I believe he was there more for moral support," he said.

A Pentagon diagram showed the hiding place as a 6ft-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 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. The 
tunnel was roughly in the middle of the compound.

"He was just caught like a rat," Maj Gen Odierno said at the press 
conference in one of Saddam's nearby grandiose palaces on the Tigris river.

DNA tests confirm identity

A US defence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Saddam had 
admitted his identity when captured.

DNA tests had confirmed the identity, the president of Iraqi governing 
council, Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, said.

Coalition officials had privately said that they did not expect Saddam to 
be taken alive, assuming that he would rather die than be captured.

Many Iraqis - both opponents of Saddam and the insurgents who fought for 
his return - agreed with that opinion.

The former Iraqi president had not been seen since US forces entered 
Baghdad, in April. Despite the high-profile and bloody operation to kill 
his sons, and the capture of many of the former regime's most senior 
figures, Saddam had proved elusive.

In hiding, he kept up a flow of defiant taped messages urging Iraqis to 
fight US-led forces.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said: "The Iraqi people can 
finally be assured that Saddam Hussein will not be coming back - they can 
see it for themselves.

"The president believes this is very good news for the Iraqi people. Saddam 
Hussein was a brutal, oppressive dictator, responsible for decades of 
atrocities."

World leaders welcome capture

Leaders of US allies in Iraq and nations opposed to the war - including 
France and Germany - welcomed the capture.

The prime minister, Tony Blair, said that Saddam would be put on trial by 
an Iraqi court. He said that the former Iraqi leader's capture "removes the 
shadow" over Iraq as he gave early confirmation of the arrest.

"We can put the past behind us. Where his rule meant terror and division 
and brutality, let his capture bring about unity, reconciliation and peace 
between all the people of Iraq," Mr Blair said in a later address.

It is thought that Saddam's capture could break the spirit of some of his 
diehard supporters and ease the anxieties of many Iraqis that Saddam would 
return to suppress them.

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

However, there are also fears that the capture could provoke further 
attacks by insurgents.

Lt Gen Sanchez said Saddam's capture would not end the campaign against 
US-led forces in Iraq. "We do not expect, at this point in time, that we 
will have a complete elimination of those attacks," he said.

US officials will also hope to extract intelligence on the alleged weapons 
programmes that the US and UK went to war to stop but which, as yet, have 
not been discovered.

-- 
Macdonald Stainsby
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green
In the contradiction lies the hope
		--Brecht.



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