Captured — Saddam 'caught like a rat' in a hole

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Cornered alone in a cramped hole near one of his sumptuous palaces, a weary, disheveled Saddam Hussein was seized by U.S. troops and displayed on television screens worldwide Sunday, a humiliating fate for one of history's most brutal dictators.

The man who waged and lost two wars against the United States and its allies was armed with a pistol when captured in a Styrofoam-covered underground hideout but did not resist, the U.S. military said. In the broadcast images, he resembled a desperate fugitive, not an all-powerful president who had ordered his army to fight to the death.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we got him," U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer told a news conference. "The tyrant is a prisoner."

A U.S. official said late Sunday that Saddam had been moved to a secure location. The Dubai-based Arab TV station Al-Arabiya said he was taken to Qatar.

"He was just caught like a rat," said Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno, whose 4th Infantry Division troops staged the raid. "When you're in the bottom of a hole you can't fight back."

During the arrest of Saddam, U.S. troops discovered "descriptive written material of significant value," another U.S. commander told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity. He declined to say whether the material related to the anti-coalition resistance.

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Saddam, who could face trial before a new Iraqi tribunal for war crimes, was defiant when top Iraqi officials visited him in captivity hours later — people at the meeting said he refused to admit to human rights abuses.

Saddam will now "face the justice he denied to millions," said President Bush, whose troops and intelligence agents had been searching in vain for Saddam since April. "In the history of Iraq, a dark and painful era is over."

U.S. officials declined to specify Saddam's whereabouts on Sunday but made clear he faces intensive interrogation — foremost, what he knows about the ongoing insurgency against the U.S.-led occupation, and later about his regime's unconventional weapons programs.

The raid by 600 soldiers and special forces took place Saturday night at a farm in Adwar, 10 miles from Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, less than three hours after the pivotal tip was received from an Iraqi.

The informant was a member of a family close to Saddam, Odierno told reporters in Tikrit. "Finally we got the ultimate information from one of these individuals."