Iraqi leaders were on Sunday night insisting on the right to put Saddam Hussein on trial inside Iraq, in what would be the most extraordinary war crimes tribunal since Nuremberg at the end of World War II.
The demand followed the capture of the former dictator, who was found hiding in a hole, with a pistol he did not use and $750,000 in cash that in the end could not protect him against informers.
Saddam was seized on Saturday night in a rudimentary hiding place dug into the earth on the modest farm of his former cook, close by the village of al Ouja where he was born 66 years ago.
The dramatic news was announced to the world by Paul Bremer, the Americans’ chief administrator in Iraq.
”Ladies and gentlemen, we got him,” he said.
”It marks the end of the road for him, and for all who bullied and killed in his name,” President George Bush declared in a special televised address to the American and Iraqi people, in which he portrayed Saddam’s arrest as a final reassurance that the old regime would not return.
”The capture of this man was crucial to the rise of a free Iraq.”
Speaking earlier at 10 Downing Street, Tony Blair said the lifting of Saddam’s ”shadow” would open the road to reconciliation in Iraq.
Bush pledged that the ”former dictator of Iraq will face the justice he denied to millions”, while members of the Iraqi governing council advising the occupation authorities said he would be tried inside Iraq by an Iraqi tribunal.
By yesterday morning the forlorn fugitive had been identified by DNA testing, had had his long greying beard shaved off, and had been flown to a secret location in the region for questioning.
Saddam’s capture represents a powerful boost for Bush’s re-election prospects and the most significant US victory in Iraq since Baghdad fell and the dictator’s statue was brought down in April.
However, it was far from clear whether his seizure would end the insurgency against the US-led occupation. Moments after the president’s address, a bomb blast shook central Baghdad. A day earlier a suicide bombing in the town of Khaldiya claimed the lives of at least 17 people.
After countless false alarms, a US special operations task force tracked Saddam down by working its way through the rings of his supporters among the Sunni clans around Tikrit after an informer led US forces to members of an outer circle, according to military officials. It was not known whether the $25-million bounty was a factor in Saddam’s discovery.
On Saturday, a member of the inner circle provided ”actionable intelligence” that led to a farm in the village of Ad Dawr, belonging to one of Saddam’s cooks, Qais Namuk. Soldiers arrived within three hours in an operation codenamed Red Dawn.
The hiding hole was found at about 8.30pm on Saturday night under a rug and covered by a piece of polystyrene.
Major General Raymond Odierno, the commander of the 4th Infantry Division in Tikrit, displaying a case filled with $750 000 in $100 notes discovered at the hiding place, said that Saddam had been armed with a pistol, but had showed no signs of using it on the soldiers who found him or on himself. He was ”very disoriented”, the general said. However, by the time four members of the Iraqi council were brought to see the captive, he was apparently in ”defiant” mood.
”He was not apologetic. He was sarcastic and making a mockery of Iraqi people,” the unnamed council member said, according to CNN. He reportedly claimed to have been ”a just but firm ruler” and the victims of his regime were simply ”thieves”.
Saddam’s immediate fate is likely to become the source of some controversy.
The governing council insisted he would be tried by a special tribunal established last week to judge members of the ousted regime, but that tribunal has been criticised by human rights activists, who argue it cannot draw on an independent judiciary and that it is likely to impose the death penalty, once the occupation ends, probably next June. – Guardian Unlimited Â