Confronted by his opponents, Saddam Hussein remained defiant, they toldJack Fairweather in Baghdad
Saddam Hussein had just woken up from a nap. The unkempt beard was gone and he appeared to be in excellent health in a long white shirt and blue overcoat.
He sat with legs crossed and eyes down, though as the six men entered - Paul Bremer, Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez, the coalition's top commanders and four members of Iraq's governing council - Saddam raised his eyes.
"Shifty eyes," recalled Mawfak Rubaie. "He couldn't look any of us in the eye."
At the moment of his arrest on Saturday, Saddam said little more than "My name is Saddam Hussein. I am the president of Iraq and I want to negotiate."
"President Bush sends his regards," came the reply from a US soldier.
At the moment of his capture, the man behind the matted, greying beard and wild hair remained as inscrutable to Iraqis as he did during 35 tears as a tyrant of the country.
But the following day, on Sunday afternoon when meeting members of the governing council, he revealed himself to be unrepentant, defiant and utterly beaten. "His sacred halo was gone," said Rubaie simply.
The ostensible purpose of the meeting was to confirm Saddam's identity, but that had already been achieved by the help of Tariq Aziz, apparently a fellow inmate at the military base the members were flown to on Sunday afternoon.
Instead, the purpose of the meeting was to have the chance to tell Saddam "what a son of a bitch" he was, according to one official. But to begin with, the meeting was strangely cautious and respectful for all the emotions that must have been bubbling up inside Saddam's interrogators.
Mowffak al-Rubaie had been tortured under Saddam's regime in the late 70s for political dissent.
All four members of the council who were brought to meet Saddam - Ahmad Chalabi, Adnan Pachachi and Adel Abdul Mehdi - had opposed his rule for decades.
"I asked why him why he had committed so many crimes against the Iraqi people," said Adnan Pachachi, who served as Iraq's foreign minister before the rise of the Baath Party.
"He said Iraq needed a just and firm leader. I told him he was an unjust and despotic ruler, at which he just turned up his nose."
Saddam proceeded to dismiss his role in gassing the Kurds and ordering the creation of mass graves for tens of thousands of Iraqis. "These people are just thugs and hooligans," he said, Rubaie recalled.
"He was diffident, uncaring but when I looked into his eyes I knew I was looking into pure evil. I could see it in his eyes and in his face." Saddam only appeared genuinely flustered when cornered about his brutal suppression of the Shias following the 1991 Gulf War.
At that point he looked at Bremer and Sanchez, who up until then had remained silent. "It was as if he was saying protect me from them. I think he feels safer with the Americans," said Rubaie. "He's probably right."
Chalabi then asked him about his role in the post-war violence aimed at American troops, an aide to Chalabi said.
Saddam responded that he gave a speech ordering the Iraqis to take up arms against the Americans and that is what they had done. He appeared to be back in dictator mode, at which point the party got up to leave. Saddam suddenly didn't seem to want them to go.
"'Is that all?' his expression seemed to say," Rubaie recalled.
But as the others left, Rubaie stayed behind. "I had one last thing I wanted to tell him," Rubaie said. "I stood there and put the curse of God on him in this life and forever in the hereafter." Saddam sat there swearing blindly, but then the door was closed and he was once again left alone with his thoughts and terrible deeds.
Yesterday, he was remaining silent, although his capture had led to the arrest of several top regime figures in Baghdad, US military officials said.
Documents found in a briefcase when he was captured have helped to unravel the workings of at least one terrorist cell in the capital. "We've got Saddam's briefcase and a lot of leads," a senior official said "So far we've tracked down the key players of one cell and we've learnt how other terrorist groups can operate."
Officials would not give the name of the men arrested yesterday, but said they were prominent Baath Party members who had been under surveillance for some time.
Further raids are expected in the following days, officials said, but Saddam himself has shown little sign of wanting to spill the beans.
Although Lt Gen Sanchez, the top US military commander in Iraq, described Saddam as talkative, other officials dismissed suggestions that the former president was co-operating with interrogators .
At Baghdad International airport, where Saddam was held on Sunday, one military said: "He's been just about as close to being defiant as he can be without getting into trouble."
The US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said: "He has not been co-operative in terms of talking or anything like that."
Some people believe Saddam has been moved to military facilities in Qatar, where interrogation will resume at improved facilities there, although this has been denied by a member of the governing council.
So far it is unclear what evidence, if any, troops uncovered of Saddam's possible operational control over the guerilla war being waged against the US-led occupation forces and those seen as collaborating with them.
Officials announced they found no communications equipment, maps or other evidence of a guerrilla command centre at Saddam's hiding place.
But American officials are sure that Saddam has a wealth of knowledge on the resistance: it is a question of getting the information from him as quickly as possible before it becomes outdated.Officials remained confident Saddam would eventually crack under pressure.
Thirteen high-ranking figures from the list of the 55 most wanted of the deposed regime remain at large, including Saddam's deputy, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri whom US officials say may be directly organising resistance.
"I'm sure he was giving some guidance to some key figures in this insurgency," said Brig Gen Mark Hertling.
"Put it this way, we know he's got the goods. It's a just a matter of time before we get them out of him," the brigadier said.