US troops have captured Saddam Hussein near his home town of Tikrit in a major coup for Washington's beleaguered occupation force in Iraq. "Ladies and gentlemen, we got him," the US administrator in Iraq Mr Paul Bremer said today in his first comments to a Baghdad news conference.
US administrator in Iraq Mr Paul Bremer
"The tyrant is a prisoner," he said, adding the capture was made in a town near Tikrit yesterday evening.
"There were no injuries. Not a single shot was fired," Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, the top US general in Iraq, told the news conference in the Iraqi capital.
He then showed a videotape of a bearded Saddam in detention and undergoing medical checks.
Soldiers tore off a false beard and took samples from the ousted dictator for DNA identity tests after digging down into a cellar during an overnight raid on a house following a tip-off, members of Iraq's US-backed Governing Council said today.
After seven months of increasingly bloody attacks on US forces and their allies following Saddam's ousting on April 9th, the arrest is a major boon for US President George W. Bush. His campaign for re-election next year has been overshadowed by mounting casualties and wrangling with key allies over Iraq.
British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair said today that the Muslims who suffered under Saddam would benefit most from his capture and the "rebirth" of Iraq.
"The rebirth of Iraq is the death of their (anti-coalition factions)' attempt to sell the lie that we are fighting Muslims," Mr Blair told reporters. "Muslims were Saddam's victims, Muslims today in Iraq are the beneficiaries of his demise."
Today's capture may break the spirit of some of Saddam's diehard supporters and ease anxieties of many Iraqis who lived in fear for three decades under a man who led them into three disastrous wars.
British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair
US officials will also hope to extract key intelligence on the alleged weapons programmes which formed the public grounds for Bush to go to war in defiance of many UN allies. Little evidence of banned weapons has been found.
Saddam (66), had kept up a stream of belligerent rhetoric from hiding, even after his sons Uday and Qusay were killed by US troops in July.
Already vexed by its failure to find al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, Washington blamed Saddam for promoting some of the violence against its forces.
But analysts warned that other groups could go on fighting. "This has lifted a shadow from the people of Iraq. Saddam will not be returning," British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair said in a statement.
Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay were identified after comparisons with DNA samples. The sons went down, guns blazing, against overwhelming force, including missiles and aircraft. Their father was taken alive.
Washington has made Saddam number one - the "ace of spades" - on its list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis, and placed a $25 million reward on his head.
An informer was paid $30 million and given refuge in the United States for turning in Uday and Qusay in Mosul.
Saddam would be put on trial, Iraqi National Congress leader Mr Ahmad Chalabi said. A tribunal system for Iraqis to try Saddam and fellow Baathist leaders was set up only last week.
"This is good for Iraq. He will be put on trial. Let him face justice," Mr Chalabi, who returned after the invasion from years in US exile, said in Baghdad. The word came just hours after the latest major attack on Washington's Iraqi allies, with a suspected suicide car bomber killing at least 17 people and wounding 33 at an Iraqi police station in the restive town of Khalidiyah, west of Baghdad.
In early afternoon, gunfire broke out across the capital as news filtered through that Saddam was in US custody.
US officials had said Saddam had eluded American troops by moving every few hours, probably in disguise and aided by members of his clan in the Sunni Muslim areas around Tikrit, north of Baghdad.
But Mr Mustafa Alani, an analyst at the Royal United Services Institute in London, warned that there were other anti-American groups in Iraq ready to continue attacks.
"There will be a reduction in operations sponsored by former regime loyalists, but this is not the full story because they are not the only group involved," he said.
"For the Americans after the failure to capture Osama bin Laden after so many years, it is a propaganda coup...It's an intelligence prize because they can get information from him about cells working now. And it's a huge victory."