on Saturday, Iraq time, the man who sent hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to their deaths at the battlefront and the torture chambers and the gallows made a decisive choice for life, his own.įrom the bottom of the shoulder-wide shaft, the 66-year-old former dictator thrust both hands skyward, signaling to Special Operations forces soldiers that he would offer no resistance.Ĭolonel Hickey said the Americans learned from an interrogation of one of Mr. The only traces of its former inhabitant that remained after an American military sweep were several used cotton swabs and an empty black plastic bag.įrom this last miserable redoubt, at 8.26 p.m. Hussein appeared to have placed his feet, a jutting steel pipe for further ventilation and a small light that appeared not to work. Hussein, whom the Army has not identified - had installed a small, six-inch-high ventilation fan above where Mr. Those who built it - possibly the two men captured along with Mr. It was there that he was lying when the American raid broke over him.Įven a few minutes in the tunnel, in daylight, was enough to foster claustrophobia. It was about 8 feet long, 30 inches high and 30 inches wide. He then would have had to twist and slide until he was lying flat in the cramped concrete-walled, wood beam-roofed tunnel. Hussein would have had to lower himself awkwardly down the shaft of what amounted to an inverted T. Hussein, who is close to 6 feet tall and was believed to have weighed about 200 pounds before he went on the run, to squeeze through.Ī reporter of about the former Iraqi ruler's size went down into the hole and discovered that Mr. Its concrete entrance at ground level was barely large enough for a burly man like Mr. It was more cramped and airless than it appeared in photographs released by the Army on Sunday. Hussein's capture was the size of the underground hiding place where he was found. One of the surprises of a visit to the site of Mr. Then they hauled the man they had sought relentlessly for eight months into the chilly night air, restrained him with white plastic handcuffs that held his hands behind his back and placed a plastic hood over his head, just as they have done with thousands of other Iraqi detainees. Hussein if he put up a fight, held back when they saw he carried no body belt bomb or gun and appeared to be pleading for his life. He described to reporters how soldiers peering down into the shaft with weapons and bright lights, with orders to kill Mr. Hickey of the Army's Fourth Infantry Division, stood near what he called ''the rathole'' on Monday. The 43-year-old Chicago-born officer who led the raid, Col. After the gilded palaces and the tyrant's life of luxury, it came down to this for Saddam Hussein: a final hiding place beneath a scrappy peasant farmer's courtyard that was as small and dark and dank as a coffin, and a trembling decision to surrender that saved him from an almost certain death at the hands of American troops.
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