Family member gave away Saddam's hideout

Saddam Hussein’s capture followed information from a member of a family “close to him”, it was revealed in Tikrit.

Major General Raymond Odierno, the commander of the 4th Infantry Division that captured Saddam, said that over the last 10 days soldiers had questioned “five to 10 members” of families close to Saddam.

“Finally we got the ultimate information from one of these individuals,” he said.

About 600 soldiers under his command conducted the raid on Saturday night in a farm near the village of Adwar, finding Saddam in a hole covered by Styrofoam and a carpet beside a two-room shack, Odierno said.

When soldiers pulled the bearded man from the hole, he said, “he was very much bewildered.”

Saddam carried a pistol but offered no resistance and taken south by helicopter about an hour after he was pulled from his hiding place, Odierno said.

“He was just caught like a rat,” he said. “When you’re in the bottom of a hole you can’t fight back.”

Odierno said intelligence indicated the target of the raid was Saddam himself.

“We thought it was Saddam,” he said.

But he said the soldiers in the raid did not know who the target was until he was captured.

The forces found no telephones, radios or other communications devices in Saddam’s hideout, which Odierno said affirmed his suspicions that the captured dictator could not have been leading the anti-US insurgency on a large scale.

“I believe he was there more for moral support,” Odierno said. “I don’t believe he was coordinating the effort because I don’t believe there’s any national coordination.”