BAGHDAD : Saddam Hussein's capture ends a US hunt for the man who ruled the oil state with an iron fist and launched two regional wars before being ousted by US-led forces in April.
US forces found Saddam, dirty and sporting a greying beard and hiding in a cellar on Saturday near his hometown of Tikrit.
Until then he had been as elusive as al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar.
war with a March 20 air raid intended to kill Saddam, 66, and decapitate the Baathist state he had forged in blood, iron and oil money.
But he escaped and disappeared from public view after US forces stormed into Baghdad on April 9. From hiding, he kept up a flow of defiant taped messages, aired by Arab media, urging Iraqis to fight US-led occupation forces.
One passionate Saddam message surfaced after his sons Uday and Qusay were killed by US forces on July 22.
The United States justified its war by saying Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and had defied UN Security Council resolutions ordering him to disarm after his defeat in the 1991 Gulf war.
Washington said he sponsored global terrorism. Troops occupying Iraq have yet to prove those charges, but many of the brutalities of his rule have been exposed, such as mass graves holding thousands of his murdered foes, especially rebellious Kurds and Shi'ite Muslims.
After using his skills as a street fighter and conspirator to get his Baath party into power in a 1968 coup, Saddam built a terrifying grip on Iraq despite wars, uprisings, coup plots and assassination attempts.
