Squalid bolt-hole of a tyrant in hiding One-roomed hut is a far cry from luxurious palaces

Major Brian Reed, operations officer for the first brigade of the US 4th Infantry Division, yesterday recounted the historic moment when the toppled dictator surrendered where he was found.

The hole in the ground - under a hut near a farmhouse in the village of Ad Dawr - contained nothing but an electric strip light and a ventilation fan. The roof was supported by rough wooden beams.

''What we found surprised us,'' said Colonel James Hickey, commanding officer of the brigade involved in capturing Saddam. ''We didn't think it would be so simple.''

The army was led to Saddam's hideaway - near a shepherd's hut in an orange grove on the banks of the Tigris river - by information from a wealthy man from nearby Tikrit, arrested in a raid on Saturday.

Colonel Hickey said it was at least the tenth time US troops in Tikrit had headed out on a mission hoping to capture the man referred to variously as BL1 (black list one), or HVT1 (high-value target one).

The officer said as US forces were seconds away from throwing a hand grenade into the spider-hole, Saddam gave himself up by telling soldiers, in English, who he was.

Saddam was arrested clutching a loaded pistol he did not fire. ''Two hands appeared from the hole as the individual surrendered,'' said Colonel Hickey. ''We were about to clear that UGF (underground facility) in a military sort of way. He was wise not to wait too long.''

The colonel's report of the mission to Major General Ray Odierno, who commands the 4th Infantry Division, was to the point: ''We captured high value target number one.''

The hut was a far cry from the sumptuous palaces once occupied by Saddam. It consisted of one room with two beds and a fridge containing a can of lemonade, a packet of hot dogs, an opened box of Belgian chocolates and a tube of ointment.

Several new pairs of shoes lay in their boxes scattered around the floor. Soldiers said it was unclear whether the food and other items belonged to Saddam. The other room, open to the elements at one end, was a kitchen with a sink fed by water from a cistern on top of a chicken coop at the other end of a small yard.

Pinned to the outside wall of the hut was a cardboard box depicting biblical scenes such as the Last Supper and the Madonna and Child with the English inscription ''God bless our home''. Inside the bedroom was a 2003 calendar in Arabic with a colourful depiction of Noah's Ark. Soldiers were surprised at the Christian decorations, at the very basic nature of Saddam's final residence as a free man, and, most of all, that he gave up without a fight after being in hiding for eight months.

Yesterday, an Iraqi official who was among the first to speak to Saddam after his arrest, said he was a broken man, seeking the mercy of his US captors to protect him from his own people.

Muwaffaq al-Rubaiye, who met Saddam on Sunday with Paul Bremer, Iraq's US governor, Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, the top US soldier in Iraq and other members of Iraq's Governing Council, said: ''I found a very broken man.

''He (Saddam) was, I think, psychologically ruined and very demoralised. His body language showed that he was very miserable.

''When we were asking him difficult questions and throwing accusations, reminding him of his crimes, he was looking at ambassador Bremer and General Sanchez, as if he was asking the Americans to protect him,'' Mr Rubaiye said.

Saddam's whereabouts remained unknown yesterday with US Central Command in Florida refusing to identify it ''for security reasons''.

CNN, the US-based news network, reported that he had been moved to the Gulf state of Qatar. However, Mr Rubaiye denied reports that he had been moved abroad, saying he was still in Iraq and would stay to become the first defendant in a new Iraqi court set up to try members of his deposed government for crimes against humanity and genocide.

''I can tell you he will not leave Iraq, he will be tried in Iraq, he will be sentenced in Iraq and he will serve his sentence in Iraq,'' he said, adding that he expected to see the deposed president face the court ''within weeks''.

Varied expressions of relief at Saddam's capture were yesterday mixed with some mistrust and resentment on the streets that the US had humbled a man many regarded as a defender of Arab and Muslim interests.

In Iraq, the crack of gunfire that erupted in towns and cities, not in anger but in joy, fell silent. In its place defiant voices were raised against the US occupiers demanding immediate self-rule.

''The small Satan has gone and has been replaced by the biggest of all America,'' said Sheikh Haidar Musawi, a radical cleric from Iraq's Shi'ite Muslim majority, in the holy city of Najaf.

Despite the welcome for the news in Arab capitals, including somewhat belated signs of quiet relief in neighbouring Saudi Arabia, there was anger among many ordinary Arabs. For many of them, Saddam's meek surrender to US forces marked the total humiliation of a man who portrayed himself as a champion of Arab rights and the reincarnation of Saladin, the twelfth-century Muslim warrior.

Repeated broadcasts of close-up footage of Saddam submitting to medical examinations at the hands of US soldiers were seen with disbelief, shame and disgust.

''No Arab and no Muslim will ever forget these images. They touched something very, very deep,'' said Khalid Jamai, a veteran Moroccan journalist. ''It was disgraceful to publish those pictures. It goes against human dignity, to present him like a gorilla.''

Sheikh Yusuf Lakdari, a preacher, speaking in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, which was briefly occupied by US troops a decade ago, said: ''The Somali people and all Muslims in the world will take revenge on the Americans wherever they are.''

Saddam's sister said yesterday her brother would never have surrendered meekly and that US forces must have used drugs or gas to paralyse him.

''Saddam Hussein, hero of Arabs, would never surrender like this. He must have been subjected to drugs or nerve gas to paralyse him, for he is not one to surrender in this humiliating manner,'' Nawal Ibrahim al-Hasan told the London-based newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi by phone from an unidentified Arab capital.

''Is it possible for a president to be humiliated like this and for the Americans to comb through his hair for nits?'' she said in the interview, to be published in the Arabic-language daily's edition today.