Not bombs but looters strip Saddam’s bunker

Many are still at it, gradually stripping every last movable object from its labyrinth of offices and living quarters, says British civil engineer John Carter. ‘‘There are many entrances and too many people,’’ he says, as a flashlight plays over the remnants of the TV editing suite where Saddam’s final broadcasts were probably prepared, safe from American bombs overhead.

Designed by its German builder to withstand an atomic strike on the scale of Hiroshima, the bunker survived the war of 2003 intact.

Above, the devastation is absolute. Under the Believer’s Palace, there is nothing but a tangle of shattered concrete and twisted steel where once Saddam held banquets for the Baath party inner circle. It was here, so one tale goes, that he would tell guests: ‘‘The traitor’s meal is poisoned.’’ Pause mid-mouthful and one risked being hauled off, never to be seen again.

Now, stumbling over debris, visitors gasp as the great space opens before them, illuminated like a cathedral by shell holes. As Saddam’s judges tease fact from fiction in his court defence, Carter spent his time in Iraq puzzling over the design of the bunker and palace complex, with its false floors, concealed entrances and elaborate life-support systems.

The future of the bunker is unclear. —Reuters