Saddam’s 8 months on run

In an ironic twist, he came back, in the end, to a place he wove into his political legend: the site on the Tigris where, in October 1959, as a 22-year-old fleeing Baghdad and his part in the failed assassination of the Iraqi military ruler, Abdul Karim Kassem, he claimed to have swum the river to escape pursuing troops.

The farmhouse from where he was captured lies a few hundred yards from the riverbank where he came each year to mark the anniversary with a choreographed swim. Before two of his sons, Odai and Qusai were killed in the northern city of Mosul on July 22, they met their father periodically.

Their deaths further isolated Saddam from the top officials. He stood atop a battered Volkswagen Passat outside the Abu Hanifa mosque, one of the Sunni Muslims’ most sacred shrines in Iraq, on April 9, the day of the city’s fall. As he spoke, in the district of Adhamiya, the closest American tanks were less than a mile away. In Salahuddin province, a sprawling region of more than 3 million people that includes Saddam’s hometown, he went into hiding. Saddam gave lavish cash gifts to those who harboured him.

In a kind of Iraqi underground railroad, Saddam was passed from one lieutenant to another, from one safe house to the next, always one step ahead of the Americans.

There were close calls. Before the mission, the 1st Brigade believed it had hard-enough information on Saddam’s location 11 times in the past several months.

US officers said they had mounted sweeps of Adwar dozens of times, but one crucial clue eluded them: the link between the town and Saddam’s swim in 1959. So crucial was this to the townsmen that they had a nickname for the farming area just northwest of the town, Al Aboor, meaning crossing in Arabic.