Acting on a tip from a family member, soldiers of the 4th Infantry Division and Task Force 121 raided a farm compound near Tikrit and discovered the former Iraqi dictator hiding in a narrow, six-foot-deep pit disguised with bricks and dirt. Armed but offering no resistance, Saddam reportedly told his captors, 'I am Saddam Hussein, I am the president of Iraq, and I am willing to negotiate.' He was later tried by an Iraqi tribunal and executed in 2006.
For nine months after the fall of Baghdad, Saddam Hussein had eluded the largest manhunt of the Iraq War, moving between safehouses and rarely staying more than a few hours in one place. The breakthrough came from a member of his own tribal network, who, under interrogation, revealed the location of a modest farmhouse along the Tigris River near Ad-Dawr, not far from Tikrit.
Soldiers searched the compound and found nothing until one noticed a patch of ground that seemed disturbed. Beneath a rug and a polystyrene block lay a narrow vertical shaft, barely wide enough for a man to fit through, that dropped into a tiny chamber with a ventilation pipe and a fan. Saddam, once the ruler of a nation with statues of himself towering over public squares, had spent months hiding in what soldiers nicknamed 'the spider hole.'
He emerged with a thick gray beard and matted hair, looking, in the words of one officer, like a homeless man rather than a head of state. American administrator Paul Bremer announced the news at a press conference with the now-famous words, 'Ladies and gentlemen, we got him.' Saddam was later found guilty of crimes against humanity by an Iraqi court and hanged in December 2006.
Key people: Saddam Hussein