December 13:

2003 : Saddam Hussein captured

After spending nine months on the run, former Iraqi
dictator Saddam Hussein is captured on this day in
2003. Saddam's downfall began on March 20, 2003, when
the United States led an invasion force into Iraq to
topple his government, which had controlled the
country for more than 20 years.

Saddam Hussein was born into a poor family in Tikrit,
100 miles outside of Baghdad, in 1937. After moving to
Baghdad as a teenager, Saddam joined the now-infamous
Baath party, which he would later lead. He
participated in several coup attempts, finally helping
to install his cousin as dictator of Iraq in July
1968. Saddam took over for his cousin 11 years later.
During his 24 years in office, Saddam's secret police,
charged with protecting his power, terrorized the
public, ignoring the human rights of the nation's
citizens. While many of his people faced poverty, he
lived in incredible luxury, building more than 20
lavish palaces throughout the country. Obsessed with
security, he is said to have moved among them often,
always sleeping in secret locations.

In the early 1980s, Saddam involved his country in an
eight-year war with Iran, which is estimated to have
taken more than a million lives on both sides. He is
alleged to have used nerve agents and mustard gas on
Iranian soldiers during the conflict, as well as
chemical weapons on Iraq's own Kurdish population in
northern Iraq in 1988. After he invaded Kuwait in
1990, a U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq in 1991,
forcing the dictator's army to leave its smaller
neighbor, but failing to remove Saddam from power.
Throughout the 1990s, Saddam faced both U.N. economic
sanctions and air strikes aimed at crippling his
ability to produce chemical, biological, and nuclear
weapons. Continuing to face allegations of illegal oil
sales and weapons-building, the United States again
invaded Iraq in March 2003, this time with the express
purpose of ousting Saddam and his regime.

Despite proclaiming in early March 2003 that, "it is
without doubt that the faithful will be victorious
against aggression," Saddam went into hiding soon
after the American invasion, speaking to his people
only through an occasional audiotape, and his
government soon fell. After declaring Saddam the most
important of a list of his regime's 55 most-wanted
members, the United States began an intense search for
the former leader and his closest advisors. On July
22, 2003, Saddam's sons, Uday and Qusay, who many
believe he was grooming to one day fill his shoes,
were killed when U.S. soldiers raided a villa in which
they were staying in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

Five months later, on December 13, 2003, U.S. soldiers
found Saddam Hussein hiding in a six-to-eight-foot
deep hole, nine miles outside his hometown of Tikrit.
The man once obsessed with hygiene was found to be
unkempt, with a bushy beard and matted hair. He did
not resist and was uninjured during the arrest. A
soldier at the scene described him as "a man resigned
to his fate."

Saddam is now in Iraqi custody with U.S. security and
faces trial in front of a special tribunal on several
criminal cases pending against him. The first began in
October 2005; on November 5, 2006, he was found guilty
of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death by
hanging. He awaits an appeal. Despite a prolonged
search, weapons of mass destruction were never found
in Iraq.

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