Iraqi-American recounts key role in Saddam's capture

ST. LOUIS -- Back in the Iraq he once fled and aching to have any hand in the capture of the ruler he so loathed, Samir couldn't see down the darkened hole enough to see who was hiding there.

As a civilian translator for hundreds of heavily armed U.S. troops on the scene, the Iraqi-American told the cowering man to surrender or die. Soldiers were ready to pitch a grenade into the spider hole when the man slowly thrust his hands into the light, giving up.

When he helped others pull the man out, Samir gasped.

He had no pleasantries for Saddam Hussein.

By his account, Samir greeted the deposed ruler -- the man with a $25 million bounty on his head as then one of the world's most-wanted fugitives -- with a few punches, kicks and profane insults.

"I was like, 'Let me do what everyone in Iraq would want to do -- beat the crap out of him or kill him,"' Samir, now living in St. Louis, recalls of the run-in moments before Saddam was whisked away to confinement. "I wanted to say, 'You did this all to us, and you still don't want to leave Iraq alone."'

Requesting that his last name not be used for this story, given fear of reprisals from Saddam loyalists or anti-American forces, Samir prizes that day like the beads he gave last month to a thankful President Bush.

"I feel so good, I feel so good," says Samir, 34.

To him, the reasons are endless.

Samir spent his first 22 years in Iraq, "where every single Iraqi was a slave under Saddam." Say a bad thing about Saddam, Samir says, "and that's it, you're done." He saw neighbors and cousins, many refusing the mandate that men serve in the Iraqi army, be taken away, never to be seen again.

Families of those executed, Samir claims, were charged for the bullets used and ordered to grieve where no one else could hear.

Samir bolted in 1991, leaving behind four brothers, three sisters and his parents. By March 2003, he sought to be a U.S. soldier in the war against Saddam but heeded the call for civilian translators to be used overseas.

"I really wanted to be part of this," he said.

As he had hoped, Samir eventually got shipped off to Iraq before being returned to the United States when his contract expired last fall. Samir quickly re-signed, insisting "I was wanting to go back there to help."

Coming up empty

Saddam proved elusive during the war, when at least two dramatic military strikes came up empty in their efforts to assassinate him. U.S. officials named him No. 1 -- the so-called Ace of Spades -- on their list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis.

Over the ensuing months, prisoners from raids and intelligence tips led to increasingly precise information about Saddam's whereabouts, as CIA and military analysts gradually pared their list of potential sites where he was staying.

In front of a mud-brick shack, troops with the 4th Infantry Division -- among the Army's elite mechanized divisions -- pulled back a carpet on the ground, cleared away the dirt and revealed a Styrofoam panel.

Underneath, there was a 6-foot-deep vertical tunnel with a shorter tunnel branching out horizontally from one side. A pipe to the concrete surface at ground level provided air.

When the hole was exposed, Samir says, the mystery man inside repeatedly implored, "Don't shoot, don't kill me!"'

Evening discoveryThe sky was dark but the setting appeared to be in daylight, given the glare from helicopter floodlights and lights on the soldiers' guns.

"You need to come out before they kill you," Samir shouted into the hole.

"Don't shoot," the man replied again.

"If you stay in there, they're gonna kill you. Either you come out with me or you die," Samir fired back.

Slowly, the man stuck one arm into the light, then the other. Samir and soldiers ripped him from the tiny subterranean refuge by his arms, hair, bushy beard or anything else they could grab.

"You could tell who it was," Samir recalls. "I'd never met Saddam, but I'd seen him enough. From the words he spoke, he was Saddam."

The ruler who once wore suits with a collection of palaces looked haggard, with a wild, graying beard and ratty hair.

"He looked old and miserable," Samir says.

While disoriented, Saddam was defiant and unrepentant.

When Samir called the man names, the ousted ruler retorted, "'Don't talk to me. I'm Saddam Hussein.'"

Samir cherishes the photo of him helping pin Saddam to the ground. Before returning to the United States, Samir says his family told him to thank Bush for helping liberate Iraq.

Last month, Samir got his chance.

Presidential visitWhen Bush came to campaign July 20 in the St. Louis suburb of St. Charles, Samir was just one of two people tapped to meet privately with the nation's commander in chief.

Samir shook his hand, exchanged greetings and gave Bush a picture of the man's picture with Saddam -- something the president said he'd seen.

"I said, 'I want to give you a message, speaking from my heart. I want to thank you for what you've done to Iraq,"' Samir said.

Bush tapped the man on the shoulder and replied, "Good work. I'm proud of your help with the military."

Before the meeting, Samir had scoured his possessions for something of value -- monetary or sentimental -- to give to Bush. He came across beads his parents had given him the last time he was in Iraq, hoping they would keep him safe.

"For the president, it's worth it," Samir recalled, just hours before he returned to the Middle East on another assignment.

"Friends had told me not to go to Iraq, saying I'll be killed. But thank God I made the decision to be part of this; thank God to have this opportunity."