Edit[r’s note: This story was originally published on Dec. 13, 2024.
A look back at local, national and world events through Deseret News archives.
On Dec. 13, 2003, Saddam Hussein was captured by U.S. forces while hiding in a hole under a farmhouse in Adwar, Iraq, near his hometown of Tikrit.
Per Associated Press reports, Saddam was seized by U.S. troops and displayed on television screens worldwide, a humiliating fate for one of history’s most brutal dictators.
The man who waged and lost two wars against the United States and its allies was armed with a pistol when captured in a Styrofoam-covered underground hideout but did not resist, the U.S. military said.
Three years later, the shotgun-waving dictator who ruled Iraq with a remorseless brutality for a quarter-century, was taken to the gallows and executed in Baghdad, according to Iraqi state-run TV. Also hanged were Saddam’s half-brother Barzan Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court.
Saddam was known as the “Butcher of Baghdad.”
After he seized power on July 16, 1979, he had hundreds of members of his own party and army officers slain. In 1996, he ordered the slaying of two sons-in-law who had defected to Jordan but returned to Baghdad after receiving guarantees of safety.
Saddam built Iraq into one of the Arab world’s most modern societies but then plunged the country into an eight-year war with neighboring Iran that killed hundreds of thousands of people on both sides and wrecked Iraq’s economy.
During that war, as part of the wider campaign against Kurds, the Iraqi military used chemical weapons against the Kurdish town of Halabja in northern Iraq, killing an estimated 5,000 civilians.
The economic troubles from the Iran war led Saddam to invade Kuwait in the summer of 1990, seeking to grab its oil wealth, but a U.S.-led coalition inflicted a stinging defeat on the Iraq army and freed the Kuwaitis.
The final blow came when U.S.-led troops invaded in March 2003. Saddam’s regime fell quickly, but political, sectarian and criminal violence have created chaos that has undermined efforts to rebuild Iraq’s ruined economy.
The Deseret News and other media outlets followed Saddam’s rise to power, his defiance in the world court and his eventual demise. Now, 21 years later, here are some stories from Deseret News archives on the topic:
“Captured — Saddam ‘caught like a rat’ in a hole”
“From palaces to a hole in dirt”
“Soldiers and families in Utah thrilled with news”
“About Utah: 2 Utahns helped boot Saddam out”
“2 Utah soldiers get look at Saddam’s rat hole”
“Swift trial for Saddam a victim of insurgency”
“Cheers around world spark hopes of unity and peace”
“Iraqi troubles overshadow significance of execution”
“Saddam Hussein calls for reconciliation at genocide trial”
“Saddam stayed strong, defiant to the end”
