The capture of Saddam Hussein

December 2003: Robert Fisk ventures inside the last hiding place of a once-mighty dictator

Saddam’s bunker was as near to an underground prison as any of his victims might imagine (Getty)

This was where the once-feared and mighty Saddam Hussein spent his last days on the run, a poor, makeshift kitchen and a simple cot and cabinet, showing signs of the soldiers’ search.

There was a kind of satisfaction, lying inside Saddam’s last hole in the earth. Seven months ago, I sat on his red velvet presidential throne in the greatest of all his marble palaces. And so there I was yesterday, lowering myself into the damp, dark and grey concrete interior of his final retreat, the midget bunker buried beside the Tigris – all of 8ft x 5ft– and as near to an underground prison as any of his victims might imagine. Instead of chandeliers, there was just a cheap plastic fan attached to an air vent. Ozymandias came to mind. This, after all, was where the dreams finally crumbled to dust. And it was cold.

He had food, of course – tins of cheap luncheon meat and fresh fruit – and I found his last books in a hut nearby: the philosophical works of Ibn Khaldun and the religious – and pro-Shia – doctrines of the Abbasid theorist Imam al-Shafei and a heap of volumes of Arab poetry. There were cassettes of Arabic songs and some cheap pictures of sheep at sunset and Noah’s Ark crowded with animals.