Inside Saddam Hussein's lair - what it was like 20 years on

For months after the 2003 invasion of Iraq by Allied forces, deposed dictator Saddam Hussein played cat and mouse with special forces and CIA hunters.

The most wanted man in the Middle East had a £20million kill-or-capture bounty in his head. Twenty years ago next Wednesday (December 13, 2003) he was tracked down to a burrow close to Tikrit, the town of his birth. I was one of the first journalists to get to the scene and the Daily Mirror revealed what it would have been like to hide in Saddam's underground lair. Here, I look back on those extraordinary days.. and some extraordinary coverage.

After months on the run and hundreds of millions of pounds spent tracking him down, tyrant Saddam Hussein was dragged out of an eight-foot deep hole in the ground.

Despite looking more like Catweazle than a one-time billionaire President who commanded a million-strong army, Saddam’s capture was a milestone in Iraq’s history.

Especially for a deluded and angry American president who saw some sort of causal link between the Iraqi regime, the al-Qaeda attacks of 9/11 and Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Apache helicopters buzzed the farmland where Saddam was discovered, in al-Dawr village, close to his birthplace of Tikrit and the whisper of “it’s him” passed among hundreds of troops.

There had been 12 raids on homes throughout Iraq, and a staggering 600 operations against individual targets who might know where he was.

And there had also been 300 intense interrogations of people close to Saddam, including one who led the task force hunters to a family in al-Dawr.

There, finally someone told them where they could find Saddam - but it still took two attempts.