Dictator with Love of Disney

AWJA, Iraq (UK Mirror) – I visited Awja back in April 2003 while Saddam and his two boys were still on the run – before Uday and Qusay were killed near the settlement that July and their father was arrested in December six miles away. Awja's grand homes were signs of the prosperity it enjoyed during the rule of its most infamous son, born there in poverty in 1937. Photographer Julian Andrews and I discovered a beautiful six bedroom house that the tyrant – now buried nearby – had built. It provided evidence of Saddam the family man. In the back garden was a brick barbecue and a wooden gazebo overlooking an almost Biblical valley of olive groves and woodland to the east. Though the inside of the white-domed, four storey home had been gutted by a US bomb a month earlier, the mosaic swimming pool was untouched. And the lawned gardens held the biggest surprise of all – 8ft plastic models of Disney's Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.