Saddam Hussein's top scientific adviser, who once liaised with UN weapons inspectors and was on an American most wanted list, surrendered to US forces yesterday, the US military said.
Amer Hammoudi al-Saadi was in custody after surrendering in Baghdad, but no other details were available, a spokesman at US Central Command war headquarters in Qatar said.
Saadi arranged the surrender after learning he was on a US most wanted list of 55 people issued on Friday, according to German public TV station ZDF, which transported him to a US warrant officer in central Baghdad and filmed the event.
Its footage showed Saadi, in an open-collared beige shirt, bidding farewell to his German wife Helga before being led by two American soldiers into the front seat of a military jeep.
"He is crucial to our understanding of what has been going on with their WMD (weapons of mass destruction) program for years," a US intelligence official said.
"He knows where stuff is hidden and he also knows the names of the major scientists associated with the program, and what their roles were and what they did. And how far along Iraq was in certain areas," the official said.
In an interview, Saadi told ZDF he did not know where Saddam was and insisted that Iraq did not possess chemical or biological weapons, as alleged by the United States and Britain, who have cited that as the main reason for their war on Iraq.
He also said he had been honest in his dealings with chief weapons inspectors Dr Hans Blix and Dr Mohamed ElBaradei, whose teams failed to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq during inspections from November to March.