The executioner said that he was ordered to seize two 19-year-old students and take them to a farm of Uday Hussein, Saddam’s oldest son who was killed by American forces last week.

As soon as they arrived the students were dragged to a cage containing the lions and forced inside. “I saw the head of the first student literally come off his body with the first bite,” he said. He then had to stand and watch the animals devour the two young men: “By the time they were finished there was little left but for the bones and bits and pieces of unwanted flesh.”

He was told later that the two young men “had competed with Uday where some young ladies were concerned”.

The 36-year-old executioner, who used the pseudonym of Abu Ahmad, also took part in mass beheadings on the orders of the sadistic Uday. In a single afternoon he supervised the decapitation of 36 people, including a pregnant woman.

He was so distressed at participating in the killing of an unborn child that he “wished for Allah to open up the ground and swallow everyone there including myself”. But he feared that if he disobeyed orders he too would be executed.

He was also involved in barbarous “pyramid” executions in which the victims were split down the middle. Using a special vice to hold the head, a swordsman split victims as they kneeled; another executioner carved the body into two, like a slaughterman in an abattoir.

Ahmad was recruited from the Iraqi army six years ago into the Saddam Fedayeen, part of the security forces commanded by Uday. He was later promoted to lieutenant-colonel and put in charge of Unit 18, which carried out personal missions for Uday.

He was inducted into the barbarous scope of Unit 18’s work in 1999 when he was summoned to Uday’s compound in a Baghdad presidential palace. On arrival, he was ordered to behead a prisoner.

It was his first time.

“The prisoner did not utter a word. I think he had by then resigned himself to his fate. I knew nothing of the man,” he recalled.

Uday did not watch executions but sent a cameraman to film them. On his orders the victims’ remains were returned to their families with the head and body in separate bags.

Now in hiding Ahmad, who has four children, fears that the American forces will come looking for him. He sleeps surrounded by guns and grenades, ready to defend himself.

The Americans say they have captured several of Saddam’s bodyguards, and yesterday it emerged that they believed they had come close to seizing the former Iraqi leader in Mosul shortly after the deaths of his sons last Tuesday.

According to military sources, intelligence intercepted a single satellite phone signal known to belong to Saddam during the bombardment of the building where Uday and Qusay were trapped.

Soldiers searched the nearby villa from which the call was made but Saddam was not there. US officers said the intercept was highly accurate, and they were convinced he had been hiding in the building. Yesterday they said they believed he was still in Mosul.

Additional reporting: Alissa Everett in Mosul

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