The imprisoned brigadier-general, who studied at the Army Staff College at Sandhurst and speaks good English, was described by a British official yesterday as “a prize capture”.

If he is allowed into Britain it is likely that he would be given a new identity and his whereabouts kept a closely guarded secret.

It is understood that before talking, the general, who is the most senior Iraqi officer in the south of the country, insisted that British forces first rescue his family, who were hiding in Basra. They were said to be moving from house to house to evade Baath Party extremists who wanted to take them hostage to prevent the general from co-operating with his coalition captors. It is believed that the family was picked up more than a week ago during a night raid by special forces.

Before his capture, the general had already been involved in a violent clash with paramilitaries and Baath Party leaders inside Basra.

An offer of sanctuary in Britain, or any other country, is likely be criticised by some in Britain after Tony Blair in Parliament last week dismissed suggestions that key figures in the Iraqi regime could be given sanctuary.

“Sometimes you have to do things in war you don’t want to do, but they are for the greater good,” the British source said. “What he has told us already has been greatly helpful to our forces”.

The general said that he had done nothing to merit facing a war crimes tribunal and claimed that he had only ever served in the regular army.

He is being kept isolated from other prisoners of war, and the source would not say if he has been visited by the Red Cross, which is checking on the almost 4,000 Iraqi captives in British hands.

British intelligence claims of the general’s willing defection are impossible to verify, but a betrayal by an officer of his rank would be a powerful setback to the Iraqi regime. He was reluctant at first to disclose much information, but after days of interrogation by MI6 officers and various military figures, including a young British officer who was born in the Gulf and is a fluent Arabic speaker, he has “been talking very freely”, the British source said.

“The general has built up something of a rapport with the young officer, and what he has told us over the past ten days or so is absolutely priceless,” the source said. As well as passing on details about the numbers of regular troops and their positions in southern Iraq, he also reportedly disclosed information about the activities of the Baath Party in Basra.

He knew where it held its meetings and where the party’s weapons and cash were stored. The British source said that the Iraqi defector marked specific buildings where the regime’s diehards were still operating on a street map of Basra. He is also said to have identified where the Baath Party was staging a meeting which was subsequently successfully attacked by RAF jets.

Because of his rank he was also privy to some of the regime’s most crucial secrets. These include Iraq’s sanctions-busting operations which were operating successfully even up to a few weeks before the coalition invasion.

British interrogators were astonished to learn about the huge amount of money being spread around by Baath Party activists to buy loyalty. The general also said that Saddam’s hand-picked political appointees outranked senior generals.

“He seemed very grateful that his ordeal was over. It was extraordinary how a man of his rank was so scared of the long reach of the regime. It is instructive for us to learn how such intimidation operates. If it terrifies a man like this, think what it must be like for junior soldiers and ordinary citizens.”

Like others of his rank, the general has no idea as to the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein or his sons, Usay and Qusay. He said the military had been kept in the dark about what was going on with their own side, let alone the true picture of the coalition advance. He quickly realised that the Russian-made T55 tanks under his command were no match for the Challenger II of the 7th Armoured Brigade — the Desert Rats. He was not given any of the more modern T72 tanks, which were kept for use by the Republican Guard closer to Baghdad.

He described disobeying an order from Baath Party officials to take men from the 51st Division and push his tanks south to meet the oncoming British armoured units of the Desert Rats, which he realised would be military suicide. Instead, he moved his men further into Basra, more for their own protection than to defend the city.

Reports during the first hours of the battle for Basra of an uprising in the city after shooting was heard could have been clashes between the general’s regular soldiers and paramilitaries who were accusing them of being cowards for refusing to fight. Fourteen tanks that did engage the Desert Rats were destroyed and most of the crews killed.

The general’s co-operation has made him, and his extended family, targets for the last remnants of Saddam loyalists such as the Fedayin. Elements of these groups are likely to survive the war and disappear but they will never forgive what they see as the treachery of senior commanders.

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