BRITISH forces staged a dawn raid on a Baath party headquarters yesterday after receiving intelligence that it was being used to exert President Saddam Hussein’s will.

Five people were arrested and taken away for interrogation in a swift assault designed to send a powerful message to the intimidated local population that the Baath party’s reign of fear is over.

The two-storey complex stood on the southwest edge of the Basra national oil refinery, three miles from the port city and surrounded by a shanty town.

A sniper team from Zulu Company, the 1st Battalion Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, kept the building under covert observation all night before the attack. At exactly 5.30am local time, a 36-tonne Warrior armoured vehicle crashed through the perimeter wall.

At the same time the vehicle’s rear hatch opened and a section of infantrymen kicked down the front door and stormed the complex. Amid the confusion, the Fusiliers systematically scoured the complex hunting for Baath party members.

One by one, doors were smashed down before soldiers with fixed bayonets burst into the rooms. Once inside the sprawling HQ, the opulent lifestyle enjoyed by Saddam’s henchmen — in stark relief to the poverty just yards away — became clear.

Leading from each side of the grand entrance stood two huge kitchens with extensive cooking facilities. From these ran two cavernous store rooms filled with food.

While local Iraqis are short of even the most basic items, the Baath party HQ was crammed with enormous humanitarian aid relief sacks of rice and grain.

Fresh garlic, tomatoes and sauces stood alongside chest freezers filled with meat and frozen produce.

Along wood-panelled corridors the British soldiers raced through a series of comfortable bedroom suites, each one made up of two rooms in which a television, armchairs, a sofa and a bed were placed. In the heart of the complex a number of imposing rooms fanned out from a central reception area. In one was a bar and a snooker table with cues still resting on the green baize. In another an office had been set up, documents lying across a mahogany table. In a filing cabinet were two bottles of single malt whisky.

While an Arabic-speaking soldier trawled the paperwork for possible intelligence, the rest of Z company poured into a large dining room.

Around a table capable of seating up to 40 people were chrome-plated dining chairs. On the table, knives, forks, glasses and salt and pepper pots were neatly arranged over a linen cloth.

At the far end of the room was a huge, smiling picture of Saddam. Upstairs, dozens more bedrooms were searched until the whole building had been cleared.

The ferocity of the raid stunned locals who, still fearful of the malign influence of the Baath party, were reluctant to approach the newly cleared building. Major Duncan McSporran, the officer commanding Z Company, told the villagers that the building now belonged to them. Within an hour soldiers returned to patrol the area to find it being looted.

Captain Alex Cartwright, 28, a Grenadier Guardsman attached to 1st Battalion, said that he was happy to allow the mob to continue. “Normally we would stop looting, but in this case we decided that it would send a powerful message — that we are in control now, not the Baath party.”

Captain Cartwright said that villagers had pointed out a number of men who were considerably better dressed and groomed than the locals and who appeared to be agitated by what they saw.

“It was also noticeable how the locals’ body language and attitude changed — they became more fearful, more cowed,” he said.

“One villager, having warned us that there were ‘eyes and ears everywhere’, said: ‘These are the men who disappear when you turn up and come back to frighten us when you go.’

“We wanted to arrest these guys and so appealed to their vanity by inviting them into the building explaining that we needed to talk to them in private.

“Once they were in the building, they were told they were under arrest and were coming with us. They protested, we searched them and then they were made forcibly aware that they were under arrest.”

Under the rule of the Geneva Convention captured prisoners of war are not allowed to be paraded, but Captain Cartwright said that he made sure that all the villagers could see the men being led into the back of a British army Warrior in handcuffs.

“That will have done our cause here immeasurable good because the people here now know that we are right behind them, doing everything we can to rid them of the regime that has blighted their lives for so long.”

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