THE search for President Saddam Hussein and his henchmen became a deadly game of poker yesterday when their pictures were printed on a deck of playing cards issued to coalition troops.

Saddam himself appears as the ace of spades and Qusay, his younger son and heir- apparent, is the ace of clubs.

The pack of 55 most wanted individuals contains three jokers, but coalition generals refused to confirm whether it includes Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf, the Information Minister, whose refusal to accept the American advance into Baghdad earned him the sobriquet Comical Ali. Tariq Aziz, the Deputy Prime Minister, is believed to be the eight of spades.

Every card carries a death sentence, since frontline troops have been ordered to use them to identify suspects who must be killed or captured.

US Central Command refused last night to release details of the rest of the deck to the media, perhaps fearing a backlash for reducing the manhunt to a game of snap.

Yesterday one of the knaves at Saddam’s court, Barzan Ibrahim Hasan al-Tikriti, his half-brother, joined the list of those believed to have been eliminated after a massive satellite-guided bombardment destroyed his villa at al-Ramadi, 60 miles west of Baghdad. Relations of the man known as Saddam’s torturer-in-chief said that he had been killed in the strike on Thursday by six 2,000lb JDAM missiles.

Barzan was chief of Saddam’s secret police in the 1980s. The human rights group Indict has given an insight into his ruthlessness.

“Barzan al-Tikriti personally tortured them (prisoners), pulling out their nails, administering electric shocks, stretching their limbs apart, throwing boiling water over them and using electric cables to beat them,” according to a personal testimony to Indict. He is also said to have used his nine-year tenure as Iraq’s Ambassador at the United Nations office in Geneva to set up a clandestine network of companies and trusts to squirrel away billions of dollars for Saddam.

The other cards are bound to include the “nasty nine” senior leaders named as the chief villains by the Pentagon before the war.

Besides Saddam and Qusay, those include the Iraqi leader’s elder son, Uday, with Izzat Ibrahim, vice-chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, Muhammad Hamza al-Zubaidi, a former Prime Minister, Taha Yasin Ramadan, Vice-President, and “Chemical” Ali Hassan al- Majid, who was reported killed in a raid on his villa near Basra last week.

“Coalition governments have identified a list of key regime leaders who must be pursued and brought to justice,” Brigadier-General Vincent Brooks told a daily briefing in Qatar yesterday. “The key list is 55 individuals who may be pursued, killed or captured. The list does not exclude leaders who may have already been killed or captured. This deck of cards is one example of what we provide to soldiers and Marines out in the field with faces of individuals and their names.

“The list is also being distributed in posters and handbills. The intent here is to help the coalition gain information from the Iraqi people so they know exactly who we seek.”

A small number of those in the deck are believed to be dead already, but distributing their details would help to confirm that, General Brooks said.

“The list does not exclude leaders who may have already been killed or captured,” he said. “We know there are some that may have already died and there are some we are not sure about. We want to ask people what is the particular status of this person.”

The net closed a little tighter on renegade leaders when an Iraqi colonel surrendered to special operations forces on Highway 11, which leads into Syria. The unit then took over the border crossing point.

“There are increasing indications of regime-associated individuals attempting to escape the coalition by fleeing into other countries,” General Brooks said.

Coalition special forces also found and destroyed a squadron of five light aircraft hidden under camouflage that may have been set aside for a desperate escape attempt by other members of Saddam’s house of cards.

The aircraft were found after a gunbattle next to Route 1 between Tikrit, which is Saddam’s home town and the last bastion of Baath party rule, and Baiji, showing how close special forces are operating to Saddam’s home town.

General Brooks added that heavy fighting around several convoys suggested that they may have been transporting fleeing leaders.

He said: “We have also seen fights that have been severe in locations where vehicles have been moving. It may indicate that there are some regime leaders that are trying to flee.”

General Tommy Franks, the coalition’s Commander-in-Chief, summed up the status of Saddam’s regime. “They are either dead or running like hell,” he said during a visit to Afghanistan.

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