Hugo Martinez.(searching for Saddam)(Interview)

In the fall of 1989 a Colombian police colonel named Hugo Martinez was given the thankless task of tracking down the notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar. Thirty of the 200 cops placed under Martinez's command were killed during the first two weeks of the manhunt, the colonel's family received numerous death threats and Escobar managed to elude capture for more than three years. But Martinez's task force managed to isolate Escobar over time by dismantling his Medellin drug cartel, and round- the-clock electronic surveillance of the kingpin's radio communications eventually led the Colombian police to the safe house where the world's most-wanted man was killed in a shoot-out on Dec. 2, 1993. Now a retired general, Martinez, 60, shared his thoughts about the search for Saddam Hussein last week with NEWSWEEK's Joseph Contreras. Excerpts:

CONTRERAS: Where do you think Saddam Hussein is hiding right now?

MARTINEZ: In a big city. It could well be Baghdad. I doubt he's in a small town because he would be more easily detected.

Why's that?

When Jose Rodriguez Gacha, the other head of the Medellin cartel, was hunted down and killed [in 1989], Pablo Escobar said it was because Gacha had left his native region and gone to an area of [Colombia's Pacific] coast where it would be very difficult to go unnoticed. If Saddam goes to a region outside his native area, he is going to stand out. I imagine that Saddam will want to be where he can blend in, where there are people who look like him, talk like him.

But won't the Americans figure that out and look for Saddam in precisely those kinds of surroundings?

The authorities will never find a person by searching for him door to door. It doesn't work that way. And the more he resembles the local people in appearance and accent, the more easily he will go unnoticed.