Half-brother was one of Saddam's most brutal servants

Even by the savage standards of Saddam Hussein's regime, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti stood out for his ruthlessness. Of the many homicidal acts of which he stands accused, the genocidal killings of thousands of Kurds during the Iran-Iraq war are probably the most heinous.

But a chilling flavour of his methods emerges in testimony given to the human rights organisation Indict about killings that included the hanging of the Iranian-born Observer journalist Farzad Bazoft, sentenced to death in a closed court on charges of "espionage" in March 1990.

"When the coaches had left... The soldiers... began to beat [the women and children] and force them to return to their houses. "As soldiers advanced towards us, I ran away with the other children and went home. By this time Barzan al-Tikriti had left," said one witness who gave testimony to Indict.

Another witness told the human rights organisation: "Around 300-350 were taken to the military camp. They were all shot, some of them personally by Barzan al-Tikriti. A training camp was built over the mass grave in which the men were buried."

The dossier also said: "Barzan al-Tikriti personally tortured them; pulling out their nails, administering electric shocks, stretching their limbs apart, throwing boiling water over them and using electric cables to beat them. Barzan al-Tikriti was also present when the British journalist Farzad Bazoft was executed."

One torture victim said: "I was pulled to my feet and stood facing the door. Suddenly Barzan al-Tikriti stabbed me in the back with what could have been a screwdriver. When I was stabbed for the second time I lost consciousness."

The capture of Barzan will cheer human rights campaigners deeply disappointed when Barzan left Switzerlandin October last year for Iraq after the authorities refused to arrest and try him in response to the detailed war crimes dossier compiled by Indict.

Indict claimsBarzan committed the torture and other human rights abuses while he was director general of Iraq's Mukhabarat (intelligence agency) from 1979 to 1983. He is also alleged to have tortured reluctant scientists to force them to work on Iraq's nuclear weapons programme.

Indict told the Swiss federal prosecutor earlier this year that it could produce as many as 30 witnesses to support its accusations against Barzan ­ the chief accusation was that in 1983 he supervised the murder of between 3,500 and 8,000 Kurds suspected of helping the Iranians.

Witnesses claim that under his direction thousands of men aged between 14 and 70 from one tribe were arrested, held in camps near Arbil, northern Iraq, and then taken away. The men were never seen again. He was also said to have participated in the deportation and mass murder of the inhabitants of the village of Dujail after an attempt on Saddam's life.

The Indict dossier says that in April 1980 Professor Mohammed Bakr al-Sadr, a leading Shia cleric, was murdered with a nail that was pushed through his head. Barzan is said to have burnt off his beard and tortured him with electricity to obtain a pledge of loyalty to the regime. He was also accused of widespread repression of religious and ethnic minorities.

In June last year, the Labour MP Ann Clwyd, a leading campaigner on Iraqi human rights, visited Switzerland and pressed Swiss prosecutors to take action on the Indict dossier. Despite a sympathetic hearing for Ms Clwyd, the federal prosecutor's office said there were not enough "substantial suspicions" to pursue the investigation and that the country's genocide law was not retrospective.

Barzan moved to Switzerland after leaving Baghdad in 1983 following a family feud. While in Switzerland, he is widely believed to have played a leading role in President Saddam's clandestine acquisition of nuclear and military technology.

Meanwhile, Saddam appointed him Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva in 1989, a position he held until 1998. He also served in the Iraqi delegation that met James Baker, the former US secretary of state, in Geneva in January 1991 in a final effort to head off the Gulf War. But in Geneva, Barzan was widely shunned by the diplomatic community. He once beat up his chauffeur at a diplomatic reception when the man arrived late.

Saddam recalled him from Switzerland in 1998, but his return to Baghdad was delayed for months, sparking rumours he wanted to defect.

At the start of 2000 Barzan, 53, who is one of Saddam's three half-brothers, was back in favour with Saddam, but he was still believed to have had a long-standing feud with Saddam's oldest son, Uday, who is married to Barzan's daughter Saja. Another of Saddam's half-brothers, Watban Ibrahim Hasan al-Tikriti also had uneasy relations with Uday, who shot him in the leg at a party in 1995 after hearing that his uncle had been criticising him.

Watban, a former minister of the interior, was captured last weekend by the SASon his way towards the Syrian border.

Saddam's half-brothers were eclipsed after the death of their mother, Subha, in 1983, but became prominent again after the 1991 Gulf War. Both Barzan and Watban are likely to have information about any Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The third half-brother, Sab'awi Ibrahim Hasan al-Tikriti, reportedly took refuge in Syria.

Barzan was only 18 when he took part in the 1968 coup that brought the Baath party to power. He remained Saddam's favourite half-brother.