Mosul, Iraq ? Kurdish militiamen captured Iraq’s feared former vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, in a bloodless operation in this northern city Tuesday and turned him over to the U.S. military, marking one of the highest-profile arrests since most of ousted president Saddam Hussein’s leadership went underground after his government collapsed in April.

Ramadan, once one of Hussein’s closest advisers, was seized with three guards soon after midnight from a two-story villa in the northern city of Mosul, where U.S. forces killed Hussein’s two eldest sons last month. After trying to flee through a back door, Ramadan surrendered peacefully, Kurdish officials said. Residents said he had done little to disguise himself other than letting his hair turn gray.

“He wasn’t expecting anyone,” said Sadi Ahmed Pire, the local director of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the two main Kurdish parties whose militiamen seized Ramadan. “He was totally surprised and then he was totally resigned.”

Once known as “Saddam’s knuckles,” Ramadan, 65, was one of handful of lieutenants in Hussein’s inner circle. His relationship with the former Iraqi president dated from the 1960s, when the Baath Party was largely an underground organization. After it assumed power in 1968, he became one of its most recognized, and notorious, officials and remained so until its collapse on April 9.

Ramadan was No. 20 on the U.S. list of the 55 most wanted officials from Hussein’s government. President Bush, speaking in Texas, said he was pleased with Ramadan’s capture and said the rest of the people on the list would eventually be detained.

“Slowly but surely, we’ll find who we need to find,” he said. “It’s just a matter of time.”

Pire said Kurdish officials had been actively pursuing Ramadan for two weeks. Twice, he said, Ramadan had escaped — once just an hour before they arrived at his farm north of here; a second time a day before they entered another villa in Mosul. During that time, Pire said, Ramadan had moved as many as six times, mainly to different houses in the city.