Washington ? President Bush on Monday bid “good riddance” to Saddam Hussein and vowed to involve Iraqis fully in a public trial that airs “all the atrocities” the former ruler is accused of committing during his 24-year reign.

Exuding contempt, Bush at one point directly addressed the deposed dictator, captured Saturday in a burrow near his one-time base of Tikrit.

“Good riddance. The world is better off without you, Mr. Saddam Hussein,” the president said. “I find it very interesting that when the heat got on, you dug yourself a hole and you crawled in it. And our brave troops, combined with good intelligence, found you. And you’ll be brought to justice, something you did not afford the people you brutalized in your own country.”

At other points in his 48-minute news conference, Bush called Saddam a “deceiver,” “liar,” “torturer,” “murderer” and “tyrant.” He also expressed doubt that Saddam could be trusted on any information he might provide about weapons of mass destruction or connections he may have had to terrorist organizations.

“I would be very skeptical of anything he said — one way or the other,” Bush said. “I don’t believe he’ll tell the truth.”

The president shed little light on the precise nature of the legal proceedings that Saddam would face, calling the determination of the legalities better left to lawyers. “I will instruct this government to make sure the system includes the Iraqi citizens and make sure the process withstands international scrutiny,” Bush said.

“And there needs to be a public trial, and all the atrocities need to come out, and justice needs to be delivered,” he added.

A senior State Department official said later that the administration had confidence that Saddam could receive a fair trial before a newly created Iraqi criminal tribunal, though the Iraqis still need to settle a number of “technical and legal” issues before the court begins to hear cases.

The U.S.-picked Iraqi Governing Council last week issued regulations creating a five-member panel to judge cases involving war crimes and genocide that occurred during the Baath Party’s 35-year reign. Saddam’s Sunni-dominated regime is accused of slaughtering more than 100,000 Kurds and using chemical weapons. It also forcibly put down a Shiite rebellion in 1991.

Human rights advocates have questioned whether Iraqis, without a constitution or recent judicial experience, can fairly tackle such a trial.

But the State Department official said international participants would be allowed to help the tribunal as advisers and judges. The Iraqis “are looking for international involvement in some form,” the official said.

He maintained that the United States would leave to the Iraqis whether to include capital punishment, which has been excluded in recent U.N. war crimes trials. “This is clearly for the Iraqis to decide,” he said.

As governor of Texas, Bush allowed 152 executions to proceed, but at his news conference Monday, he declined to reveal his personal preference for the type of punishment that Saddam deserved.

“I’ve got my own personal views of how he ought to be treated, but that’s — I’m not an Iraqi citizen. It’s going to be up to the Iraqis to make those decisions,” the president said. “What matters is the views of the Iraqi citizens. And we need to work, of course, with them to develop a system that is fair and where he will be put on trial and will be brought to justice — the justice he didn’t, by the way, afford any of his own citizens.”