Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti (28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician who served as the fifth President of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. He was a leading member of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party. He played a key role in the 1968 coup that brought the party to power in Iraq. On 5 November 2006, Saddam was convicted by an Iraqi court of crimes against humanity related to the 1982 killing of 148 Iraqi Shi’a and sentenced to death by hanging.
About Saddam Hussein in brief
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti (28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician who served as the fifth President of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. He was a leading member of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party. He played a key role in the 1968 coup that brought the party to power in Iraq. In 2003, a coalition led by the United States invaded Iraq to depose Saddam, in which U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair erroneously accused him of possessing weapons of mass destruction and having ties to al-Qaeda. On 5 November 2006, Saddam was convicted by an Iraqi court of crimes against humanity related to the 1982 killing of 148 Iraqi Shi’a and sentenced to death by hanging. Saddam’s brother and father died of cancer before his birth, and his mother attempted to abort her pregnancy and commit suicide. His mother remarried, and Saddam gained three half-brothers through this marriage. At about age 10, Saddam fled the family and returned to live in Baghdad with his uncle Khairallah Talfah, who became a father figure to Saddam. Under the guidance of his uncle, he attended a nationalistic high school in Baghdad. After secondary school, Saddam studied at an Iraqi law school for three years, dropping out in 1957 to join the revolutionary Ba’ath Party, which his uncle was a supporter. Later in his life, relatives from his native Tikrit became some of his closest advisors and supporters. In the early 1970s, Saddam nationalized oil and foreign banks leaving the system eventually insolvent mostly due to the Iran–Iraq War, the Gulf War, and UN sanctions.
He suppressed several movements, particularly Shi’a and Kurdish movements which sought to overthrow the government or gain independence, respectively. Saddam’s invasions of Iran and Kuwait also resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths. The total number of Iraqis killed by the security services of Saddam’s government in various purges and genocides is conservatively estimated to be 250,000. In 1955, there were fewer than 300 Baath Party members in Iraq and Iraq and it is believed that Saddam’s primary reason for joining the party was opposed to the more established Iraqi nationalist parties. Saddam apparently supported himself as a secondary school teacher. During this time, Saddam supported himself through his uncle as a primary school teacher, and later as a law school teacher as well. He later became the mayor of Baghdad during Saddam’s time in power, until his notorious corruption compelled Saddam to force him out of office. Saddam was a devout Sunni Muslim and a veteran of the 1941 Anglo-Iraqi War between Iraqi nationalists and the United Kingdom, which remained a major colonial power in the region. He had a large following in Syria and the following year, he became a leading figure in the Arab Socialist Revolutionary Party of Syria and other Arab Socialist parties in the Middle East.
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