Saddam Hussein

April 28, 1937 – December 30, 2006

Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti (1937–2006) was an Iraqi politician who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 1979 until his overthrow in 2003. He also served as prime minister of Iraq from 1979 to 1991 and from 1994 to 2003. A leading member of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, which espoused a mix of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism, he was removed from power in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and executed in 2006.

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Biography

Saddam Hussein joined the Ba'ath Party as a young man and took part in a failed attempt to kill Iraq's prime minister in 1959. After the Ba'athists took power in 1968 he became the regime's strongman and, in 1979, president.

He led Iraq into war with Iran in 1980, a conflict that lasted eight years and killed hundreds of thousands. His forces used chemical weapons against Iranian troops and against Kurdish civilians, including at Halabja in 1988. In 1990 he invaded Kuwait, and a US-led coalition drove Iraq out in the Gulf War of 1991.

Iraq then lived under sanctions and weapons inspections. In 2003 a US-led invasion overthrew him. He was captured in December 2003, tried by an Iraqi court for the killing of villagers in Dujail, and hanged in December 2006.