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(Photo: CBS)
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Saddam Hussein was born on April 28, 1937, in the desert village of al-Oja, near the town of Tikrit and north of Baghdad. The son of a peasant father, he led Iraq as president, prime minister, chairman of the ruling Revolutionary Command Council and military field marshal.
Violence played a large part in Saddam's political strategy. One year after joining the then-underground Baath Socialist Party in 1957, he spent six months in prison for slaying his brother-in-law, a communist. In 1968, the Baath Party took over in coup that Saddam helped organize. Saddam pushed aside coup leader Gen. Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr to become president in July 1979. Hundreds of senior party members were imprisoned or executed.
Saddam has had two daughters and three sons with his wife, Sajida Khairallah Telfah. Their daughters and youngest son keep a low profile. Saddam's wife is his cousin; he was raised by her late father, his uncle. Saddam's father died before he was born.
In a country where family and hometown connections are paramount, Saddam sought to protect himself by grooming his son Qusai as a successor and surrounding himself with relatives and friends from the Tikrit area.
After more than decade of sanctions and political isolation sparked by a 1990 invasion of Kuwait, which were felt most sharply by ordinary Iraqis, Saddam remained defiant in the new millennium. In a televised speech to his nation, he predicted that Iraq would "no doubt emerge triumphant" in any U.S.-led war.
After the fall of Baghdad, he spent eight months on the run before being captured by U.S. forces just 10 miles from Tikrit.
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