|  | Was: Supervisor, Republican Guards
Qusai Saddam Hussein
(Photo:
AP
)
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Qusai Hussein, Saddam Hussein's younger son, held wide-ranging powers over the nation's ruthless security apparatus and was one of the most feared men in Iraq. He and his brother Odai were killed in a four-hour firefight July 22, 2003, when U.S. forces surrounded and then stormed a palatial villa in Mosul, Iraq, a senior American general said.
Quiet, handsome and every bit as brutal as Saddam, the 37-year-old Qusai headed Iraq's intelligence and security services, his father's personal security force, and the Republican Guard, an elite force of 80,000 soldiers responsible for defending Baghdad.
Qusai was far more trusted by his father than his older brother Odai, and appeared to be his heir before the regime crumbled. He stayed out of the public eye and led a substantially more subdued private life than Odai. Iraqis nicknamed Qusai "The Snake" for his bloodthirsty but low-profile manner.
Experts do not believe Qusai played a significant role in the Gulf War of 1991. But he was a leading figure of terror in the conflict's aftermath, using mass executions and torture to crush the Shiite Muslim uprising after that war. He was on a Bush administration list of former Iraqi regime members who could be tried for war crimes.
Qusai was made chief of the army branch for the ruling Baath party in 2000, meaning virtually all the army's movements were under his supervision. Just before the war began in March 2003, he was put in charge of defending the nation's capital and heartland.
Qusai wed the daughter of a respected senior military commander. The couple, who later separated, had two daughters.
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