The Tyrant Pays for His Crimes ; Bloodthirsty Dictator Copied Stalin's Lead in Disposing of Enemies

Summary

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VIOLENT, proud and defiant, Saddam's character was formed by a childhood of deprivation and brutality. He was born in 1937 in the dusty village of Awja near Tikrit, a fiercely tribal area. His father disappeared before his birth and Saddam's mother married a man who regularly beat the child.

An old schoolfriend once told the BBC's Panorama show that Saddam was a loner in his youth. 'He used to carry an iron bar to protect himself,' said Hasan al-Alawi, 'and he grew up believing it was the only thing he could trust.'

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Extract

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The Tyrant Pays for His Crimes ; Bloodthirsty Dictator Copied Stalin's Lead in Disposing of Enemies

The wary, unloved child grew into a thuggish teenager who fled the family to live with a militant Iraqi nationalist uncle in Baghdad.

In the 1950s the young Saddam was drawn into the violent world of Iraqi politics and recruited by the opposition Ba'ath party to assassinate the then Iraqi President, Abdul Karim Kassim.

Later he would hire a Hollywood director to make a film about...

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