Saddam Hussein

He was born in al-Awja, a small village near Tikrit, to a peasant Sunni Arab family; the Arabic article describes his upbringing in the house of his uncle Khairallah Talfah in Baghdad, as a member of the al-Bayjat clan of the Albu Nasir tribe. His father died around the time of his birth, and after his mother's remarriage he went to live with his uncle, a veteran of the 1941 Anglo-Iraqi War who became a fatherly figure to him. He joined the Ba'ath Party in 1957 and in 1959 took part in the party's attempt to assassinate prime minister Abd al-Karim Qasim, fleeing afterwards to Syria and then Egypt, where he studied law without completing the degree. Imprisoned in Iraq in 1964–1966, he rose after the Ba'ath coup of 1968 to become vice-president under Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr. ^{1 2}

On 16 July 1979 he succeeded al-Bakr as president — the succession is recorded here in prose, since al-Bakr has no record in this graph. His rule brought war with Iran (1980–1988), including the Anfal campaign and the chemical attack on Halabja in 1988; the invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 and the Gulf War of 1991 that expelled Iraqi forces; and a decade of international sanctions. Senior government, military and security roles under his administration were filled predominantly by Arab Sunni Muslims, a minority of the population, while the regime suppressed Shia and Kurdish opposition. From 1993 his regime placed greater emphasis on Islam across Iraqi life through the Faith Campaign; he had also added the Takbir to the national flag in 1991 and commissioned a "Blood Quran", written with 27 litres of his own blood, to thank God for saving him from dangers and conspiracies. In 1977 he had stated that the party "does not take a neutral stance between faith and atheism; it is always on the side of faith". ¹

The United States-led invasion of 2003 overthrew his government; he was captured near Tikrit on 13 December 2003. Tried by the Iraqi Special Tribunal, he was sentenced to death for the Dujail massacre and executed by hanging at Camp Justice in the Kadhimiya district of Baghdad on 30 December 2006. He was buried in a mausoleum at al-Awja; before the mausoleum was destroyed in the fighting of 2015, a Sunni tribal group reportedly removed his body to a secret location. ^{1 2}

No source names Saddam Hussein's own school. The English article's Sunni reference is to the family he was born into, and the Arabic article's is to the clan of his upbringing — family and clan framing. Neither infobox carries a religion field, and Wikidata's religion value is Islam in general alone. His Faith Campaign, the Takbir on the flag and the Blood Quran are public practice and state policy. The museum therefore records his faith as unknown, flagged, with the position stated exactly in his data record. ^{1 2 3}

• The defined source entities cited above, recorded in data/source/.
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