in timing.
The Free Officers and the Baathists traded bullets and bombs until February 1963, when Qasim was caught in another ambush and shot 82 times at close range. Following Qasim’s death, ABI agents—having received a mountain of incriminating evidence from an anonymous source—swooped in and arrested over two hundred Free Officers, effectively breaking the union’s back. Most of the professions that had been represented by the Free Officers now switched their allegiance to Baath.
In March 1963 Saddam Hussein returned to Baghdad and was appointed secretary treasurer of the Baathists. In 1968 he was promoted to union vice president. Finally, in 1979, after the surprise resignation of union president Ahmed Hassan al Bakr , Saddam was elected leader of the Baathists, a position he holds to this day.
PHILANTHROPIST, NOVELIST . . . AND PROFESSIONAL DEFENDANT
1979 also marked the first time Saddam was indicted by the federal government. The case, which concerned the bribery and intimidation of workers on an oil pipeline between Kurdistan and Iraq, never went to trial. A furnace malfunction at the hotel where the government’s witnesses were sequestered flooded the guest floors with carbon monoxide, asphyxiating four dozen people.
In 1982 the government tried again, accusing Saddam of having rigged the election in which his uncle Khairallah became mayor of Baghdad. On the morning of the second day of jury deliberations, the jury foreman was found hanged in a courthouse restroom. An alternate juror was summoned and deliberations continued; Saddam was acquitted.
By 1986, with two additional acquittals to his name, Saddam had become a national celebrity. He gave regular press interviews and went on television to proclaim, with a wink, his innocence. He suggested that his legal troubles were a result of “high and mighty persons in Riyadh ” failing to understand “the rough and tumble nature of life in Iraq.”
In 1987 Saddam established the Saddam Hussein Foundatio n, a charitable trust that gave money to schools, mosques, and hospitals, and the Baath Union Scholarship Program , which helped Iraqis from poor families attend college. Federal prosecutors, noting that Saddam’s personal charity donations exceeded his declared income by a factor of ten, charged him with tax evasion . He was found not guilty . . .
In December 1998 Saddam held a press conference to announce he was publishing a pulp-fiction novel. “For years, government lawyers have been telling outrageous stories about me,” he said. “I thought it was time to try telling one of my own.” The book, Zabibah and the King , concerns a labor organizer from Tikrit who reluctantly turns to a life of crime after his mistress, Zabibah, is murdered by gangsters; in due course, having exacted revenge on the killers, he becomes the (benevolent) king of the underworld.
The Baghdad Post called Zabibah and the King “sublime,” but most other reviews were lukewarm at best, and initial sales were disappointing. Then the Baghdad district attorney attempted to use the book as the basis for a murder conspiracy charge, arguing that the climax of the story was a thinly fictionalized account of the killing of Abd al Karim Qasim that included details only someone privy to the murder plot would know. A grand jury rejected the DA’s request for an indictment, but the resulting publicity pushed Zabibah onto the bestseller lists.
Saddam Hussein has since written three sequels to Zabibah , also bestsellers: The King’s Castle (2001), The King and the City (2003), and The King Says Devil, Begone (2006). According to Saddam’s literary agent, a fifth “King” novel is nearing completion; state and federal prosecutors are said to be eagerly awaiting their advance review copies.
FACTS ABOUT SADDAM HUSSEIN
· He married his cousin Sajida Talfah in 1963. They have five children, including two sons, Uday (b. 1964) and Qusay (b. 1966).
· In 1986 Saddam married a
The Free Officers and the Baathists traded bullets and bombs until February 1963, when Qasim was caught in another ambush and shot 82 times at close range. Following Qasim’s death, ABI agents—having received a mountain of incriminating evidence from an anonymous source—swooped in and arrested over two hundred Free Officers, effectively breaking the union’s back. Most of the professions that had been represented by the Free Officers now switched their allegiance to Baath.
In March 1963 Saddam Hussein returned to Baghdad and was appointed secretary treasurer of the Baathists. In 1968 he was promoted to union vice president. Finally, in 1979, after the surprise resignation of union president Ahmed Hassan al Bakr , Saddam was elected leader of the Baathists, a position he holds to this day.
PHILANTHROPIST, NOVELIST . . . AND PROFESSIONAL DEFENDANT
1979 also marked the first time Saddam was indicted by the federal government. The case, which concerned the bribery and intimidation of workers on an oil pipeline between Kurdistan and Iraq, never went to trial. A furnace malfunction at the hotel where the government’s witnesses were sequestered flooded the guest floors with carbon monoxide, asphyxiating four dozen people.
In 1982 the government tried again, accusing Saddam of having rigged the election in which his uncle Khairallah became mayor of Baghdad. On the morning of the second day of jury deliberations, the jury foreman was found hanged in a courthouse restroom. An alternate juror was summoned and deliberations continued; Saddam was acquitted.
By 1986, with two additional acquittals to his name, Saddam had become a national celebrity. He gave regular press interviews and went on television to proclaim, with a wink, his innocence. He suggested that his legal troubles were a result of “high and mighty persons in Riyadh ” failing to understand “the rough and tumble nature of life in Iraq.”
In 1987 Saddam established the Saddam Hussein Foundatio n, a charitable trust that gave money to schools, mosques, and hospitals, and the Baath Union Scholarship Program , which helped Iraqis from poor families attend college. Federal prosecutors, noting that Saddam’s personal charity donations exceeded his declared income by a factor of ten, charged him with tax evasion . He was found not guilty . . .
In December 1998 Saddam held a press conference to announce he was publishing a pulp-fiction novel. “For years, government lawyers have been telling outrageous stories about me,” he said. “I thought it was time to try telling one of my own.” The book, Zabibah and the King , concerns a labor organizer from Tikrit who reluctantly turns to a life of crime after his mistress, Zabibah, is murdered by gangsters; in due course, having exacted revenge on the killers, he becomes the (benevolent) king of the underworld.
The Baghdad Post called Zabibah and the King “sublime,” but most other reviews were lukewarm at best, and initial sales were disappointing. Then the Baghdad district attorney attempted to use the book as the basis for a murder conspiracy charge, arguing that the climax of the story was a thinly fictionalized account of the killing of Abd al Karim Qasim that included details only someone privy to the murder plot would know. A grand jury rejected the DA’s request for an indictment, but the resulting publicity pushed Zabibah onto the bestseller lists.
Saddam Hussein has since written three sequels to Zabibah , also bestsellers: The King’s Castle (2001), The King and the City (2003), and The King Says Devil, Begone (2006). According to Saddam’s literary agent, a fifth “King” novel is nearing completion; state and federal prosecutors are said to be eagerly awaiting their advance review copies.
FACTS ABOUT SADDAM HUSSEIN
· He married his cousin Sajida Talfah in 1963. They have five children, including two sons, Uday (b. 1964) and Qusay (b. 1966).
· In 1986 Saddam married a
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