America’s No 1 trophy prisoner is due to face trial in Baghdad on Wednesday, nearly two years after he was dragged out his sordid “foxhole” in December 2003.

The most serious charge against Saddam Hussein relates to the execution of 143 people who allegedly tried to assassinate him in Dujail, north of Baghdad, in 1982, and whose death sentences he signed personally. Saddam is incarcerated in “Camp Cropper”, near Baghdad airport, where, according to his guards, he whiles away the hours eating Doritos and writing bad poetry.

Saddam Hussein was born in a village near Tikrit in 1937. His leadership ambitions were evident from an early age: for 20 years from the age of 19 he helped to overthrow a succession of Iraqi leaders. In 1964 he became No 2 in the Baath party, which assumed power in 1968. When President Bakr resigned in 1979, Saddam called a party meeting and read out, on film, the names of those he intended to purge. They were executed immediately. Saddam had made himself undisputed leader of Iraq.

During his dictatorship, Saddam excelled in brutality. In 1982 he shot his health minister in a Cabinet meeting; in 1988 he ordered a chemical attack on the Kurds, killing 5,000 people. He invaded Kuwait in 1990, firing Scud missiles at Israel and declaring: “We will devour half of Israel by fire.” After losing the Gulf War he crushed the Shia Muslims and the Kurds, killing thousands of Iraqis.

In a 2002 interview with George Galloway, MP, Saddam declared his love for double- decker buses, Quality Street chocolates and Winston Churchill, whom he quoted: “If they come, we are ready. We will fight them on the streets. We will never surrender.” He was re-elected that year with a questionable 100 per cent of the vote. After the American-led coalition attacked Iraq in March 2003, Saddam went on the run but was betrayed by one of his bodyguards. Pictures released to the media showed a frightened old man who had, contrary to his boasts, given himself up without a fight.

Saddam’s defence is said to rest on the argument that the Dujail death sentences were just as legitimate as those that George W. Bush has signed in his time. If convicted, he faces the death sentence himself. Britain and the UN have protested against Iraq’s reintroduction of the death penalty but Jalal Talabani, the new Iraqi President, said recently on television that he would not block the imposition of the death penalty if Saddam were found guilty, as “there are 100 reasons to sentence Saddam to death”.