He started two major international wars - one against Iran, the second as a result of aggression against Kuwait - which cost an estimated one million lives. He instituted genocidal campaigns against the Kurds in the north of Iraq and the Marsh Arabs in the south. Ruling through the Sunni minority of which he was a member, he ignored the claims of the country's majority Shia population.

The third war in the region - which brought him and his regime down - was not directly begun by him, but by apparent American - and British - fears of a perceived threat his arsenal of weapons posed to international security. This time Saddam misjudged the event - and certainly the American mood.

Having been let off the hook after his defeat over his Kuwait adventure, he clearly felt that the international community did not have the stomach for a fight. He may have been right in that. But a new American President, George W Bush, determined to find a scapegoat for the Muslim terrorist attacks on the US in September 2001, was in no mood to abide by the niceties of international law. In the determination of President Bush and his cabinet of advisers, Saddam at length met his match, though the internecine aftermath of the campaign that overthrew him gave his conquerors little enough satisfaction.

Saddam appeared to have psychopathic tendencies which, combined with the exacerbating circumstances of his absolute power, resulted in the killing of more fellow Muslims, possibly, than Genghis Khan and Tamberlaine had caused between them in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Yet, until he invaded the oil-rich state of Kuwait, he enjoyed the collaboration of many governments abroad - including those in the West - who had given him backing in his unprovoked assault on Iran.

His invasion of the important Kuwait oilfields in 1990, however, resulted in the formation of an international military coalition against him, which was given sanction by United Nations resolutions. US-led, it inflicted a severe defeat on his forces and administered a check to his territorial ambitions - though it made him a hero to many Muslim militants and Arab nationalists. Even with defeat staring him in the face he continued to proclaim victory to his people.

And after his expulsion from Kuwait and the massive casualties inflicted on his army, Saddam continued defiant, thwarting the efforts of UN inspectors to check on his weapons stocks and refusing to let himself be cowed by the overflying of his country by armed British and American aircraft. Meanwhile he continued with projects to develop new weapons to threaten territories outside his borders, apparently secure in his power, in spite of the sufferings of his people, which were in such painful contrast to the lavish lifestyle enjoyed by himself and his family.

A fervent admirer of Hitler on account of the latter's boldness and hatred of Jews, he told his official biographer in 1980 that he wanted Iraqis to think of Nebuchadnezzar every day. "We could march into Palestine and bring all those Jews here in Babylon with their hands tied behind their backs once more", he said.

Saddam bin Hussein was born an orphan in the small village of Auja near the town of Tikrit some 100 miles north of Baghdad when Iraq was still a young state under King Ghazi and his British advisers. His was the traditional childhood of the poor peasantry, struggling to subsist in a hot, dusty, disease-ridden land.

In addition, as a hyperactive child who seemed constantly to provoke fights with other children, he endured ill treatment at the hands of a violent stepfather, a man known as Hassan the Liar. His circumstances were somewhat softened, however, by the interventions of his maternal uncle, Khairallah Tulfah, known as Khairallah the Thief, who would one day be rewarded by his nephew with the governorship of the capital and become known as the Thief of Baghdad.

Saddam's schooling began at the age of seven in Tikrit. Such was the lawless environment around him that, on his first day at school, he carried a steel bar in his hand and a loaded revolver in his pocket, the latter bought for him by his relatives. A year later, his uncle, who had fought on the side of a pro-Nazi coup in 1941 and who had started a bus service in Tikrit, took him to Baghdad for the rest of his primary and secondary education, and Saddam acquired a surname, Tikriti.

In 1958, after the overthrow of the monarchy, he was briefly imprisoned for the murder of a teacher, his uncle's Communist opponent in parliamentary elections in Tikrit, and began to develop a reputation as an assassin. For this reason, the leaders of the Socialist Arab Renaissance (Baath) Party, apparently in collusion with Egypt's Colonel Nasser, chose him to lead an attempt on the life of the country's military dictator, General Abdul-Karim Qasim.

Yet, the five-man gang bungled the ambush, even though Qasim travelled with hardly any protection, and Saddam fled to Syria, nursing a wounded leg, which was probably caused by a comrade's bullet. In Syria he stayed for six months before going on to Cairo "to study law", but in fact to work for Egyptian intelligence - and to marry his cousin Sajidah, Khairallah's daughter.

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