All language subtitles for Secret.Sex.Lives.of.Tyrants.S01E05.1080p.WEB.h264-EDITH

NARRATOR: Evil.

Powerful.

Uncompromising.

Ruthless.

Behind closed doors...

a private hell.

- (woman screams)

- Tyrants often deviate
in their sexual behaviour.

- He fantasised about older women.

- He puts make-up on...

- He had thousands of concubines.

They were these glamourous,
gun-toting sex objects.

- (alarm blares)
PA: Fire on designated targets.

NARRATOR: The psychological insights
of the degenerate and deviant.

WOMAN:
He was obsessed with aphrodisiacs.

- It is typical of somebody
who is sexually repressed.

- Power can...change somebody.

- (wild cheering)

- (rousing rhythmic chanting)

NARRATOR: A tyrant,

a fighter
and a notorious sexual deviant.

- He wanted to instil fear
in the population.

- He was a textbook
oppressive tyrant.

NARRATOR: Saddam Hussein became

one of the world's
most despised dictators.

- He was a sexual sadist
par extreme.

- All of his sexual fantasies,
desires, gratification

are entwined with the...
a thirst for violence.

- And I think he maintained
the mentality of a torturer

right throughout his career.

NARRATOR: He dropped lethal gas

on his own people.

- Over 5,000 people were killed:
men, women and children.

NARRATOR: Murder by day,

before dropping sex stimulants

and calling for his mistresses
by night.

- He participated in sexual torture

of his victims,

including those
who were political prisoners,

as well as the women
that he had in his own bedroom.

- His world view was completely
shaped by his belief

that he was the greatest person
in the world

and nothing short of an invasion

to capture him in the end
was going to stop him.

NARRATOR: Baghdad, Iraq.

The love story of Zabibah
And The King plays out on stage.

The searing romance
is based on a novel

written by one Saddam Hussein,

perhaps to impress his mistress
of 30 years Parisoula Lampsos.

- It's quite amusing to people,
if it wasn't so horrendous,

that Saddam Hussein would write,

or at least ghost-write,
a romantic novel,

because he was
the antithesis of everything

a normal romantic hero would be.

NARRATOR: Who was this Iraqi enigma?

Romance novelist, sadistic killer,

kingpin on the wrong side
of the global war on terror.

- (speaks Arabic)

INTERPRETER: I am the helpless...

I am helpless citizen
of the Middle East.

NARRATOR: For the future ruler

of one of the world's
most oil-rich nations,

Saddam Hussein
had an unlikely start.

He was born in 1937 in Al Awja,

near Tikrit, just north of Baghdad.

- He was a Sunni Muslim...

in a country that was predominantly
Shi'ite Muslim.

He was brought up

in a fairly poor family

and joined the military

as a way to try to move up

and make a name for himself.

- Saddam's father
was a shepherd

who either died or abandoned
the family before Saddam's birth,

so he never had
a true father figure.

His mother, in her desperation,
tried to abort the child,

but when that failed,

she married another man

who, according to his CIA profile,

often beat the young Saddam.

NARRATOR: But Saddam did find
a father figure in his uncle,

an official of the Arab
Ba'ath Socialist Party,

Khairallah Talfah.

He taught the boy to stand
on his own two feet

and he railed against the decadent
influence of the Imperial British.

- The Baghdad of the 1950s

was a real jewel in the crown.

It was a beautiful place
with ancient temples,

beautiful buildings
and it attracted tourism

from all over the world.

Not just that -
it was a very liberal city.

Women were able to go to work.

Young girls went to school.

WOMAN: People were free to drink.

People were free to cohabitate.

People were free to express...

their opinions - politically,
religiously, um...so on.

- Now, to an Arab nationalist,

all of this represents
"the decadence of the West",

which is there to undermine
the "pure Arab way of life"

and he would have reacted strongly
to that.

NARRATOR: Fuelled by his uncle's
hatred of British imperialism,

Saddam was an activist
from a young age

and he wasn't going to wait
for permission to lead.

- If you try to understand
Saddam Hussein,

you've got to look at his course,

from his...
slightly difficult upbringing,

the absence of a father

and his immersion at a very
early age in Arab nationalism,

with this uncle, who was a mentor.

- Especially that his uncle was...

he fought in the battles
against the UK in Iraq in 1941

and that has influenced

Saddam Hussein's upbringing

in terms of looking up to his uncle

and looking at Western imperialism

as an ideology
that needed to be...rid in Iraq.

NARRATOR: But unlike his uncle,

Saddam had no intention
of running for political office.

Power was there
to be taken by force.

At just 22, he made his move.

- In 1959, the young Saddam Hussein

led a failed assassination attempt

on the Iraqi Prime Minister.

Because it failed,
he had to escape the country,

first by horseback

and then swimming across a river,

which gave him a mythical outlook

and the admiration
of the Iraqi people.

NARRATOR: The mythology
of the foiled assassination plot

would later be used to help create
Saddam's "cult of personality".

For now, however, he was content

to lie low and study law in Cairo

until he found his way
back to Baghdad.

That chance came in February 1963,

after the Ba'ath Party overthrew
the Iraqi leader Abdul-Karim Qasim

in a violent coup.

ARCHIVE NEWSREEL:
The historic city of Baghdad,

capital of Iraq, has been the scene
once more of bloody revolt.

For five years,
General Abdul Qasim, right,

ruled the country by armed might.

Now, like many before him,

he has fallen as he rose -
violently.

NARRATOR: The coast was now clear
to return to Iraq and take a wife.

An arranged marriage
to his first cousin,

Sajida Talfah,

the daughter of his mentor
and uncle Khairallah Talfah.

It was a calculated move
on Saddam's part,

designed to shore up his support
within the Ba'ath Party.

MARIAM FARIDA: Maybe he had a
romantic side to him, I'm not sure.

I mean, I'm sure he had...

..exposed some sort of romance,

but you also see
that brutal...leader,

the one who is oppressive,

so you have that bipolarity

in his, in his leadership
and in his persona, as well.

NARRATOR: Iraq was free,
but by no means united.

ARCHIVE: For a brief time,
Iraq's three peoples,

the Kurds, the Shi'ia and the Sunni,
shared power,

but there followed a series of coups

and then, in 1969,

the Arab Nationalist Ba'athist Party
took over for good.

NARRATOR: Saddam Hussein's cousin
Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr

became President,

with Saddam
as his unofficial deputy.

- He was also extremely ambitious

and when he came close to power,

he proved to be absolutely ruthless.

NARRATOR:
Not only ruthless, but also,

as he ascended closer to power,

an increasingly roving eye.

In 1968, the then 31-year old
married Saddam

attended a dinner in Baghdad

and was besotted by the daughter

of his host's neighbour.

She had jumped the fence
to join the gathering.

Parisoula Lampsos was only 16,

a Greek businessman's daughter.

It's said they danced cheek to cheek

to Frank Sinatra's
Strangers In The Night.

The Butcher of Baghdad
would meet with Parisoula

for at least three nights a week

for the next 33 years
of war and suffering.

By 1979,

Saddam Hussein
had risen through the ranks,

from Ba'athist hitman to
President of the Republic of Iraq.

- Saddam Hussein
wanted to portray himself

as the father of the nation,

father of the Iraqis
and the Iraqi nation

and he often used
narratives and propaganda

that, um, supported that story.

He saw himself as the natural leader
of the Arab world.

NARRATOR: By the time he became
President, he had five children.

Two sons, Uday and Qusay,

who would later become
as infamous as their father,

and three daughters, whom he married
off to prominent political allies.

Soon after becoming President,

it's believed
he had multiple mistresses,

including Parisoula Lampsos.

When he wasn't gratifying himself
in the bedroom,

he was ruthlessly cementing his grip
on power

and eliminating his enemies.

On the 22nd of July 1979,

just one week
after he became President,

Saddam Hussein called his party
members to a special meeting.

As their new leader arrives,

those attending think
it will be business as usual.

But Saddam is about to reveal
his true intentions.

Saddam's deputy announces

that there are traitors
in the audience,

members disloyal
to their new leader.

One by one,
their names are read out.

- (reads out names in Arabic)

NARRATOR: One by one,
the accused are ushered out,

never to be seen again.

- In 1979, Saddam Hussein staged

a very public - in fact,
televised - purging

of his political party.

The images of him sitting
on a stage, smoking a cigarette,

while names are called
of party members

who are brought forward...

- (names read out in Arabic)

- No-one knowing
where they're being ushered,

and you talk about
top-leadership army...personnels.

You just find them getting
ushered out, one after another,

and then, soon after,
you realise what's happening,

because you can see,
even on live television,

that people's reactions
were starting to look bizarre.

People starting to look scared.

You could only imagine what was
happening to those called outside.

Later on, we realised
that they were being shot to death,

while Saddam was just sitting
on the stage and smoking cigars.

- As the remaining members of
the party realise what is going on,

this atmosphere of adulation
starts to build up,

as all of a sudden they are claiming
and declaring

their support of Saddam Hussein.

MARIAM FARIDA: But I think the
grandiosity of it is the performance

and to try to create fear
amongst those

who are even willing to consider
the possibility

of going against his wishes.

It's also known that he...

he even assassinated
close family members of his,

because he felt
that they are plotting against him.

NARRATOR: Murdering members
of his own family

sent a clear message:

"Stand up to Saddam and you won't be
standing for much longer."

The wives and sisters of opponents

learned their President
had little mercy for them, too,

and a pattern of sexual terrorism
was emerging.

WOMAN: Hussein was a sexual sadist.

He entwined his sexuality
with violence.

He would use his power,
control, over these women...

to sexually abuse them

and to sexually torture them,

but alongside that,

it gave him pleasure to instil
fear and terror into his victims.

Just like all sexual sadists,

this was the only way

for him to receive sexual pleasure.

NARRATOR: Yet in public, like
so many of his fellow dictators,

he was at pains to present
a very different image.

- When he goes to visit places,

he often goes on walks

and there's a lot of children
around him cheering for him,

a lot of women and elderly,

and that helped
creating and boosting that narrative

as being the "father of the nation"

and I think he did that on purpose.

NARRATOR: In 1980,
fresh from his coronation

as undisputed ruler of Iraq,

he surprises his family and
the nation by taking a second wife.

- (chanting)

NARRATOR: Totally unrelated
but equally surprising,

he decides the Ayatollah-led Islamic
revolution in neighbouring Iran

is a threat to his brand
of Arab nationalism,

so he flexes his muscles
with a pre-emptive strike.

Saddam funded his military
with oil dollars,

but Iran hits back - hard.

ARCHIVE:
This oil installation at Kut

received a direct hit
from Iranian planes three days ago.

Whilst outside,
those who have not fled

cower beneath anything
that will give them cover.

NARRATOR: As the war dragged on,

Saddam relied on the United States
for support.

Oil was black gold in the 1980s

and the West was thirsty for it.

- In 1980,
when the war sprang up with Iran,

he was supplied or helped by not
just the West, but also by Israel,

because, of course, at that stage,

the enemy was seen
as the mullahs in Iran.

So at that point,
the West was being good with him,

but it didn't last.

- Emboldened by that support
from the United States,

he invaded Iran.

The war lasted eight years

and was one of the bloodiest
conflicts in the Middle East,

claiming over a million lives.

ARCHIVE: With so many other
conflicts in the Middle East,

Iran-Iraq has become
the forgotten war.

- During the course of the war,

he ran Iraq's economy
into the ground,

ending up owing billions of dollars
to oil-rich Kuwait.

ARCHIVE: In the capital,
huge pictures of Saddam Hussein

look down on a city and
an economy in deep trouble.

- You've got to look at the other
factor of his grandiosity.

He just couldn't restrain himself.

NARRATOR: Even as the war with Iran
dragged on,

crippling Iraq's economy,

Hussein built
huge, opulent palaces.

He released propaganda photos

depicting a happy and homely
family life.

Years later, however, when US troops
stormed one of his palaces,

they referred to it
as his "love shack",

a labyrinth of mirrored walls,

beanbag chairs,
lamps shaped like women,

bottles of Cognac and a Jacuzzi.

The walls were adorned
with seedy, semi-pornographic murals

and in the bedroom,

American troops found photos -
not of Saddam's loving family,

but of his many conquests.

- Saddam Hussein
was like all other dictators

in that there was a public front

and there's what he did behind the
public front, in his personal life,

and it was very important
that this be kept hidden.

The reason, of course, was,
it was against his image

as the sort of
"father of the nation"...

but also, it would
have actually made some people

step back in horror,

so he had to keep it separate
and keep it hidden

and, like so many others
of his kind,

this only emerges
after his downfall.

NARRATOR: It also became clear
Saddam had discovered a new weapon

to keep any Iraqi opposition at bay:

the widespread use of torture
and sexual sadism.

- Hussein was a sexual sadist

and what that means is that
all of his sexual fantasies,

desires, gratification

are entwined
with a thirst for violence.

For the majority of people,

their sexual appetite,

their sexual interests,
they develop during puberty

and if you are...
attracted to violence,

this is when that cultivates
and culminates

into sadistic tendencies,

so it is likely

that well before Hussein
gained the power that he had,

that he was likely participating in
various forms of sexual sadism.

NARRATOR: Bizarrely,
Saddam's mistress Parisoula

would write in her memoirs

that one of the dictator's
favourite pastimes

was donning a cowboy hat,
sipping whisky

and smoking
his favourite Havana cigars

whilst watching torture,

to the musical accompaniment

of Frank Sinatra's
Strangers In The Night.

Small wonder
that his sons Uday and Qusay

were showing signs of following
in his predatory footsteps.

- Hussein's sons had...

and overindulgent,
excessive lifestyle

that almost exceeded
the sexual conquests of Hussein.

One of his sons, Uday,
was rumoured

to have any woman brought
to his pleasure dome at any time.

They demanded
numerous sexual partners

and it's not so hard to recognise

that this is
how they viewed masculinity,

that they grew up...their father
was Saddam Hussein,

so when they became men,
they built their sexual lives

around
these extreme sexual appetites,

somewhat thinking
that they're normalised,

especially that they DESERVE
that level of sexual satisfaction,

as the sons of the ruler.

NARRATOR: Uday had become
a violent sexual predator,

cruising Baghdad night clubs
to pick up young women.

Those who resisted were kidnapped
and dealt with by his bodyguards,

as were any
who dared to criticise him.

JOURNALIST: He and the Colonel
took us to see the morgue.

Kareem says he was told,
"Go and find your brothers there."

They were lying in a pile
of 50 stinking bodies.

Their main crime
appears to have been

insulting Saddam Hussein's son
Uday.

NARRATOR: With his country
devastated by war and poverty

and his sons wildly out of control,

Saddam continued his regime
of sex pills and sexual liaisons.

It was at this time

that Saddam Hussein committed

his most heinous atrocity.

- (gunfire)
NARRATOR: In March 1988,

with Kurdish peoples
in Northern Iraq

rebelling against his ruinous reign,

Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons
to quash the unrest.

ARCHIVE: A week ago,
the Iranians captured it.

Within days, they claim,
Baghdad ordered it to be destroyed

with chemical weapons,

even though 50,000 of their own
people were still living there.

- Saddam Husseins's murderous regime
turned to genocidal

when on the 16th March 1988

Iraqi forces dropped
a lethal mix of gas

onto a Kurdish town, Halabja.

FEMALE JOURNALIST: Can she say
why she fears Saddam Hussein?

- (speaks emphatically
in Kurdish)

WOMAN: Because Saddam
make for her this problem.

- The weapons Saddam's regime used

in the chemical attack in Halabja

was a combination
of mustard gas and sarin.

NARRATOR:
Iraq became the first government

to ever attack its own people
with chemical weapons...

..and it remains
the largest such attack

in human history.

- Over 5,000 people were killed.

Men, women and children.

ARCHIVE: The people, the families
we found lying all around

had not been injured.

They'd been poisoned
by chemical bombs and shells

containing cyanide, mustard
and other nerve gases.

NARRATOR: It was one of the worst
atrocities of the modern era.

- I think he wanted
to set an example.

I think he wanted to set a precedent

for whatever group
wanted to demand change

is going to be met
with the same brutal response...

and that worked, cos after that

there was
no other political demands,

no political representation.

It was only Saddam's regime,
the Ba'athist regime.

- You're always reluctant
to put labels on people,

but if you want to use the word
"supremely psychopathic",

then there's no doubt
that Hussein was...would fit that.

NARRATOR: After the Iran-Iraq
hostilities finally ended

in August 1988,

at the house of Hussein a revelation
was about to tear the family apart.

Saddam had secretly married
his mistress Samira

two years earlier in 1986.

When his polygamy became public,

Saddam's wife of 25 years,
Sajida, was furious

and her oldest son Uday murderous.

- At a party held
by the Egyptian President,

Uday got completely out of control

and actually beat a man to death.

That's how bad things were getting.

NARRATOR: The victim of Uday's
frenzied attack was no stranger.

He was his father's own bodyguard.

- He beats people to death
because...

I mean, his father kills people

just for the mere fact of saying,
"We want better life,

we demand better living standards,"

so why would you think
this is an unacceptable behaviour?

But, yeah, even to Saddam's measure,

his sons, Qusay and Uday,
were even more brutal than him.

NARRATOR:
This was the first public sign

of a family dynasty
increasingly consumed

by sexual deviancy
and extreme violence,

but from both father and eldest son

there was even worse to come.

ARCHIVE: The woman had
just handed over £10,000 worth

to add
to the growing mountain of gold.

Those who forget to donate
are visited by soldiers

who remind them of their civic duty.

NARRATOR: While the Husseins
continued to enrich themselves,

their people starved,

yet Saddam had now
all but lost touch with reality.

- Saddam Hussein
comes to see himself

not only as indestructible...

..but also loved by the majority
of the people in Iraq.

He sincerely believes
he IS loved, but...

at the same time,
he keeps up this threat

and this fear in the population.

NARRATOR: By 1990,

with the country
deeply and irretrievably in debt,

Saddam responded
in the only way he knew how:

he accused neighbouring Kuwait,

who had helped bankroll
his war with Iran,

of siphoning off Iraqi oil.

- (speaks Arabic)

TRANSLATOR: We said to him
that what you are doing to us

was an...an...uh...

an act of war.

NARRATOR: On the 2nd August 1990

Iraq invaded Kuwait.

Whatever the aim,

the United States' response
was swift and uncompromising...

- (dramatic music)

NARRATOR:
..and other world leaders joined in.

ARCHIVE: On the steps
of Downing Street tonight,

Mrs Thatcher spoke of war.

- The peaceful solution would be

for Iraq to get out of Kuwait.

That is a matter for them.
We hope they will do it.

If not, we shall have to take
the military option

and see that Iraq DOES leave Kuwait.

- I mean,
the invasion of Kuwait in 1990

was predominantly one of...
Saddam's ambitions, personally.

He saw Kuwait as a significantly
smaller country in size to Iraq.

He saw that he is capable militarily
to take over,

to occupy it and stay there...

and control...um...

and he invaded it, in fact.

It was, luckily for Kuwait,
in that sense,

in that time that the US and
the West came and aided Kuwait.

Otherwise, it would have easily gone
into the hands of Iraq

and Saddam's ambitions.

NARRATOR: But rather than withdraw,

Hussein took hundreds
of Western foreigners hostage

and paraded them to the world
as his "guests",

human shields
against a Western attack.

ROBERT M KAPLAN: He should never
have gone to war against Iran.

Because of that war,

he was bankrupt

and that's why
he had to invade Kuwait

and then, of course, this time
the West was fully against him,

so having started off on
a possibly good note with the West,

it swung
to the complete other side.

- So they realised that they had
to stop him at some point.

NARRATOR: On 17th January 1991,

a US-led coalition
of more than 30 countries

crushed Iraqi forces

with a massive onslaught
of cutting-edge military technology.

ARCHIVE: In their opening attack,

the Allies combined their stealth
and precision technology,

electronic warfare tactics

and the classical elements
of mass and surprise.

NARRATOR:
It took just five days, 100 hours,

for them to drive Iraq
out of Kuwait.

US FIGHTER PILOT 1:
There's the hit. There's the shock.

US FIGHTER PILOT 2:
Oh, yeah! Keep hitting those...

Secondaries,
quick five secondaries.

NARRATOR: But before they retreated,
Iraqi forces

set the oil wells on fire...

- (flames roar)

- ..creating an environmental
and economic catastrophe!

- Iraq, let's not forget,

is the second-largest exporter
of oil in the world

and they can easily fluctuate
and control the oil prices

around the world,
which they did, at some point,

and that was unacceptable
for the West,

so they wanted to have control
over these uh...these decisions.

NARRATOR: Mistress Parisoula recalls

the only time she saw Saddam cry

was when he lost Kuwait.

He had gambled on Western apathy

and their previous support for him
in the conflict with Iran

and he had lost - heavily.

With the West
now calling for his overthrow

and his friends in the region
deserting him,

Saddam Hussein
was now a tyrant without teeth.

- But then, you see stories

and you see images
of Iraqi men and women

who are dying on the street
after the sanctions,

because of the scarcity
of basic food and basic life.

Um, you know, there's...
there was absolutely nothing,

so when there were sanctions
on Iraq,

it was mainly the Iraqi people
that struggled.

He maintained, Saddam Hussein
maintained his lavish lifestyle.

- (clamouring)

ARCHIVE: The suffering is far
greater than anyone had anticipated.

US and Turkish officials
now estimate

as many as 270,000 Kurds
may have fled to that country

to avoid Saddam Hussein's vengeance.

NARRATOR: Vengeance, for Saddam,

meant the cruel and prolonged
violent humiliation

of anyone deemed an opponent.

- We're starting to see
a systematic use of torture...

as a political tool for oppression.

We're starting to read stories

about rape being a systematic tool

to create, uh, shame amongst tribes,

to create more...more control
over them,

to persuade them and coerce them.

- The torture
that he inflicted upon women

was often associated
with rape and sexual violence,

but even men
were forced to...succumb

to these sexual...
sexually violent proclivities

and this included using
electric shock on the genitals,

it included uh...

even emotionally manipulative
torture,

such as having a woman

that was a family member
of the prisoner, the male prisoner,

having a woman come in
and be raped in front of him,

in order to instil
terror and pain and violence

through a...
orchestrated rape event.

NARRATOR: But Saddam
wasn't the only Hussein

who ordered
the torture and rape of civilians.

In the mid 1990s,
Saddam's eldest son Uday

raped the 15-year-old daughter
of Saddam's mistress Parisoula

in front of her.

Despite this,
or perhaps because of it,

Parisoula remained Saddam's lover

and Uday was appointed leader of the
paramilitary force Fedayeen Saddam,

to try and keep him occupied
elsewhere.

- (rousing rhythmic chanting)

- The sons are modelling themselves
on their father,

so they do
exactly what he is doing.

Also, Saddam Hussein
has expectations of his sons...

and he is showing the way

for how they can control society,

so it's a reciprocal relationship.

NARRATOR:
Uday's militia organisation

tortured and killed
his father's opponents

and reportedly beheaded 200 women

in an anti-prostitution campaign.

MARIAM FARIDA: They are known
to be brutal like their father,

but I don't see this as shocking,
to be honest.

I mean, why would you prep your sons
to rule

if you don't have
that kind of ambition?

NARRATOR: Uday was even known
to torture Iraqi athletes

who failed to win
international events.

By 1996, even Saddam thought
his sadistic son was going too far.

Incredibly, Saddam ordered
Uday's assassination.

It failed, but he spent
the rest of his life

with two bullets
lodged in his spine.

As Uday recovered, his father
remained leader of a country

now almost entirely dependent

on food and aid handouts
from the United Nations.

- In political, or...

what you might call
nationalistic terms,

he was a madman.

Whether he was clinically insane
is questionable

and, ultimately, doubtful.

What he certainly was,
was an undoubted psychopath.

NARRATOR: By 2001,

Saddam Hussein was living in denial,

clinging onto power
by encouraging a siege mentality

in his benighted
and bankrupt country.

- (emphatic address in Arabic)

ARCHIVE: The presidential address
was broadcast

on all Iraq's television and
radio channels simultaneously.

Saddam Hussein told his country
that the Gulf War,

what he called "the immortal
mother of all battles",

had been a triumph for Iraq
over the forces of Satan.

- (menacing music)

NARRATOR:
In September of that year, however,

his fate would be taken
out of his hands.

- (screams of panic)

NARRATOR: The world changed over
a few horrifying moments on 9/11.

Now it was the West

who was seeking vengeance.

US President George Bush Junior

declared Iraq a "rogue state".

- Saddam Hussein
is a homicidal dictator

who is addicted
to weapons of mass destruction.

America must not ignore the threat
gathering against us.

We cannot wait for the final proof,

the smoking gun...

..that could come in the form
of a mushroom cloud.

NARRATOR: Calling out Saddam Hussein

for secretly developing
weapons of mass destruction

was a big call by President Bush.

No definitive evidence
was ever found

by UN inspectors
or American Intelligence,

but Saddam himself had continually
encouraged the speculation

and, having shown he'd been willing
to gas his own people

and having plotted to assassinate

the US President's father,
George Bush Senior,

he had shown himself to be
an implacable enemy of the West.

- It was seen
as an opportunity to get rid of him,

because for the Bush administration

it was a "now or never" opportunity
to get rid of Saddam Hussein,

because you have...
the pretext is set, it's there

in terms of, you know,
the popular propaganda:

you have the weapons of mass
destruction, you have the 9/11,

you have
harbouring of terrorist networks...

and you have
your regional alliances,

such as Saudi Arabia
and the Gulf States,

who are seeing Saddam as a threat -
as an existential threat...

..and it's a weak state now,
it's a weak regime,

so you can get rid of him.

NARRATOR: While his empire
continued to crumble around him,

Saddam found ways
to distract himself.

He married a fourth wife in secret

and moved his mistress
Parisoula Lampsos

into the grounds
of his Presidential palace.

After 30 years, Saddam didn't
even give her the dignity of a name,

referring to her only as "Shaqraa" -
"the Blonde".

- He actually kept her
in her own house

that is rumoured
to be gilded in gold

and she had jewels and
all of these extravagant things,

but he...she was only kept there
for his sexual interests

and she...erm...
felt that she could not leave.

She felt imprisoned.

NARRATOR: Lampsos eventually
escaped Saddam's clutches

and fled to the West,

where she wrote her memoirs.

Much of what is known
about the tyrant's secret sex life

comes from her.

- Hussein is known for using Viagra
all of the time...

and this feeds
into his sexual sadism.

The sex drive

that somebody that's taking Viagra
would have

would result in...multiple demands
for sexual encounters,

but because Hussein
was a sexual sadist,

this also meant
that multiple instances of torture,

pain and violence

would also be...demanded
by his sex drive,

so we can see that this relationship

between
his unsatiated sexual appetite

feeds into his violent nature.

NARRATOR: Saddam ignored
the West's ultimatums to step down,

so on March 20, 2003,

US-led coalition forces
invaded Iraq.

- On my orders,

Coalition forces have begun striking

selected targets
of military importance

to undermine Saddam Hussein's
ability to wage war.

NARRATOR: In April,
US troops entered Baghdad,

revealing the full extent

of the wealth and corruption
of Saddam Hussein.

Images of the opulence hidden
behind the doors of the palaces

were shown around the world.

MARIAM FARIDA: Well, then,
you look at Saddam Hussein's life,

his houses,
his castles, his palaces,

his cars - he was...

he was lavishing in gold.

He thinks he built a legacy...

with his name.

He took ownership of the country,

he took ownership
of the Iraqi people

and he wanted to continue
and maintain that legacy

for his...future children,

so eventually
it will become a monarchy.

He was a textbook oppressive tyrant.

NARRATOR:
The tyrant was about to be toppled.

In July 2003,

US troops killed Saddam's hated sons
Uday and Qusay

in a four-hour shootout.
- (shots ring out)

NARRATOR:
Then, in December of that year,

the ultimate humiliation:

Saddam Hussein is found hiding
in a spider hole

near his hometown of Tikrit.

- It's a miserable hiding place,

particularly for a man who built

some of the most ostentatious
palaces in the Middle East.

The kitchen was filthy.

No palace servants here.

NARRATOR:
With his reign of terror over,

his people were at last
free to speak.

REPORTER: This man
took reporters to a prison

and showed them the crude tools

with which he'd been tortured
by Saddam's secret police

and the scars they'd left.

NARRATOR: In October 2005,

Saddam Hussein was tried

before an Iraqi Special Tribunal

for crimes against humanity.

REPORTER: The Judge read the charges

against Saddam Hussein
and his seven co-accused:

premeditated murder, imprisonment,

forced deportation.

NARRATOR: Finally, in November 2006,

Saddam was found guilty
of crimes against humanity

and sentenced to death

for the murders of 148 inhabitants

of the village of Dujail in 1982.

In reality,

deaths at his hands numbered
in the hundreds of thousands,

but he and his followers were
so adept at destroying evidence

that the Dujail murders
were the only ones

which could be linked
directly to him.

On December 30, 2006,

aged 69,

Saddam Hussein was hanged.

He died as he had lived -

violently and defiantly.

- Saddam Hussein
has been characterised

as "the madman of the Middle East",

but this implies
that he was irrational

and uncalculated.

- When you say
someone is a "madman",

you are instantly saying, you know,

they are irresponsible for the
behaviour they create or commit,

they are irrational,

and hence, anything that they commit

is because of that irrationality.

My opinion is, Saddam Hussein
was a very calculated man.

He was a very smart man.

- He was ruthless.
He was meticulous.

We can't just say
it was down to madness.

Everything,
everything was thought about.

- (wild cheering and whistling)

REPORTER: This act, these images

broadcast around the globe

came to represent
the end of a cruel dictatorship.

- He would be seen as not just one
of Arab nationalist dictators

who caused a lot of damage
and destruction,

not just to their country,
but people around,

but as someone who had no limits

and, sooner or later, he was going
to overextend himself

and the message was from...

the message to history is

that all dictators
have their shelf life,

their use-by date

and he's a classic example.

- (melancholy piano melody)

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