Interrogation of Saddam Hussein age of 20, Saddam Hussein joined the nascent Ba'ath Party, which was founded on a socialist form of Pan-Arabism. After participating in an unsuccessful 1959 assassination attempt on then Prime Minister of Iraq Abd al-Karim Qasim, Saddam became a fugitive, and eventually fled to Syria and then Egypt. Following the Ba'athists overthrow of the prime minister in the February 1963 Iraqi coup d'état, and the counter-coup half a year later, Saddam was jailed in Iraq from 1964 to 1966. The Ba'ath party returned to power after another successful coup in 1968. General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, a relative of Saddam Hussein,
Reactions to the execution of Saddam Hussein sectarian free-for-all that had the effect, on the video recordings, of making Mr. Hussein, a mass murderer, appear dignified and restrained, and his executioners, representing Shi'ites who were his principal victims, seem like bullying street thugs." The British Pakistani writer Tariq Ali denounced the proceedings, contrasting more favorably the trials of Nazi criminals after World War II with the trial of Saddam, "Where Nuremberg was a more dignified application of victor's justice, Saddam's trial has, till now, been the crudest and most grotesque." Reactions to the execution of Saddam Hussein Reactions to the execution of Saddam Hussein were varied. Some