Born in 1966, the second son of Saddam Hussein, Qusay was the heir apparent, groomed to succeed his father as ruler of Iraq. Little is known about the life of Qusay Hussein. Under the last years of the Hussein regime, he had, however, taken on increasing responsibility as head of all Iraqi intelligence and security services, the Republican Guard, and the Special Republican Guard, the units responsible for the regime's protection and its special weapons programs.
Qusay served as deputy chairman of the Special Security Committee of the Iraqi National Security Council. The U.K. claims that the committee's main goal was to prevent UN inspectors from uncovering evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs. He was also the head of Al-Amn al-Khas, Iraq's Special Security Organization, which was responsible for the Iraqi president's security, supervising operations against Iraqi Kurds and Shi'a, securing WMD sites, and monitoring all other security services, as well as government ministries.
Qusay is reported to have ordered the prison executions in 1988-89 of more than 2,000 inmates, and was subsequently given broad powers by his father to quell the 1991 Shi'a uprising that followed the Gulf War that year. He was behind the 1995 operations to crack down on the Al-Dulaym tribe and another Shi'a revolt in 1997.
In May 2001, Qusay was elected to the 18-member executive leadership of the Ba'ath Party, the Iraqi Regional Command. He was also named deputy of the Ba'ath Party's Military Bureau that year. Five days before the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom in March, Saddam divided Iraq into four military command regions, appointing his younger son commander of Iraq's "Central Region," including the governorates of Baghdad, Salah Al-Din, Al-Anbar, Babil, and Wasit (see "RFE/RL Iraq Report," 20 March 2003). Married to the daughter of a senior military commander, Lieutenant General Sultan Hashim Ahmad al-Jabburi Tai, Qusay is said to have at least three sons. One of those sons is said to have been with his father when he was killed in Mosul on 22 July. But U.S. officials have not yet confirmed the identity of that child.