Bakr, Ahmad Hasan al-
Bakr, Ahmad Hasan al-
(äkhmäd` häsän` äl-bäk`ər), 1914–82, president of Iraq (1968–79). He served as an officer in the Iraqi army but was forced to retire (1958) because of his participation in revolutionary activities. A member of the Ba'ath partyBa'ath party, Arab political party, in Syria and in Iraq. Its main ideological objectives are secularism, socialism, and pan-Arab unionism. Founded in Damascus in 1941 and reformed, with the name Ba'ath, in the early 1950s, it rapidly achieved political power in Syria.
..... Click the link for more information. , an ultranationalist left-wing group, he became prime minister after the Ba'athists seized power in 1963. He left the government later in that same year when conservative military leaders forced the Ba'athists from power. Bakr became president in 1968 after leading another Ba'athist coup, and was replaced by Saddam HusseinHussein, Saddam
, 1937–2006, Iraqi political leader. A member of the Ba'ath party, he fled Iraq after participating (1959) in an assassination attempt on the country's prime minister; in Egypt he attended law school.
..... Click the link for more information. in 1979.