While governments and private businesses can both offer bounties, Saddam Hussein’s $25 million bounty came directly from the United States government. It was the largest bounty offered for a single person, matched by the bounties on Osama bin Laden, bin Laden’s Al Qaeda successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in 2022, and former successor Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi, who died in a U.S. airstrike in 2006.
As the BBC explains, Hussein was part of a 55-person group of “the most-wanted members of the former Iraqi regime” targeted by the U.S. government. And since 55 is close to the number of cards in a standard deck, Saddam Hussein got labeled the “Ace of Spades,” i.e., a top target. His two sons, the elder Uday and the younger Qusay Hussein, were included on the list with a bounty of $15 million each. As Time explained in 2014, Uday was too “psychopathic” even for Hussein, and so Hussein intended to pass along his dictatorship to Qusay, who also played a role in Iraqi intelligence and weapons programs.
Per CNN, both of Hussein’s sons were dead by December 2003, and their collective $30 million bounty was paid out to an unnamed informant who led authorities to the sons’ locations. Both men, along with two others, were killed in a “fierce gun battle” with U.S. forces (via the U.S. Air Force), and the bounty for both was paid out, which sheds light on bounty requirements: Namely, the informant fulfilled his part by willingly disclosing the sons’ locations, no matter what else happened. He didn’t have to play the Hollywood vigilante, either.
