Ex-Iraq President Saddam Hussein to be featured in Call of Duty video game

Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is set to "appear" as an antagonist is the forthcoming installation of the Call of Duty: Black Ops video game, slated to be released later this year.

In a reveal trailer released on Tuesday, the game is shown to take place during the geopolitical conflict surrounding the Gulf War in the early nineties, and features the former US presidents Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush and former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, alongside Hussein, played by real-life actors.

The live-action, black-and-white trailer sees the historical figures cloaked in darkness as they narrate ominous monologues potentially regarding the game’s protagonist. Hussein says: "Nothing is what it seems. But if it’s truth you seek, look in the dark", before the game’s logo is revealed at the end.

The Call of Duty: Black Ops series has a track record of using fictionalised historical and political figures in its games, in themes blending fiction with reality. US Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy have appeared as fictionalised versions of themselves.

Hussein has previously been depicted in the Solider of Fortune video game, released between 2000 and 2002.

Like its predecessor, Black Ops 6 will be set in the past. The previous game was set amid the Cold War, during the early to mid-eighties.

Activision-Blizzard, the US video game company behind the Call of Duty series, will unveil the latest installment in full next month.

The Gulf War, which took place between 1990 and 1991, began after Saddam Hussein's regime invaded Kuwait. A 42-country coalition led by the US later forced Iraqi troops out of Kuwait while carrying out a devastating bombardment of Iraq.

The US and UN also imposed crippling sanctions which were blamed for the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi children.

Hussein was the Iraqi president between from 1979 to 2003, before he was captured following the US invasion of Iraq in the same year.

The former president was subsequently put on trial for crimes against humanity, with a particular focus on massacres carried out against Iraq's Kurdish community in the early eighties, before being sentenced to death by hanging in 2006.