Son of Saddam
David
Another brutal murderer the Anti-America left is helping to
support....
Son of Saddam
As Iraq's top Olympic official, Uday Hussein is accused of the torture
and murder of athletes who fail to win
By Don Yaeger
As he stood at the double-door entrance to the office of Iraqi
National Olympic Committee president Uday Hussein, the boxer knew what
awaited on the other side. He had just returned from a Gulf States
competition, where he had been knocked out in the first round. Now it
was time to pay the price.
A former double for Uday says Iraq's Olympic programs have been
destroyed since Saddam gave his son control in 1984 and the brutal
punishment of athletes began. AP Photo
Inside the yellow-and-blue office, Uday, the older of Iraqi president
Saddam Hussein's two sons, paced the floor, waving his expensive Cuban
cigar and glaring out the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking
Baghdad. "He was yelling about how Iraq should not be embarrassed by
its athletes," recalls Latif Yahia, employed for nearly five years as
Uday's body double -- he would stand in for Uday on occasions that
were deemed a security threat -- and one of his closest associates to
have escaped to the West. "He kept saying, 'This is my Iraq.
Embarrassing Iraq embarrasses me.'"
With a wave of Uday's arm the manacled boxer was led into the room by
Iraqi secret service. Sitting behind a dark wood desk beneath an
oversized portrait of himself, Uday began his tirade. "In sport you
can win or you can lose. I told you not to come home if you didn't
win." His voice rising, he walked around the desk and gave the boxer a
lesson. "This is how you box," he screamed as he threw a left and a
right straight to the fighter's face. Blood dribbled from the
athlete's nose as Uday launched another round of punches. Then, using
the electric prod he was famous for carrying, Uday jolted the boxer in
the chest.
Blood was streaming from a cut above the boxer's eye when Uday ordered
his guards to fetch a straight razor. The boxer cried out as Uday held
the razor to his throat, and as he moved the blade to the fighter's
forehead, Uday laughed. He then shaved the man's eyebrows, an insult
to Muslim males. "Take him downstairs and finish the job," Uday
screamed.
Says Yahia, "They took him to the basement of the Olympic building. It
has a 30-cell prison where athletes -- and anyone else who is out of
favor with Uday -- are beaten and tortured. That was the last I ever
heard of that boxer."
THE BUTCHER'S BOY , as he is sometimes called, is reputed to be the
most brutal member of Iraq's notorious ruling family. As an infant he
reportedly played with disarmed grenades. By 10 he was accompanying
his father to the torture chamber at Qasr-al-Nihayyah (the Palace of
the End, where many political enemies, including deposed King Faisal
II, were killed) to watch Saddam deal with dissidents. By 16 he
bragged of committing his first murder, telling classmates he had
killed a teacher who had upbraided him in front of a girlfriend.
For nearly 20 years Uday Hussein has been the most powerful force in
Iraq's athletic hierarchy. In 1984, when Uday was 20, Saddam handed
his son the reins of both the country's Olympic committee and its
soccer federation, hoping Uday could help rebuild the spirit of the
nation's youth while also proving himself a worthy successor to his
father. The Iran-Iraq war, which would drag on for eight years and
lead to the death of hundreds of thousands of young Iraqis, was
demoralizing Iraqi youth. Success in sports, Saddam thought, could
lift their spirits and restore national pride.
"Saddam's plan didn't work," says Issam Thamer al-Diwan, a former
Iraqi volleyball player who now lives in the United States and carries
a list of 52 athletes he claims have been murdered by the Hussein
family. "Iraqi sports are worse today than ever. Our teams used to
win. There was much pride in playing for your country. But Uday never
understood pride, only fear. He was never an athlete. He thought he
could use his father's sadistic approach to improve performance. He
has failed."
In fact Iraq, once an Asian sports force that sent 46 athletes to the
1980 Summer Olympics, now rivals Liechtenstein in terms of athletic
insignificance. Iraq sent just four athletes to the 2000 Games in
Sydney. "People don't want to play because they [are afraid] to lose,"
says Sabah Mohammed, Iraq's former national basketball coach, who fled
to London in 1999 and claims that nine members of his wife's family
have been executed by the Hussein regime. "Can you blame them? No one
wants to speak out against Uday." (SI's attempts to reach Uday for
comment through the Iraqi permanent mission to the United Nations were
unsuccessful.)
Uday's penchant for violence has long been an open secret among
international athletic officials. Amnesty International reported in
2001 that Uday had ordered the hand of a security officer at his
Olympic headquarters to be chopped off five years earlier, after the
man was accused of stealing sports equipment that was missing (but
later turned up). In 1997 FIFA, the governing body of world soccer,
sent two investigators to Baghdad to question members of the Iraqi
national team who'd allegedly had their feet caned by Uday's henchmen
after losing a World Cup qualifying match to Kazakhstan. The
investigators spoke only to people whom Uday had selected. The result:
a report exonerating Uday.
"Did the torture of those players happen?" asks Sharar Haydar, a
longtime Iraqi soccer star who participated in 40 international
matches for the national team and was a teammate of many of the
victims. "Absolutely. But when you interview athletes who are under
Uday's control, what else do you expect them to say?
"I know what they went through," adds Haydar, who escaped from Iraq in
1998 and now lives in London. "I was tortured four times after
matches. One time, after a friendly [match] against Jordan in Amman
that we lost 2-0, Uday had me and three teammates taken to the prison.
When we arrived, they took off our shirts, tied our feet together and
pulled our knees over a bar as we lay on our backs. Then they dragged
us over pavement and concrete, pulling the skin off our backs. Then
they pulled us through a sandpit to get sand in our backs. Finally,
they made us climb a ladder and jump into a vat of raw sewage. They
wanted to get our wounds infected. The next day, and for every day we
were there, they beat our feet. My punishment, because I was a star
player, was 20 [lashings] per day. I asked the guard how he could ever
forgive himself. He laughed and told me if he didn't do this, Uday
would do it to him. Uday made us athletes an example. He believed that
if people saw he was not afraid to beat a hero, that they would live
in greater fear."
Ahmed Kadoim, a FIFA-recognized referee who fled Iraq in December,
tells a similar tale of torture at Uday's hands after he refused to
fix a soccer game last May. "I was the referee of a match between
Al-Shorta and the club of the air force," Kadoim says. "I was told
that Shorta should win, but I refused to fix the match. It ended at
2-2. I was taken by Uday's men to Al-Radwaniya prison, where they used
hoses and a cane to beat me three times a day. My punishment was 10
beatings each time. When I was bleeding, they forced me into a pool of
sewage. The guards laughed and said, 'You should have let them win.' I
still am in pain nearly a year later."
"Saddam is brutal and occasionally predictable," a senior U.S. State
Department official told SI. "Uday is brutal and unpredictable." It
may be revisionist history, but the official says Uday's bloodthirsty
nature worked to his father's advantage during the Gulf War. "You
should not discount the fact that when we invaded Iraq in 1991 that
Uday's presence, and the possibility at that time that he might be the
next ruler of Iraq, played a role in our decision to leave Saddam in
place. There was a lot of unease, and there was no plan for what would
come after Saddam. The possibility that it could have been one of his
sons was unacceptable." Indeed, Uday, along with his brother, Qusay,
top a list of Iraqi officials who the Bush Administration has said
will be tried for war crimes or crimes against humanity after an
American-led attack on Iraq, according to published reports.
"Two stories about Uday leap to mind," the State Department official
told SI. "The first is the caning of the feet -- called falaka -- of
the soccer team. That form of torture is well known to be used by
Saddam's forces as well. They beat the soles of the feet, which breaks
a lot of the smaller bones, causes massive swelling and leaves victims
unable to walk for a while. There were also reports that after a loss
Uday forced the volleyball team, which was made up of taller athletes,
to remain in a room he had constructed with a five-foot-high ceiling.
He built the room so small that not all of them could sit at the same
time. The only way they could fit was by having half of them standing
and leaning over while the other half were sitting with their knees in
their chests. He considered this a motivational technique. There was
always a psychological element to the kind of torture Uday employed.
You are supposed to play like tall players, so feel what it is like to
be small. For the soccer players, you are supposed to be fast and
quick, so I am going to beat your feet and ruin your livelihood. That
was his thinking."
After years of Uday's abuse, it came as little surprise to the
international community when he was the target of an assassination
attempt in December 1996. Uday was driving to a party in a two-car
caravan with bodyguards when gunmen peppered his car with submachine
gun fire. Uday was hit by eight bullets and was rushed to a hospital.
No one was arrested for the crime, leading experts on Iraq to believe
that a member of Uday's family -- possibly his brother -- had
masterminded the attack. The 6'1", athletically built Uday survived,
but he was partially paralyzed. Today he uses a wheelchair in private
and limps with a cane in public. In the years since the assassination
attempt Saddam has tended to favor Qusay as his successor.
AS U.S. AND British forces sit on the borders of Iraq poised for
invasion, Uday Hussein's name is near the top of the Pentagon's list
of the Filthy 40 -- the close associates of Saddam targeted for
war-crime trials. Yet Uday remains in place, unchallenged, as his
country's Olympic leader.
"This man has no business using the Olympic rings to give him
credibility," says Charles Forrest, CEO of INDICT, a
U.S.-government-funded human rights group based in London. "That the
Olympic community, which has known about the atrocities of Uday for
years, has taken no action is a black eye for the organization. The
IOC is in a morally indefensible position here."
In December, INDICT filed a complaint with the IOC asking that Iraq be
expelled from the Olympic community. Attached to the complaint were
sworn statements from several Iraqi athletes detailing torture and
imprisonment on orders from Uday. In February the IOC agreed to
investigate Uday's behavior. As of last week, however, none of the
athletes who had given sworn statements for the INDICT complaint had
been contacted by the IOC.
"[IOC leaders] have tried to call the timing of our complaint
suspicious and suggest it is part of an anti-Saddam agenda," says
Forrest. "The real question should be, Why didn't you do something
about this years ago? It is not as if we've uncovered something no one
has ever heard of, and they know it. It almost seems [that they're
thinking] that if they wait long enough, the U.S. will invade and they
won't have to deal with this issue."
IOC president Jacques Rogge acknowledged last week that his
organization received the complaint and says it is in the hands of the
ethics committee. But IOC member Richard Pound says that it is
"important to remember these are just allegations, and you have to
make sure this is not all tied to the Iraq-U.S. dispute, that we are
not being used for propaganda. You just never know."
"That disgusts me that someone would say that," says Haydar, the
former soccer star. "I wish they would run their hands over our scars,
see the pain in our eyes and float in raw sewage. Then there would be
no questions."
"The problem for the IOC is going to be when Saddam is overthrown and
people walk into the Olympic headquarters and see the torture chamber
and the blood on the floor," Forrest says. "What will they say then?"
Issue date: March 24, 2003
*********************************************************************************
Dear Skywalker:
You might want to adjust your aluminum foil hat--too many Zeta rays
are getting through.
Joe S. alt.politics 3/4/03
**********************************************************************************
TheKeith
would rather blame the US government than admit to fact.
<David (David)> wrote in message
news:3e7f7eb6...@news.chartertn.net...
TheKeith
"TheKeith" <n...@spam.com> wrote in message
news:RdWdndm_5vt...@giganews.com...
Scorpi...@attnospam.net
--
The most momentous thing in human life is
the art of winning the soul to
good or evil. Pythagoras
Jennifer E.
Uday Hussein take tender loving care of them for their support.
-J.
<David (David)> wrote in message
news:3e7f7eb6...@news.chartertn.net...
>
>
JLplsSS
>would rather blame the US government than admit to fact.
>
>
So what if this is true. Evil despots rule many countries around the world.
Are you suggesting we invade them all, overthrow their governments and install
democracies?
Saddam's trangressions against his own people are horrendous, but please don't
pretend that our being in Iraq now has anything whatsoever to do with Shrub's
benevolence towards Iraqi people.
Donna
My opinions might have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
goldenm...@yahoo.com
We will free Iraq. This will piss off
radical Islamics worldwide. Sleeper cells
will be activated within a few weeks or
months. Russia will arm the Arab Muslims
from Turkey Armenia Iran and Armenia with
nuclear. They will march on the Middle
East and BOOM. I am figuring that US will
take a few nukes along the way.
Everyone will pay for this ignorance. Forget
your mortage.
GM
David (David) wrote in message news:<3e7f7eb6...@news.chartertn.net>...
si...@seeingtree.org
goldenm...@yahoo.com says...
>
>Yes, I read this a while back.
>
>We will free Iraq. This will piss off
>radical Islamics worldwide. Sleeper cells
>will be activated within a few weeks or
>months. Russia will arm the Arab Muslims
>from Turkey Armenia Iran and Armenia with
>nuclear. They will march on the Middle
>East and BOOM. I am figuring that US will
>take a few nukes along the way.
>
>Everyone will pay for this ignorance. Forget
>your mortage.
>
>GM
the forest will protect me
i am his be-lov-ed child
where the spring emerges
from the heart of mother earth
& in the hollow of a tree
i keep the sacred fire
slender virgin
without guile
sibyl
goldenm...@yahoo.com
You need to take your meds everyday.
GM
PistolPete
news:or1v7vkct1emp5aa7...@4ax.com:
>>********** Dear Skywalker:
>>You might want to adjust your aluminum foil hat--too many Zeta rays
>>are getting through.
>>
>> Joe S. alt.politics 3/4/03
>>***********************************************************************
>>***********
>
mr. genius scorpion king,
perhaps we should let him kill a hundred thousand americans by supplying
anthrax or other wmd to al-queda?
----== Posted via Newsfeed.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==----
http://www.newsfeed.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! >100,000 Newsgroups
---= 19 East/West-Coast Specialized Servers - Total Privacy via Encryption =---
Scorpi...@attnospam.net
>>>***********
>>
>mr. genius scorpion king,
>perhaps we should let him kill a hundred thousand americans by
supplying
>anthrax or other wmd to al-queda?
From his office at the Iraqi Olympic HQ? I'll take that bet.