Udai Hussein

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Udai Hussein (before 1998)

Udai Saddam Hussein at-Tikriti ([ ʕudaɪ -], Arabic عدي صدام حسين التكريتي, DMG ʿUdayy Ṣaddām Ḥusain al-Tikrītī , also transcribed Uday, Odai) (born June 18, 1964 in Baghdad , † July 22, 2003 in Mosul ) was the eldest of Saddam Hussein's five children and his first wife Sadschida Talfah . He was the head of the National Olympic Committee of Iraq and the Saddam Fedayeen militia . For several years he was considered the likely successor to Saddam. He also produced the newspaper Babel .

Life

Because of his extravagance, but above all because of the murder of Saddam's favorite bodyguard and taster in 1988, the successor no longer fell on him, but on his brother Qusai Hussein . For this murder he was temporarily exiled to Switzerland by his father .

In 1984, Udai was married by his father to his cousin Sadscha, the daughter of Saddam's half-brother Barzan al-Takriti. However, the marriage lasted only a few weeks, because Sajah fled to her mother Ilham, the sister of Udai's mother Sajida, in Switzerland.

On December 12, 1996, he was seriously injured in an attack in Iraq. He was hit by eight, according to other sources seven, bullets while driving a car. Saddam Hussein's lover, Parisoula Lampsos, later reported that the dictator would not have been unhappy if his son had not survived the attack.

On March 17, 2003, US President George W. Bush gave Saddam Hussein 48 hours to leave the country, but explicitly added that Udai and Qusai had to go too, or there would be war. Udai responded to the ultimatum by advising Bush and his family to leave the United States.

Accusations of murder and torture

Some of the allegations that are made against Udai:

  • It is alleged that Udai, as head of the Iraqi Olympic Committee, oversaw the captivity and torture of Iraqi athletes who did not live up to his expectations. It has been proven that he had several players from the Iraqi national football team interned in a prison camp after the 3-0 draw against South Korea. There is talk of crushing feet or hitting football players after bad games. Other sources tell of an Iron Maiden .
  • A former member of the French Foreign Ministry alleged that Udai and his bodyguards used gun violence to force a French couple into sexual intercourse in a hotel room, and that they were videotaped for Udai.
  • The Swiss hotelier Ramon Weibel stated in an interview with Stern (1998) that Udai had stayed in his hotel with the declared intention of having two fewer companions “with you” when he left, whereupon Weibel informed the police. In fact, two bodyguards had disappeared, and their whereabouts could not be clarified until Udai's departure.
  • Former Udai doppelganger Latif Yahia claimed that Udai was unable to perform sexual acts without causing pain and seeing blood on his partners. The double said Udai ordered numerous abductions of women, including a Russian ballerina . In a broadcast by Alfred Biolek he also reported that he had stolen thousands of luxury automobiles and valuables for Udai in Kuwait.
  • It has been reported time and again that Udai, driving a motorcade through Baghdad, selected women to brutally rape them in family palaces or even on the street. According to reports from Iraqi families, Udai often held abducted women captive for weeks. If relatives complained about this, they got the kidnapped family member murdered, dismembered and packed in several boxes.
Latif Yahia, 2009

Latif Yahia

Allegations of Yahia

The Iraqi officer Latif Yahia , who served as Udais Fidai (doppelganger) from his recruitment on October 2, 1987 until his escape on December 9, 1991 , detailed various crimes of Udai in his book:

  • Rape of Abbas Al-Janabi's niece. In compensation, he later became the director of the Udais newspapers.
  • Camel Hannah, Saddam Hussein's taster. An ostensibly futile reason to calm down during a celebration that he did not obey (“I only listen to orders from the President”) causes Udai to freak out and slit the throat of the food processor and friend of Saddam with an electric knife. Then he kills the fatally injured man with two shots. The real cause was the hatred of the camel Hannah, who “always worried my father women and girls. If only he had n't brought about this whore (meaning Samira Shahbandar) ”.
  • Nahle Sabet, an architecture student, raped and thrown to eat by Udais' fighting dogs.
  • Asra Hafez: The girl resisted the harassment of Udai, dared to laugh at him, whereupon Udai struck the girl with three bullets in the chest.
  • Sana Al-Haidari, a student who claimed to be friends with Udai: tortured with electric cables, raped, her tongue cut out with a razor blade and thrown into Lake Al-Sarsar from a helicopter.
  • Weam Tabet Al-Kabisi, daughter of a wealthy businessman: is harassed by Udai while dancing with her friend Luai Khairallah. Weam is kidnapped and raped, shot by her boyfriend days later because he could not take revenge on Udai.
  • Ilham Ali Al-Aazami, student and winner of the Miss Iraq election: After refusing to accept Udai's invitation, she is detained and raped. After that, the rumor circulated that she was a prostitute. Ali Al-Aaazami's father then kills his daughter. Udai, for his part, kills the father after the latter then presented himself personally.
  • Hassan Abd Al-Amir and his wife allow themselves to overtake Udai's motorcade. Both are being arrested and imprisoned, the man murdered after he tried to complain to the president in person.
  • The newly wed officer Saad Abd Al-Razzek and his young wife are approached on the street from Udai. The officer defends himself against the harassment of his wife and is brutally beaten. The woman is kidnapped and tortured and raped in the Al-Medina Hotel. Then the woman rushes from the 6th floor because she can't stand the shame. The husband is charged with insulting the president and sentenced to death .

Criticism of its credibility

Journalists Eoin Butler of the Irish Times and Ed Caesar of the Sunday Times question the credibility of Yahia and his entire biography. Butler interviewed Yahia in 2007 and 2011 as well as numerous people who lived in Iraq during the Saddam regime. Quite a few of these people denied that Saddam or Udai Hussein used doubles.

Movie

The 2011 film drama The Devil's Double by Lee Tamahori focuses on his life as a doppelganger.

After the Iraq war

According to Abid Hamid Mahmud at-Tikritis , Saddam Hussein's former private secretary, he and Udai and Qusai Hussein went into hiding in Iraq in the weeks following the end of the fighting and then escaped to Syria. However, the local authorities deported them again, so that they had to continue to hide in Iraq.

Udai was shown on the Ace of Hearts card (No. 3) on the most wanted Iraqi card game published by the US Department of Defense . A reward of $ 15 million has been promised for clues leading to his capture.

Battle at the last hiding place in Mosul (July 22, 2003)

On July 22, 2003, he and his brother Qusai were killed in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul in a battle lasting several hours with US special forces and soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division . Shortly before that, the Americans had received an indication of their whereabouts. The soldiers found five people dead - brothers Udai and Qusai Hussein, Qusai's 14-year-old son Mustapha, and two bodyguards.

According to media reports (e.g. BBC , New York Times ), many people in Baghdad celebrated the news of the brothers' death by firing shots in the air. However, since the news was initially doubted by many Iraqis, the US military first published photos of the dead and later presented the laid out and externally restored bodies to camera teams from independent international media.

Web links

Commons : Udai Hussein  - collection of images, videos and audio files

supporting documents

  1. ^ "Ma vie au service d'Oudaï, un cauchemar". In: liberation.fr . November 25, 2003, accessed on May 12, 2019 (French): "sept balles"
  2. Suzanne Goldenberg: Uday: career of rape, torture and murder. In: UK Guardian Unlimited. July 23, 2003, accessed November 5, 2006 .
  3. Aparisim Ghosh: Iron Maiden Found in Uday Hussein's Playground. In: TIME.com. 2003, accessed April 15, 2018 .
  4. Brian Bennett and Michael Burnet: The Sum of Two Evils . In: TIME.com . May 25, 2003. Retrieved November 5, 2006.
  5. Latif Yahia / Karl Wendel: I was Saddam's son , Munich 2003. P. 139
  6. ibid. P. 208
  7. ibid. P. 61
  8. ibid. P. 224
  9. ibid. P. 225
  10. ibid. P. 226
  11. ibid. P. 229
  12. ibid. P. 228
  13. ibid. P. 189ff.
  14. a b Ed Caesar: The Double Dealer . In: The Sunday Times , January 23, 2011. Archived from the original on April 26, 2012 Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Retrieved January 14, 2012. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.edcaesar.co.uk 
  15. Eoin Butler: The Tangled Tale behind The Devil's Double . In: The Guardian , August 13, 2011. Retrieved January 14, 2012. 

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