Saddam's son beats 12-year-olds who say no to sex: defectors

Saddam Hussein's eldest son mercilessly beats girls as young as 12 on the soles of their feet if they refuse to sleep with him, Iraqi defectors said today.

Uday Hussein forces head teachers of schools in Baghdad's poorest districts to send pupils to his palace where he arranges dates with those he likes.

If the chosen girls annoy him in anyway they are dangled over a wooden beam held by his bodyguards and repeatedly hit with a wooden club, according to two former members of his inner circle who recently fled Iraq.

"He does it to a girl if she says she doesn't want to go out with him, or if she finds another boyfriend, or is late or reluctant," one defector told Vanity Fair magazine.

The 38-year-old warns victims not to flinch while the beating is administered or they will have their legs broken. He often hits them up to 50 times, the report claimed.

Uday, head of Iraq's Olympic Committee, was known to have beaten football players and athletes when they lost.

The defectors said he also inflicted beatings, imprisonment and torture on close friends and business associates - simply for being late to a meeting or irritating him.

His punishments have become more brutal since an assassination attempt in 1996 which left him with walking difficulties and problems having sex.

"Uday tells them, 'this mark is never going to go from your body, so you'll remember me until the day you die'," one defector said.

One former friend died after being held down and made to drink huge quantities of pure alcohol.

Business rivals have been shot in the arm or a leg and then allowed to bleed slowly to death.

Uday also likes to deflower virginity, knowing that no one will touch them after he has slept with them, the defectors said.

"He likes joking about with his friends: 'look at her, after this she'll be a prostitute'."

The defectors have been debriefed by MI6 and Pentagon officials and are regarded as reliable sources on the workings of Saddam's regime, the magazine said.

Intelligence officials believe Uday may have been in the bunker hit by a cruise missile in the "decapitation strike" on Baghdad in the first hours of the war.

His younger brother, Qusay, is Saddam's heir after Uday fell out of favour when he murdered a close friend of his father in 1988.

LONDON (TABLOID NEWS SERVICES) -- Saddam Hussein's eldest son is a vicious cocaine kingpin guilty of sending blizzards of the drug into Europe, a high-ranking Iraqi defector claims.

Majid al-Samarra'i, the former Iraqi ambassador to Venezuela, says Uday Hussein -- Saddam's heir -- has made millions of dollars shipping coke to Britain and the rest of Europe.

The nervous former ambassador wants political asylum in England, The Times of London reports, and that's why he provided Western intelligence agents with damning documents outlining Uday's alleged role as a coke-smuggling kingpin. Uday reportedly moved loads of cocaine from Venezuela to Heathrow Airport aboard British Airways flights during the 1980s and 1990s.

Al-Samarra'i has given the British foreign intelligence service flight itineraries, shipment dates and records of secret multi-million-dollar bank accounts detailing Uday's nefarious coke racket.

On a single British Airways flight from Caracas to Heathrow in 1996, al-Samarra'i's attorneys purport, the smugglers planted 140 kilograms of cocaine, worth almost $7.5 million at current street prices in Europe.

Attorneys for al-Samarra'i told The Times that Uday has "indirect" control over the drug shipments. It's been long reported that Uday and brother Qusay -- a vicious and imperious duo -- oversee various smuggling schemes to fund their family's lavish lifestyles. (In keeping with family values, Saddam appointed his half-brother Barzan ambassador to Switzerland; Barzan is rumored to also manage Iraq's international black-market operations.)

The family of al-Sammarra'i is tight with Saddam's clan, but al-Sammarra'i still fears execution if he returns to Iraq. Saddam has little reason to welcome al-Sammarra'i back to Baghdad: the Iraqi government suspects al-Sammarra'i is a mole for the CIA.

The defector fled his Caracas post in 1997 after an alleged assassination attempt at his home.

Assassination, even if you're directly related to Saddam, is a very common solution to loyalty concerns in Iraq. Friends smuggled the ambassador and his mistress Maria Garcia out of Venezuela and nearly sneaked him into England after first fooling passport controls in the Dutch Antilles, Cuba and Portugal.

A senior Iraqi opposition source told The Times that al-Samarra'i was recruited by the CIA in the early 1990s. This was reported to the Iraqi government by his wife when she found $40,000 and secret papers in his safe.

When The Times asked al-Samarra'i, now hiding out in London's highly fashionable Knightsbridge, if he had worked for the CIA he replied: "I am an Iraqi diplomat and ex-ambassador. I came here to seek asylum."

It is in this climate that the former ambassador, one of the most senior Iraqis to defect to the West, is offering up these documents -- less a friendly gesture than a desperate gamble for political asylum.

Al-Samarra'i complained to The Times that his lawyer had been unauthorized to leak any knowledge to the press about the drug trade.

"I'm a diplomat and I have no connection with this. I am not a businessman or a trader," he said. "How do I know such a thing?"

Britain's Home Office refused to discuss the case but did confirm that the Home Secretary, Jack Straw, is considering granting al-Samarra'i asylum. If unsuccessful, attorneys for al-Sammarra'i said they'll ask the United States to give him refuge.

Meanwhile, the U.S. and Britain are moving more military forces into the Gulf, pressuring Saddam Hussein to allow U.N. chemical weapons inspectors into the presidential compounds he has declared off limits to inspection. The Anglo-American build-up, coupled with Saddam's defiance, is bringing the crisis to the brink of war.

In 1976 Saddam paid an official visit to France, his first and last to any Western country, and was received by Chirac as a head of state.

It was not until 1991 that Chirac broke contacts with Saddam as a result of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

The friendship forged between the two men proved profitable for both sides. France sold an estimated $20 billion worth of weapons, including Mirage fighters, to Iraq, and emerged as Iraq's biggest trading partner, in a wide-range of civilian goods and services, after Russia. In exchange, Iraq focused on France as its largest oil market in Europe.

During five of his seven-year first term as president, Chirac was unable to pursue an Iraq policy of his own because he had to contend with a Socialist-Communist cabinet headed by his then political rival Lionel Jospin.

Since last April, however, Chirac, with his supporters in control of both the parliament and the cabinet, has assumed personal charge of the Iraqi issue by setting up a special "policy cell" within the Elysee Palace.
Chirac has dispatched a special emissary to Baghdad to sound out "the possibility of change without war."

The emissary is Pierre Delval, described by many as a brilliant young diplomat.

He first went to Baghdad using as cover the post of director of the French state-owned National Printing Company, but has since been seconded to the Quai d'Orsay, the French foreign office.

The Delval mission is designed in a way as to allow him to spend ten days in Iraq each month, thus giving Paris a direct diplomatic presence in the absence of an ambassador.

According to sources Iraqi response to Delval has been "more than encouraging."

This was symbolized by the fact that Saddam Hussein invited the French diplomat to attend a four-hour session of the Iraqi government last month when the latest threats from Washington were debated.

Delval's main Iraqi contact man is Tareq Aziz, the veteran Baathist leader who has been close to the French for years.

In recent months, however, Delval has also forged links with Qussai, Saddam Hussein's younger son. The two have met on at least six occasions and held "very broad discussions on all aspects of policy."

French sources believe that Qussai, unlike his elder brother Uday whom they describe as "unpredictable," could play a central role in a period of transition.

One idea is for Qussai to be appointed prime minister, a post now held by Saddam himself, so that he can form a cabinet of new generation and bring in new faces, mostly technocrats.

Another French idea is that the Baath party, now controlled by Uday, should be revived under a new leadership.

Delval has met several Baath leaders to evoke the possibility of a congress in which the Iraqi ruling party could "carry out major reforms of policy and personnel."

The French believe that the Baath remains a real political force in Iraq and should not be dismissed out of hand.

Paris sources claim that Saddam's decision to announce a general amnesty, including the release of all political prisoners, is a response to French suggestions.

Another French suggestion is that Saddam should announce an amnesty, perhaps next April, for Iraqis in exile, inviting them all to return home and help rebuild the country.

Another part of the plan is to hold fresh parliamentary elections, perhaps next autumn, so that a more credible legislature could be formed. The French want the new parliament to include members from the two principal Kurdish parties plus the Iraqi Communist party, and independents, especially women.

Unlike Washington that presents Iraq's leadership as a coterie of war criminals, Paris insists that the Iraqi ruling elite includes many "valuable individuals".

One senior French official even told us that Paris believed that Iraq had "potentially the most effective leadership group in the whole of the Arab world."

Apart from Qussai and Tareq Aziz, Iraqi officials who appear to be supporting the French initiative include the National Assembly Speaker Saadoun Hammadi, diplomatic advisor Nizar Hamdoun, Commerce Minister Muhamamd Mahdi-Saleh, head of the Central Bank Muhammad al-Hawwash, presidential adviser Abdulrazzaq al-Hashemi, Industry Minister Amer al-Rashid, and Foreign Minister Naji al-Sabri.

To these are added a number of technocrats, senior civil servants, university teachers, and private businessmen with links to France.

"We can change Iraq without war," says a French source. "All we need is time to show that our scenario works better than that of Washington."

What France is proposing in Iraq is already seen in Paris as "the Chirac Doctrine" which is aimed at persuading "trouble-making regimes" to accept peaceful change.

The question is: Will Washington stand back and watch while the Chirac doctrine is pout to its first major test?

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THIS IS THE SCUM THE PROTESTORS PROTECT