Posted on 04/12/2003 8:51:29 AM PDT by Happygal
Iraq has been saved from a cruel dictator far worse than Saddam Hussein, says the former body double of Uday Hussein, Saddam's eldest son and heir. Latif Yahia had been a school classmate of the dictator's son and looked like a twin brother. He thought he'd been forgotten, but a few years later Yahia, an Iraqi officer serving in the Iran-Iraq war, was suddenly summoned home to Uday's palace in Baghdad.
In strode Uday Saddam Hussein. "I want you to be me," the president's son declared, "Everywhere, always. You will be my fidai, my double. You will be the son of the president under my direction. You'll have the most beautiful life on earth. Everything that's mine will also be yours. You will be my brother."
Latif politely declined. He could not accept the task. It would be too much for him. "What? You don't want to be the son of Saddam Hussein," Uday screamed.
Two bodyguards seized Latif and dragged him from the room. He was blindfolded and thrown into a car. Latif was locked inside a psycho-torture cell. The walls, floors and lights were bright red. The cell was too small to lie down in or stand up, leaving him to squat; and there was no toilet. After seven days, Uday came by. "Latif. How are you? You've changed your mind haven't you? I'll set my dogs on you and have your sisters raped if you refuse again." Latif gave in and became Uday's double in November of 1987.
For years he lived an extraordinary life of untold luxury and unimaginable horror - before eventually fleeing Iraq. He lived in Dublin and married an Irish woman before going on the run again.
Saddam and his sons had a small army of doubles. Whenever the Iraqi despot felt danger he had a double stand in for him. One had already been assassinated in 1984, but he had several left. Doubles were chosen from the Hussein family, usually a cousin closely resembling the dictator. But none looked like Uday. That's when Uday remembered his old classmate who did.
Latif Yahia was cleaned up and taken directly to Uday's palace on the Tigris River and placed in Uday's own room. Latif's first lesson was to learn how to not react in disgust or become sick at Hussein's regime of cruelty. He was taken to a viewing room holding thousands of videos of torture sessions. Saddam's son learned the same way.
"Uday told me whenever he seemed weak or squeamish as a child his father would beat him with an iron bar and then force him to watch videos of prisoners being tortured." It worked. 'Just wait until I become president," Uday promised, "I'll be crueller than my father ever was. You mark my words. You'll yearn for the days of Saddam Hussein.'
"I studied from nine in the morning to Muslim evening prayers, practising how Uday Hussein sat, held his cigar, everything. In time I could predict how he would act and move. Uday never looked anyone in the eye, never shook anyone's hand, and greeted everyone arrogantly."
One day a pair of foreign doctors with Slavic accents arrived at the palace. "They tested every inch of my body to see if it matched Uday and were pleased. My skin colouring was 99pc similar to Uday's. Shape of face, hair, ears, nose, build - all were almost identical. . . . Our voices were also almost exactly alike, but the doctors said I would need surgery to get Uday's lisp." The next day Latif Yahia's teeth were ground down and implants screwed in. "They asked me to say something and it was utterly bizarre. I was lisping."
Ismail al-Azami, Uday's private hairdresser, spent hours sculpting Latif's hair to match Uday Hussein's. Yassem al-Helou, Uday's fashion advisor, helped Latif choose from amongst Uday's thousands of Italian suits, Swiss watches and Italian shoes. Uday changed suits four times a day - and even had a paint shop behind his palace garage where each day he would have one of his many cars painted to match the colour of his suit.
Latif said: "Not one of his cars cost less than $100,000. He had more than 100 Maseratis, Ferraris, Porsches, Jaguars, Mercedes in all models and colours." Uday even enacted a law prohibiting Ferrari imports so he would be the only person in Iraq to own one.
When double training was finished, there was one final test. Latif was summoned to meet Saddam Hussein himself. "My walk to the president would decide my fate. If he rejected me, I was a dead man." The Iraqi dictator circled Latif Yahia observing every feature and gesture. "Saddam smiled, spread his arms and exclaimed: 'Yes, it's you. Allah gave me two sons and you're the third!'"
Says Latif: "Nothing about Saddam in person appeared cruel, cold or repulsive. He was a man with strong charisma captivating everyone. Now I was a member of his clan. I would learn secrets hidden from millions. I was Saddam Hussein's third son, just as he said."
But in six months Latif hadn't been allowed to see his parents. Every day he had to be Uday Hussein, and Uday was a monster. "I witnessed horrific crimes and began to hate the man whose double I had become. Uday was a brutal rapist with an obsession for beautiful women."
Every day Uday Hussein and his bodyguards drove around the university and the girls' schools until the president's son saw a girl he fancied. He would stop her and ask her to spend the night with him. If she refused, his bodyguards would grab her and bring her back to the palace. There Uday would rape the girl. If she resisted, after he was done, he would give her to the whole team of bodyguards.Uday learned rape and murder from his father. Reveals Latif: "Saddam's family, the Tikriti clan, were a bunch of criminals. When Saddam came to power it was like the mafia taking control of a country."
But Iraq wasn't enough. Saddam Hussein next turned to Kuwait. Uday divided his men into three teams: the Car Team would take every Mercedes and BMW left in Kuwait; the Property Team would empty houses abandoned by Kuwaitis; and the Electronics Team would gather valuable electronics. Yahia directed the Car Team and auctioned them off in Iraq, raising US$125m in cash for Uday. But the plunder of Kuwait created an international outcry. Uday Hussein was mentioned by name and his reputation suffered.
One of Uday's intelligence officers suggested: why not blame Latif? He was forced to make a televised confession. The Iraqi TV newscaster said Latif Yahia had been sentenced to death and would be executed in the next few days. But he was kept alive to continue as a double.
"Until now my family and friends thought I had disappeared. With my confession I became both disgraced and officially dead. I could never have a life in Iraq. I would have to escape."
Then the first Gulf War began. The real Uday Hussein fled to Switzerland while Latif risked assassination in his place. For much of the war the double hid from Allied bombing in the famous bunkers of Saddam Hussein.
One day Uday brought Latif and others to a meeting with Saddam Hussein at his bombed personal palace, after the Kurdish uprising. Seeing the damage up close so enraged Saddam he ordered his men to bring him prisoners. Troops quickly returned with 30 captured Kurdish rebels. "Saddam shot each one at close range. He emptied clip after clip," says Yahia. "Then he demanded another 60 men and killed them too. Finally he laughed and said he felt better."
During the rebellion Latif Yahia, posing as Uday, visited troops fighting rebels in Basra when his convoy came under attack. "The armoured windshield of my car burst into a thousand pieces," he remembers, "then I was hit by grenade fragments." Doctors told him they could save his legs and arms but his right pinky finger would have to be amputated. Uday Hussein burst into the hospital the next day after returning from Switzerland.
He lined up the hospital staff, "If you don't save his finger I will kill you all." Uday knew if his double lost a finger he would have to have a finger cut off too. The finger was saved and Latif returned to a shattered Baghdad.
"Hundreds of thousands had no way to feed their families. But Uday didn't care. He continued to party openly, without shame." Uday threw a multi-million dollar extravaganza on his birthday. A thousand people dined on lobster and delicacies. Hundreds of beautiful girls were invited. At one point Uday shouted, "Rip the whores' clothes off!" His friends shredded the women's clothing and the party turned into a massive orgy.
The next day Uday summoned Latif and screamed, "Why are you sneaking around after my girlfriend?" Latif was stunned. He never approached Uday's women. "I can tell you despise me, that you want to get away. I am going to have to educate you again."
The double was imprisoned at the al-Radvania secret police barracks, kept in a tiny cell open to the sun and 120 degree heat and given no water for days. Torturers worked over Latif for hours every day; needles were driven under his nails and he was whipped with electrical cable. Latif's back became badly infected, he was starved and delirious.
After 27 days, Uday appeared. "How did you like your education? Would you like a few more weeks?" Latif was completely broken at this point and begged for mercy.
Next, Uday ordered all hair removed from Latif's body, a torture worse than death for religious Muslims. Then they dumped Latif in front of the home of his parents who thought he'd been killed years before. "I crawled to the house. My mother didn't recognise the horrible creature. When I told her who I was she almost went crazy from shock."
At a private clinic doctors managed to heal Latif's infection and many broken bones. He then sent a secret appeal to the Kurdistan Democratic Party. Kurds smuggled him out of Baghdad to northern Iraq and then up into Turkey. There Latif requested asylum at a US military base after showing pictures of himself with Uday Hussein. US Army Colonel John Nab realised Yahia's intelligence potential. Latif was interrogated by the CIA which confiscated everything he'd smuggled out of Iraq.
He was offered American citizenship, but instead chose to join family in Austria. On March 9, 1992 Latif landed at Vienna's Shwechat Airport, a free man. An international rescue agency smuggled out Latif's wife, Bushra, and daughter, Tamara. The Iraqi set up successful businesses with part of his family's large fortune in foreign bank accounts.
Bushra couldn't take the strain of life on the run and fled with their daughter back to Iraq. Latif Yahia moved to Dublin in late 1999 after escaping assassination attempts in Austria where he was shot at by Iraqi agents, London where he was rammed by a car in a public phone booth and in Norway where he was stabbed.
He married an Irish woman, but said he left Ireland in disgust after being "hassled" by immigration authorities and others whom he believed belonged to intelligence services.
Now Latif runs his European operations - including businesses in Ireland - on the move, never staying in one country for long. He hopes with the fall of the Hussein regime that life will finally become normal for him and that the nightmare that began when he was forced to be a body double for Uday Hussein will finally be over.
University of Arkansas?
Huh? Why couldn't he just get a new double? This smells like some sort of daytime Iraqi soap opera.
interesting....and all the while the people of Iraq where starving...how *nice*.
Incredible story. . .but don't suppose HBO or Hollywood is interested in the truth of a totalitarian nightmare. . .
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