Uday Hussein
Uday Saddam Hussein was an Iraqi politician and businessman. He was the eldest son of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and his first wife Sajida Talfah, and was known for his extreme cruelty, erratic behavior, and human rights abuses, which included torture, rape, and murder.
Born in Baghdad, Uday was seen for several years as the likely successor to his father; however, he lost the place as heir apparent to his younger brother, Qusay, owing to injuries in an assassination attempt. Owing to his family connections, Uday held various roles in the Iraqi political and military circles, as well as in business.
He held positions as a sports chairman, heading the Iraqi Olympic Committee, Iraq Football Association, and the Fedayeen Saddam. He was notorious for using his positions to inflict abuse. Athletes who lost matches were often imprisoned, beaten, and tortured in a private prison in the basement of the Olympic Committee building, sometimes in a sarcophagus with nails pointing inward or by being dropped into acid baths.
Uday was accused of serial rape and murder of young women, whom his guards would often snatch from the streets and force to come to his parties. In one infamous incident, he bludgeoned his father's favorite bodyguard to death at a party in 1988, an act for which he was briefly imprisoned by his father.
Owing to Uday's violent and unstable nature, Saddam eventually favored his younger, more discreet son Qusay as his successor. In 1996, Uday was severely injured in an assassination attempt by gunmen, which left him partially paralyzed and able to walk only with great difficulty. Following the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, he was killed alongside Qusay and his nephew Mustafa by an American task force after a prolonged gunfight in Mosul.
Early life and education
Uday Saddam Hussein Al-Nasiri Al Tikriti was born in Karkh, Baghdad, to Saddam Hussein and Sajida Talfah while his father was in prison. Multiple sources give different birth dates; although official sources give a birth date of 18 June 1964, The Independent gave a birth date of 9 March 1964, while others give a 1965 birth. One source gave it as early as 1963. He was rumored to have played with disarmed grenades as an infant. As a child, he and his younger brother Qusay would witness executions with their father.Uday attended al-Mansour school in Baghdad in the 1970s. One of his teachers was Dinah Bentley, an English teacher from Yorkshire who married an Iraqi and briefly taught at the school. Uday was reportedly driven to school by a chauffeur in a Mercedes-Benz and surrounded by servants. He picked up his English teacher's Yorkshire accent and was described as a cheerful, bright child who was responsive to discipline, but an average student who struggled to concentrate.
He began studies at Baghdad Medical College, but only stayed for three days. Then he moved to the College of Engineering, and obtained a Bachelor of Engineering from the University of Baghdad. He wrote his master's thesis on "Iraqi military strategy during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war". He obtained a doctorate in political science from the University of Baghdad in 1998 and the title of his dissertation was "The world after the Cold War", in which he predicted the United States would no longer be a world power in 2015. Some have argued that Uday did not have academic prowess and his theses were written by others in exchange for money and gifts, with no one able to give Uday a low score out of fear. "He was really smart, probably smarter than his father—but he was crazy," said one of his classmates about Uday.
Torture of Iraqi athletes
In 1984, after Uday graduated from university, Saddam appointed him chairman of the Iraqi Olympic Committee and the Iraq Football Association. In the former role, he tortured athletes who failed to win. According to Latif Yahia, Uday's alleged body double, "The word that defines him is sadistic. I think Saddam Hussein was more human than Uday. The Olympic Committee was not a sports center, it was Uday's world".Raed Ahmed, an Iraqi athlete who defected to the United States, said: "During training, he would watch all the athletes closely, and put pressure on the coaches to push the athletes even more. If he was not happy with the results, he would have coaches and athletes put in his private prison in the Olympic Committee building. The punishment was Uday's private prison where they tortured people. Some athletes, including the best ones, started quitting the sport once Uday took over the Committee ... I always managed not to be punished. I made sure not to promise anything. There is a strong possibility of always being beaten. But when I won, Uday would be very happy." In 2005, a video of Uday questioning Raed's family was released. They were then reportedly transported by car to a prison, where they remained for 16 days in poor conditions.
Ammo Baba, whose football teams won 18 tournaments and participated in three Olympics, said that Uday's punishment destroyed players' athletic abilities. Baba said that half of the Iraqi athletes had left the country, and many had feigned illness before playing against strong competitors; he reportedly told his friends that if he died suddenly, they would know the reason. Maad Ibrahim Hamid, assistant coach of the national football team, said that Uday rewarded players financially for winning and threatened them with imprisonment if they lost. According to Hamid, athletes were not tortured; they were arrested for immoral behaviour, and for playing poorly. Ahmed Radhi said that after he was unwilling to join the new Al-Rasheed club, he was kidnapped at midnight by Uday's men, beaten and accused of harassment; he accepted Uday's offer when he was threatened with death. International footballer Saad Qais said that Uday was angry with him because he was sent off during a 1997 match against Turkmenistan. His "discipline" was administered by jailers in a closed section of a detention facility for athletes and journalists in Radwaniyah Palace. According to Qais, "Uday established the Rashid team and forced the best Iraqi players to play in it, and forced me to leave my beloved team, and he honored us with gifts after every win, but he also punished us after every loss."
Murder of Kamel Hana Gegeo
Although his status as Saddam's elder son made him Saddam's prospective successor, Uday fell out of favour with his father owing to his public erraticness. In October 1988, at a party in honour of Suzanne Mubarak, wife of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Uday murdered his father's personal valet and food taster, Kamel Hana Gegeo. Before an assemblage of horrified guests, an intoxicated Uday bludgeoned Gegeo who died of internal bleeding hours later. Gegeo had recently introduced Saddam to a younger woman, Samira Shahbandar, who had become Saddam's second wife in 1986. Uday considered his father's relationship with Shahbandar an insult to his mother. Shahbandar's oldest son fled to Jordan because of the harassment by Uday after the marriage. Uday also may have feared losing succession to Gegeo, whose loyalty to Saddam Hussein was unquestioned.As punishment for the murder, Saddam briefly imprisoned Uday. Once released, Uday was sent to Switzerland to act as the assistant to the Iraqi ambassador there. He was expelled by the Swiss government in 1990, after he was repeatedly arrested for fighting. According to Jalopnik, Uday's vast car collection was burned by his father after the Gegeo incident.
Others describe the murder as follows: Next to the palace where Suzanne Mubarak and Uday's mother were staying, Gegeo was celebrating the wedding of a relative and firing in the air. Uday sent his men and asked them not to bother the two women. During the discussion, Uday hit Gegeo's head with his walking stick, causing Gegeo's death. Uday, afraid of his father's reaction, tried to commit suicide and was taken to the hospital. He escaped from the hospital, set up a barricade around his home, and fired at anyone trying to enter his home. He surrendered with the persuasion of his brother Qusay.
According to the memory of Uday's half-uncle Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, after escaping from the hospital he went to his father's palace and told him to "stay with your real wife." Saddam then said to Barzan, "He was lucky because I had no weapon with me." However, Uday later came to the door of the palace again and told Barzan that he intended to shoot his father. He fired at Qusay and at step-uncles who were trying to prevent him from doing so. Later, under the guidance of Barzan, Uday apologized to his father. His father ordered him to surrender. When his brothers-in-law Hussein and Saddam Kamel learned that he was trying to escape to the United States, he was arrested on his father's orders, but released three weeks later. After the incident, Uday attacked two people whom he thought were informers. At the request of Saddam, Uday was sent out of Iraq under the control of Barzan to Switzerland in order to get rid of the disgrace caused by Uday.
Muhammad Asim Shanshal, head of the private office of Uday, said:
After a call from his mother, Sajida, told him that Kamel Hanna holds a joyful party for Saddam's second wife, Samira Shahbandar. There was shooting, rejoicing, and Uday shouting in the face of 'Kamel Hanna', denounced: "What is the mess?!" And he said: We celebrate on the occasion of lady and the President. Uday threatened him and warned him not to shoot bullets in the air, so it was 'Kamel Hanna' except that he raised his weapon in the air and fired bullets, so Uday's response was a fatal blow to his head with a heavy club that was with him, and he was killed. Saddam imprisoned all his guards and those who were with him, who were 15 individuals, and I was supposed to be with them had it not been for the delay that saved me from prison. They were sentenced to imprisonment, and Uday was exiled from Iraq to Switzerland for a period of six months.President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt called Uday a "psychopath".