And how about that Udai, he is a kick huh?
Udai Saddam Hussein, Saddam's eldest son and now 33, first became known abroad in 1988 in a scandal that was to lay a marker for things to come.
Udai had taken against Saddam's personal valet Kamal Hana Gegeo because of his role in acting as a go-between for Saddam's external affairs. In particular, Saddam had an affair with the daughter of an old Baghdad family called Samira Shahbander - who was eventually to become his second wife - and Udai was said to have been afraid that this union could threaten his own position as Saddam's eldest son by his first wife Sajida.
So Udai decided to take his revenge on Gegeo. Aged 24, he gatecrashed an official party held in honour of Suzanne Mubarak, the wife of the Egyptian president, who was visiting Baghdad. Pushing aside the official host Taha Muhieddin Maaruf - Iraq's Vice President and a generation older than himself in a culture where such things matter deeply - Udai and his bodyguards beat Gegeo to death with a heavy club in full view of the gathered guests.
The affair became a national scandal when Saddam put his son on trial for the murder, saying that even the president's son must face justice. Gegeo's family pleaded for a pardon for Udai, saying that he had been provoked beyond all endurance. Just the slightest bit of pressure, perhaps? There were all kinds of 'spontaneous' demonstrations for Udai and eventually Saddam was satisfied with exiling him to Switzerland.
He returned a year later to become head of the Iraqi Olympic Federation. He also runs a major television network in Iraq and a newspaper and is said to have an extensive business network.
That much is known because that particular drama was acted out in public. There are all kinds of other stories of Udai picking any woman that took his fancy and killing their husbands or menfolk and mind-boggling tales of corruption which will probably never be proved or disproved definitively.
But Udai's ferocious temper has contributed to the break-up of even Saddam's close family. He was said to have personally shot Saddam's half-brother Wathban in the leg at a wedding when he annoyed him.
For Udai's brothers-in-law, Hussein Kamel Majid and his brother Saddam Kamel, Udai was such a frightening prospect that when they fell out with him it was one of the key factors which caused them to quit Iraq for Jordan in 1995 - they weren't just defecting, they were fleeing for their lives. When they returned and were killed in a 'gunfight' in Baghdad in February 1996, Udai was prominent at the funeral of their assassins, who also died in the shoot-out. |
