This your hero, Dougie?
Obituary: Uday Hussein
By James Drummond
Published: July 22 2003 17:02 | Last Updated: July 22 2003 17:02
Uday Hussein, declared dead on Tuesday at the age of 39 after an attack by US forces, seemed at times an even more terrifying figure than his father, Saddam.
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Indulged from his earliest years, he grew up to be a violent, unstable playboy, licensed to do whatever he liked, whenever he liked and with almost limitless means.
Even his father grew to find him an embarrassment.
As a teenager Uday was fond of going to discotheques where he would order his bodyguards to kidnap desirable girls for him.
As he grew older the tales of rape, drunkenness, torture and murder associated with his name multiplied. He was said to run a private torture chamber in Baghdad known as the "red room" - al-Ghurfa al-Hamra.
One of his worst excesses came in 1988 when he murdered his father's bodyguard and personal valet, Kamal Hanna Jajo, by beating him to death. The killing happened at a reception given for Suzanne Mubarak, wife of the Egyptian president, on an island in the Tigris.
Uday blamed Jajo for introducing Mr Hussein to the blonde Samira Shahbandar, who became the tyrant's mistress and later his second wife. Uday ostensibly committed the murder to avenge his mother, Sajida, Mr Hussein's first wife.
Mr Hussein was sufficiently outraged to make Uday stand trial for the murder. He was sentenced to a year's imprisonment, later commuted to exile in Switzerland, where he joined his uncle Barzan.
Once there, however, Uday's fraudulent activities soon attracted the attention of the authorities, who sent him home after only six months.
Back in Iraq Uday found he was being superseded in his father's affections by his younger brother, Qusay, who was quieter though no less brutal. His position was further undermined in 1996 when his car was ambushed in Baghdad and he was nearly killed.
Some say the assassination attempt was carried out by the Da'wa, the Shia Muslim opposition organisation, which now has a representative on the interim council charged with ruling Baghdad. Others say it was the work of a previously unknown secular group called al-Nahdah - "The Awakening".
There were even rumours that the hit had been authorised by brother Qusay with the approval of their father, who was desperate to find a way of containing the volatile Uday.
What is known is that the attackers killed the driver and riddled Uday with bullets. He owed his survival to French surgeons who were rushed to Baghdad. Although he made a substantial recovery, he remained partially paralysed. After the attack he seems to have calmed down a little - though this was relative.
Even after his influence over his father waned in the wake of the Jajo killing, Uday was encouraged to concentrate on his business interests, of which there was an impressive list.
He was made chairman of the Iraqi Olympic Committee and of the football authority, appointments which soon brought rumours of athletes being beaten half to death if they failed to do well.
Uday was also head of the journalists' union, publisher of the Babel newspaper, boss of the Youth TV station and a member of parliament. His companies, often operating under the Babel title, were heavily involved in Iraq's lucrative smuggling operations.
In the build-up to the US-led invasion of Iraq, Uday re-emerged into the international spotlight when he urged the Iraqi parliament to agree to the return of UN weapons inspectors.
And despite the growing influence of his brother, Uday was not cut out of the regime's decision-making process altogether. Right to the end he sat on the national security council and was in charge of Mr Hussein's Fedayeen militia.
Born in 1964, the eldest of Sajida and Saddam's five children, Uday is said as a baby to have been used by his mother to smuggle messages to Mr Hussein, who was then in prison following a failed coup attempt.
After a brief marriage to a daughter of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, vice-chairman of the revolutionary command council, Uday married his cousin Saja, daughter of his uncle Barzan. The marriage was designed to heal a family rift but it lasted only a few months.
Like his father, Uday Hussein was wanted for crimes against humanity.
Specifically he was accused by western human rights groups of personally executing Shia dissidents in Basra during the uprising that followed Iraq's eviction from Kuwait in 1991.
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