washingtonpost.com
After Uday, Iraqis Release Their Rage
Baghdad Residents Express Relief, Speak Openly About Cruelty of Hussein's Eldest Son
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, July 24, 2003; Page A07
BAGHDAD, July 23 -- The slim red folder contained just two sheets of handwritten testimony and a photograph of a mangled foot.
But the tale inside spoke volumes about the depths of depravity reached by former president Saddam Hussein's oldest son, Uday, and about the widespread relief here that has greeted news of his death, along with that of his younger brother, Qusay, in an attack by U.S. troops on their northern hideout Tuesday.
Seven years ago, a Baghdad man's pretty 17-year-old daughter vanished and was rumored to be held inside the Iraq Olympic Committee compound run by Uday. After 10 days, the frantic father asked his attorney to inquire about the girl. The attorney presented himself at the committee and was eventually taken before Uday.
According to the file of the attorney's testimony, Uday "was looking at the papers I had filled out. He said, 'I was going to break both your legs so you can never come back here, but I see your left leg was wounded in the Iran-Iraq war, so I am only going to break your right leg.' "
A henchman shot the lawyer's right foot, leaving him unable to walk, and he recalled being dumped near a hospital. The girl was eventually sent home, having been repeatedly raped, and her family was told not to move. But they fled in terror to Poland, where they had relatives. Several years later, gunmen working for Uday tracked them down there and killed the girl and her father, according to the lawyer.
"This is just a sample," Adnan Jabbar Saadi said today at the Human Rights Organization of Iraq, where several weeks ago he listened to the attorney tell his story. "Hitler was mild compared to Uday."
As news of the deaths of Hussein's two feared sons spread across the capital today, Iraqis from all walks of life expressed relief at being freed from their powerful spell.
Few Baghdad residents expressed strong emotions or opinions about Qusay, 37, who kept a more discreet public profile than his older brother but wielded far greater power as a close adviser to Hussein and commander of several security and intelligence operations. Those who did mention Qusay described him as part of a formidable family triumvirate that they believe has now been fatally crippled, whether or not Hussein is killed or brought to trial.
But Iraqis were vocal about the capricious wrath of Uday, 39, a less powerful but far more public figure whose perverse rages affected thousands of people over the years. Members of the national journalists' union he headed, coaches and soccer players in the teams he controlled, waiters in the clubs he frequented -- everyone suddenly felt free to vent after years of humiliation and retribution at Uday's hands.
"It is like a feast. I shot 30 bullets in the air last night," said Abid Khaldun, 56, a retired teacher, referring to the citywide bursts of celebratory rifle fire that greeted the first TV reports of the brothers' deaths Tuesday night. "Now there is only one wicked man left" -- Saddam Hussein, still missing and believed to be hiding in Iraq -- "and he has just lost his wings."
Though some Iraqis said they would not feel fully comfortable until they had seen firm evidence that Uday was dead, the pervasive atmosphere was one of grim satisfaction that justice had been done. All over the city, people volunteered stories of Uday's cruelty -- some of which were probably apocryphal, others of which they had said they had not dared tell before.
A shopkeeper said he knew a family whose children had been taken by Uday and fed to the pet lions he kept in his lavish palace. Waiters at posh clubs said they used to cringe when he arrived -- drunk, armed and looking for women to grab. A lawyer said Uday had ordered the head of an attractive TV announcer shaved so he could keep her long locks, then confined her naked at the Olympic Committee for one month when she objected.
At the journalists' union today, preparations were underway for the group's first leadership elections in years. Uday was named chairman of the group in 1991; after that, no one dared oppose him. One current candidate for the post, journalism professor Hashim Hassan, paused between election meetings to comment on Uday's death.
"He promised we would be free to write. I believed him and I was deceived," said Hassan, who spent three years in prison for refusing Uday's request to become editor of a newspaper he was starting. "I'm glad he and Qusay are gone, but the Americans took away our right to try them in Iraqi courts. They'd better be careful with Saddam, because we want him alive."
Feelings ran especially high today among soccer players whom Uday routinely humiliated and abused as head of the Iraq Football Association and the Olympic Committee. At Karkh Stadium, where the Iraq national soccer team was practicing this evening, the mood was ebullient but the scars were deep.
Ali Wahib, 29, a star midfielder, said he was once so badly beaten on Uday's orders after a loss that he thought his career was over. "I wasn't happy when I heard he had died," Wahib confessed as he laced up his cleats on the warmup bench. "For 35 years people suffered. We wanted to take revenge. I wanted to torture him slowly."
Iraqis' gratitude toward the U.S. military for ridding their country of the notorious was widely tempered by their anxiety and frustration over the extended U.S. military occupation here.
Salaam Hashim, the a soccer coach who played on a team controlled by Uday in the 1990s, said U.S. forces had "done Iraq one favor by getting rid of the Saddam regime and his sons. Now they should do us another favor by giving Iraq to the people. We thought they would take us from a black room to a white room. Instead we are in a gray room."
Esam Saadi, a human rights lawyer, said the killings were both a political victory for the United States and an example of divine justice. After the U.S. invasion, he said, "people were afraid Saddam would come back, but now they have less to fear. The evil crow's two wings have been cut off. He can still cry, but he cannot fly anymore." |
