I SAW SADDAM'S SON TORTURING A GIRL TO DEATH

0 Comments | Sunday Mirror, Aug 11, 2002 | by DECLAN POWER

AS SADDAM Hussein warns the US their troops will die in droves if they attack Iraq, one man can testify to Saddam's thirst for blood.

Latif Yahia, 38, one of Ireland's leading Iraqi dissidents, was once forced to become the Iraqi dictator's "son" and double for Saddam's eldest lad, Uday.

Latif now lives in Dublin with his Irish family. But as war clouds loom over the Gulf, the exiled Iraqi remembers what life was like under the brutal regime of Saddam.

From the torture he was subjected to to force him to become Saddam's son, to hobnobbing with European leaders, including our own Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, Latif Yahia has seen it all.

The son of a wealthy Baghdad merchant, Latif went to a secondary school for Iraq's elite and there met Uday Hussein, the eldest son of Saddam Hussein.

After school, Latif went to university to study law before becoming an officer in the Iraqi army and serving in the Iran/Iraq war.

"We got on well at school because Uday reckoned we looked alike. Little did I know this likeness would come back to haunt me."

The former Iraqi army officer shuddered in horror at the memories of his induction as Uday's double.

"I was at the front at the time when I was told to report to Baghdad for work with the intelligence services. When I got there I was told to strip and wait in a hospital room. A team of surgeons came in and inspected my face, saying: 'It's a good specimen'."

But when Latif was told he would have to cut all ties with his family and friends he refused.

"That was my first big mistake. A senior officer told me my mind would be changed."

For the rest of that week Latif was hung like a side of beef in the cellars of Iraqi intelligence HQ as secret service goons whipped his back and feet with electric cable.

"The pain was intense, I fell into a stupor and thought this is the end. It was when they threatened to take my younger sister and rape her in front of me that I capitulated."

Latif was then trained how to impersonate Uday and was also subjected to plastic surgery to give him a chin cleft and prominent teeth so he could lisp like Uday.

Latif was to suffer wounds from nine attempts on his life as he appeared in place of Uday.

"Uday was sent off to the safety of Switzerland where he could drink, womanise and gamble in complete safety."

At first it was fun to ape the psychopathic eldest son of Saddam. Latif was used for propaganda purposes, being regularly portrayed exhorting the Iraqi troops to victory.

So delighted was Hussein with Latif's performance that he showered praise on him when he returned to Baghdad after the war.

"He would embrace me at functions and tell all assembled that Allah had blessed him with a third son."

It wasn't long before Latif was regularly to witness murder, torture and rape at the Hussein compound in Baghdad.

Uday would pick women from the streets and order his bodyguards to bring them to his quarters. There Uday would rape and brutalise them.

Latif was to witness Uday show his displeasure to a former girlfriend.

"The girl had spoken insultingly about his sexual prowess to get revenge on Uday. But when he heard this he flew into a rage and ordered his men to pick her up.

"Unfortunately I had to be in attendance with Uday on that awful day.

"In front of our eyes Uday took a beautiful woman and transformed her into a barely breathing hunk of raw meat.

"After beating her severely, he then sodomised her with a length of live electric cable, screaming: 'You said I wasn't hard enough. Is this hard enough for you?'

"Then, to punish her further because of what she had said, Uday slit her tongue with a razor blade.

"I remember the blood spilling onto her dress and her screams," recounts Latif.

"When Uday finally killed the poor girl, she was wrapped in a carpet and dumped in the sea from a helicopter."

As Uday's brutality worsened, Latif became so depressed that he tried to slash his wrists. When Uday found out, he had Latif tortured.

Latif was also imprisoned and on one occasion a drunken Uday shot him in the back.

It was while recovering from this that Latif made a bolt for Northern Iraq with his girlfriend.

"Her name was Buschra. She was brought to the compound to be a concubine for Saddam himself. But thrown together in this hell we had come to love each other."

Using his likeness to Uday, Latif fooled the border guards and the CIA spirited Latif and Buschra out of northern Iraq and to a new life in Austria.

But Saddam was still to haunt the couple: "I rejoiced when Buschra gave me my first-born child - a girl - but she later confided to me that the child had been fathered by Saddam.

"I did not believe her at first, but later as she grew I could see some resemblance.

"I swear I loved her as my own, but it became too much for me at times - to know how Saddam had reached out and still had his hand in my life."

This was eventually to cause Latif to split from his family and wander until he settled in Ireland.