Son of Saddam - 19

December 8, 2020·33 min·3 clips

An Iraqi soldier forced to become Uday Hussein's body double asks why God made him look like the most hated man in Iraq.

In 1998, at the end of the Iran-Iraq war, 23-year-old Iraqi soldier Latif Yahya was summoned to the Republican Palace. Uday Hussein, Saddam's eldest son, had noticed that Latif was his near-exact physical duplicate and wanted him to serve as a body double and assassination decoy. Latif refused; Uday placed him in a cell roughly one square meter, painted entirely red, where Latif could hear screaming continuously for seven days. When Uday returned, he threatened to bring Latif's sisters to the palace — implying sexual violence. Latif accepted the role. He was given a luxury suite stocked with silk bedding, fine clothing, and jewellery, but told his family had been informed he died in the war and that he no longer existed. A trainer named Mun'am Hamad began intensive coaching on Uday's gait, smoking habits, laugh, and speech patterns. Latif's teeth were drilled and reshaped without explanation to match Uday's profile. The first major test was a meeting with President Saddam Hussein himself, who approved of the double and warned Latif never to make him angry. Latif's public debut came at a Baghdad football stadium, where he distributed medals before a large crowd. Uday reviewed the footage and declared it convincing. Eleven months into the role, Latif survived his first assassination attempt — a shooting ambush outside a Baghdad hotel — and was briefly allowed to see his family for thirty minutes. Over subsequent years he witnessed Uday abduct a newlywed woman from her husband on their wedding night; the woman jumped from a fourth-floor window. He watched Uday shoot a father who came to confront him about the murder of his daughter. Ordered to execute the grieving man, Latif cut his own wrist instead. Uday had him tortured for 21 days after a false accusation involving one of Uday's women. Released barely alive, Latif's mother urged him to flee. His father refused to leave Iraq on principle; his nine-year-old sister told him to go. Latif prepared his escape — keeping a gun in his car — but Uday called him to a party on the planned night of departure. At the party, Uday shot Latif in the shoulder during a confrontation. Latif returned fire, escaped the compound, and drove toward the Turkish border. At a military checkpoint, bleeding and desperate, he mimicked Uday's posture behind the wheel. Guards recognized what they believed was Uday Hussein and waved him through.

As heard by us

A forced double life turns captivity into a relentless survival story.

Locked Up Abroad follows Latif Yahya's forced role as Uday Hussein's body double like a trap closing in. The episode keeps returning to the same hard facts: the summons to the Republican palace, prison when he refuses, the training to walk and talk like someone else, and the…

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A soldier is forced to become Saddam Hussein's son's body double.

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