Cross him, pay a price

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By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN, Times Senior Correspondent

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 6, 2000

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraqi President Saddam Hussein likes to keep things all in the family. But relatives who cross him, beware.

In 1995, Hussein's son-in-law, Gen. Hussein Kamel, surprised the world by defecting to Jordan after years of heading Iraq's efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction. But even more surprising -- many said "stupid" -- was his decision to return to Baghdad after such a public betrayal of the Iraqi regime.

Kamel and his brother, who had also defected, lasted only a few days back in Iraq. They were killed Feb. 20, 1996, in a shoot-out with Saddam Hussein's security forces, led by Hussein's oldest son, Uday.

The slayings devastated the men's mother, Safiyah Salma Al-Majid. She complained she wasn't allowed to see her grandchildren and began publicly criticizing the Iraqi regime.

Last February -- almost four years to the day her sons were murdered -- Mrs. Al-Majid was found hacked to death at her home in Baghdad. Police did a brief investigation and closed the case without arrests.

According to Western intelligence sources, the Kamel brothers had run afoul of the regime because of a power struggle with Uday Hussein. But Uday himself had barely escaped his father's wrath.

In 1988, he gunned down one of Hussein's favorite bodyguards for allegedly arranging trysts between the Iraqi president and a beautiful eye doctor. Hussein later took the woman as his second wife -- much to the anger of his first wife, Uday's mother.

In Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein, authors Andrew Cockburn and Patrick Cockburn, describe a bizarre scene in which wife No. 1 called Jordan's King Hussein and pleaded with him to help.

"Uday has killed Jajo and now Saddam wants to shoot Uday!" Mrs. Hussein shouted into the phone. The king flew his own plane to Baghdad and, he later recalled, spent the next several days "talking things over" with Iraq's ruling family.

As an apparent result of the king's intercession, Saddam Hussein cooled down -- somewhat.

"It is my constitutional responsibility to enforce justice in the society ... and that does not exempt anyone," Hussein said in announcing that his son would stand trial for murder.

Uday did time in prison, then spent a self-imposed exile in Switzerland that ended when he was asked to leave for carrying a concealed weapon. On his return to Baghdad he regained his father's trust enough to supervise the execution of several hundred officers accused of plotting against the regime.

(According to the Iraqi National Congress, a London-based opposition group, the hot-tempered Uday has also murdered a guard, an aide, a tobacconist caught selling U.S. cigarettes and a teenage girl who resisted his sexual advances.)

So despised was Uday in his home country that in 1996 he was nearly killed when would-be assassins opened fire on his Mercedes, riddling him with bullets. Initial reports said he had been permanently paralyzed but after several operations, he is able to walk again, albeit with a limp.

Now in his mid-30s, Uday owns a Baghdad TV station, a Baghdad newspaper and is head of the country's press council. He was recently elected to the Iraqi Parliament and is in charge of Iraq's Olympic committee.

More clandestinely, he is reputed to have made a fortune smuggling cigarettes, luxury cars and other goods as a major player in the country's thriving black market.

Observers have long presumed that Uday's ultimate goal is to succeed his father. If that's the case, his chief rival may be his younger brother, Qusay. Considered more mature and self-controlled, Qusay has one of Iraq's most sensitive jobs: directing Saddam Hussein's secret security forces.

"Qusay is still behind the scenes but he's emerging more," says Phebe Marr, an Iraqi expert and former senior fellow at the U.S. National Defense University. Still, she doubts that either Qusay or Uday will ever rule Iraq.

"If Saddam died tomorrow, nobody thinks these kids can hang on. Needless to say, they're not that popular," Marr says. "But I don't think he's going to die tomorrow and I think he's going to be around awhile."

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